As you may have seen here, an academic has suggested that words which are wrongly spelt should be accepted as 'variant spellings'.
I'm not swayed by the argument, to be honest (it smacks slightly of just making it easier for exam papers to be marked), but more to the point, I question Mr Smith's commitment to it as well; if he really meant it, surely he should have said "Insted of complayning abowt the stayte of the educayshun sistem..."
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2 comments:
Connexion.
Mediæval.
Sulphur.
Off the top of my head, words whose standardised spelling in UK English has changed within the last seventy years.
There are more.
And that's not including new variants such as "Oh noes! The internets ated my post!" or the thousands of new coinings that people create every year, in many cases purely for the lols.
Fair points all Piers - I'm just a little concerned about the origin of this suggestion, really; I'm just unconvinced that suggestions about spelling should be given this level of publicity, especially when the person making them is an expert in a different field. Somehow, I doubt that suggestions about the method of, say, citing case law, would get as much exposure were they made by a teacher of linguistics... well, maybe if it was another slow news day, it might.
J
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