Government has to address issue

“Panglot: U ask for a standard spoken English but dont seem to want a standard ritten English based on it? Changing pronunciation is much harder than changing spelling.

We hav standard ritten English now, which all our variant idioms accept. Lets just upgrade that standard.

Retaining our privileged lingua franca status should be one of our main aims. A standardized upgraded spelling would help that.”

“AllanJC: I see your point, but the basic principle of spelling should be that it matches speech otherwise there are two things to learn, which is a bit pointless. Languages such as Finnish that are truly phonetic are very quickly learnt by young children. Let's face it, there needs to be a standard spoken English for foreign learners, and it might help heal the rifts in British society: as the previous government were keen on saying "we are all middle class now".”

“Panglot: If spelling was changed to represent exactly the way people pronounce words, we would hav (sic) so many varieties of English spelling that English would represent the tower of Babel rather than a lingua franca.

We ar fortunat that it has this latter status now, and it would be a backward step for us to lose it.

Any upgrading of our spelling should follow a standard we can all cope with, despite our different accents. Our present "traditional spelling" (TS) ruffly and poorly follows "standard English", and we all cope with this as best we can.

An updated spelling should do likewise, but be easier for all learners. I suggest the standard should be an amalgam of General American and Received Pronunciation (RP, British), as used by news readers at NBC and BBC.”

“Rubbish. I can spell fine. Maybe parents should spend more time helping their children with school work”

“I don't think just tinkering with existing conventional spelling will help much.

The basic principle of writing should be that it matches the way people actually speak. English has strayed away from this principle which it makes it unnecessarily hard to write.

What it needed is a root and branch solution to this problem: go back to phonetic spelling.

Excellent phonetic systems exist, like Simplified Standard Sound Symbols.

Details can be found here: http://tinyurl.com/98dlwf3”

“My hope is that the texters who simplify English spelling and can see that dropping redundant letters (u, hav, gone) makes words easier to spell and leaves them just as readable, can help to bring about a general revision of English spelling habits.

At least 3695 common English words contain one or more unpredictable letters. Improving them all in one go would be challenging, but this rote-learning burden could easily be at least halved, by ameliorating just a few of the worst inconsistencies – the ones which impede progress with learning to read and write most of all.

Among the worst retardants of literacy progress in English are:
surplus -e endings (give, imagine, promise - cf. drive, define, compromise) and
other redundant letters (friend, build, Wednesday),
and needlessly doubled consonants (arise – arrive);
omitted doubled consonants (shoddy - body)
and the many unpredictable spellings for the ee sound (seek – speak, seize, siege, scene).
Those inconsistencies could easily be amended, given more concern for the educational progress of all children, rather than just the top half of the ability range who cope with them with relative ease.

Perhaps this can only come about when more people understand what enormous educational, social and fiscal costs the inconsistencies of English spelling entail. I have written yet another book in which I explain what they are, which irregularities retard English literacy progress most of all and how they came about – the ebook 'Spelling it out: the problems and costs of English', (July 2012, price £ 2.05), but most of the information in it is also available for free on my blogs and website.”