Making an Argument for Spelling

[Nightshade]

It's not newspeak or doubleplusungoodspeak, it's simply no child left behind all growed up. Evolution of the language is a shift in words -- light to lite, for example -- or an addition or subtraction of words -- ROFL -- it is not someone who's too braindead to have learned the difference between their, there and they're, too, two and to, or where and were. It's also not teh typos. It's ignorance. Before spelling was standardized, optional spelling was fine. It was standardized for clarification. Going backwards is stupid.

 

[Dead Winter]

I'm teaching business English in the Czech Republic along with my job with the British Library. Can't be all that bad!

No, I'm exaggerating. It's quite nice.

Italians tend to get all fired up about things until they realize they actually have to put some time into studying this stuff. It's more comical than anything.

 

[Liverslapper]

no spell check on WoW. and fukc spelling.

 

[Shmu]

You mean fac spelling

 

[flying_whale]

Italians tend to get all fired up about things until they realize they actually have to put some time into studying this stuff. It's more comical than anything.

That is so true. My mom has noticed this about Italian exchange students too. In Romanian this summer she taught a course on the perspective of American society on Italian culture. She teaches a slightly similar course at the Univ of Washington in Seattle too. She had Italian students in both classes and she was saying about how they all got excited and asked questions in the class asked for extra reading materials and they all failed the final exam from not reading anything, yet they were asking for extra reading. Italians...funny things.


I agree, language is a pain to learn passed a certain age. My dad has been trying to learn English for the past ten years. He can't get passed the "hello my name is.... I'm glad to meet you". He says those with a very heavy, Borat-like accent. It is true that if you learn and immerse yourself in a language before your teens you have a very high chance of speaking like a native in terms of pronunciations and in terms of catching new idioms without having someone translate their meaning in your native tongue. (talking about misspellings, I wrote thongs instead of 'tongue', good the spellchecker caught it...)

I learned English starting at ten by studying it in school four times a week. At age thirteen I moved to the Seattle. Personally, I'm very fond of my English, but there is an interesting thing about comparing my mom's English with mine. She writes incredibly eloquently in English and speaks very well in an academic/intellectual environment, but under normal circumstances her English sounds abnormal. I'm not talking about her accent, but her grammar and use of idioms. She can ace a test on phrasal verbs, yet in normal conversations she says 'turn out' the lights not turn off the lights. Turn out, being the literal translation from Romanian into English. She first studied English in high school, starting age fifteen. I don't have this problem with the language and I catch 40% of new idioms I get thrown out. I do have sometimes vocab problems in the first month after returning from my summer stay in romania. I have another romanian friend going to the UW who moved to the states when he was eight and he sounds like a native speaker and doesn't face these problems at all. Language...funny things. One funny thing I find about American English is that it is a language in which I am more confortable picking up chicks and being sleezy rather than my native tongue. It really should be the other way provided that Romanian is closely related to french, the language of sleezy hairy bastards.

 

[Captain Beard]

It really should be the other way provided that Romanian is closely related to french, the language of sleezy hairy bastards.

I thought the Roma were the sleazy, hairy bastards.

 

[Lordlucid]

You just validated my point.

Yeah, but that's the problem...if no one complains, people think it's ok to speak and spell like a complete moron.

I would tend to agree with the general statement for learning how to correctly spell words (I never said it wasn't a valid point). I'm not the greatest at spelling. Nor am I all that great at grammar. Perhaps, I've never learned the difference between to, too, or two. I can say though, your bitching on a forum is not going to change how the youth of our world spells, writes, shops, eats, or otherwise.
I read the article and I do not agree with the teacher. As a teacher spell checking and correcting someone on their grammar should be essential. Mark their grade down if they cannot learn to dot their I's and cross their T's. That will make them either learn to go back and check their work when finished or to fail. Teachers get paid to teach.

 

[Det Som Engang Var]

You can still use ebonics and speak properly. I pull it off naturally everyday.

 

[Dead Winter]

I would tend to agree with the general statement for learning how to correctly spell words (I never said it wasn't a valid point). I'm not the greatest at spelling. Nor am I all that great at grammar. Perhaps, I've never learned the difference between to, too, or two. I can say though, your bitching on a forum is not going to change how the youth of our world spells, writes, shops, eats, or otherwise.
I read the article and I do not agree with the teacher. As a teacher spell checking and correcting someone on their grammar should be essential. Mark their grade down if they cannot learn to dot their I's and cross their T's. That will make them either learn to go back and check their work when finished or to fail. Teachers get paid to teach.

I never supposed that bitching about it on a forum would change the world. That's kinda what forums are for: bitching, arguing, debating, and posting pictures. If you come to this forum for anything other than the above, you're going to be let down.

 

[Burti]

This one girl wrote me a note that was LOADED with errors; grammatical, punctual, and spelling.

I gave it back to her with corrections; she cried.

Am I a terrible person?

 

[Dead Winter]

No, you're not. After high school, one should be able to speak and write clearly and concisely.

If I were looking over someone's CV and it was full of grammatical errors, I wouldn't hire them no matter how qualified they were. It just shows how much attention to detail a person has and if they really care about what they do. If someone made a small typo or something, that's one thing. But not knowing when to use "their", "there", or "they're" is idiocy.