Who wants first to comment on this topic??????

The trend is away from O and towards E. Over the past 30 years, several words have had their spelling altered. Advisor has become adviser, for example. This seems like change for the sake of change, but doesn't really improve the language much. I will concede it tends to help standardize the spelling, I suppose.

But if we're gonna reinvent the language, let's start dropping silent and superfluous characters. That'd do wonders for simplifying things.

Does anybody have any trouble understanding thru (versus through)? Do you really need the ogh?

Doug

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YORF member #11

Igniter and ignitor are both accepted variants of the word - as are through and thru.

Mario

I had always used an 'o', but recently the FireFox spellchecker has led
me (right or wrong) to switch to an 'e'...


Now let's talk about 'fish' spelled 'ghoti'
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghoti

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brianc -- NAR 83726 \ TRA 11640 \ L2

I didn't know it dated back that far. The first time I ever heard it was someone ranting against phonics. His argument struck me as poorly thought out.

I was taught to read and spell using phonics. It gives a good leg up maybe half the time, primarily to modern words of English origin. Where it fails is with words with non-English origins and hence different meanings for the letters. Even then, my trick for remembering the spelling of those words was to remember how they would sound if they were pronounced the way they're spelled. Sports writers have used that trick with the Duke basketball coach's name: krazy zewski minus the a (Krzyzewski).

Doug

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YORF member #11

Linky. Someone from my neck of the backwoods had some relevant things to say on the whole subject of spelling reform.

Mark \\.

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SAM # 0011

Originally, I was strictly with ignitor, but then after a while I started to use igniter too. Now I use both interchangeably. =

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Josh
NAR #87993

Whatever spelling they use in England and Canada, we'll use the other version here in the US.

For the record, I have never seen it spelled with "-or" until this thread.

[Wait, Jack Bauer's having a shoot-out!...]

Mark \\.

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SAM # 0011

Yeah, and look who was killed off really fast in Sunday's episode....

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-Fred Shecter NAR 20117 (L2)
Southern California Rocket Association, NAR Section 430

You beat me to it, Mark!

Every advocate of simplified spelling should pay a visit to the Adirondack Loj. My other hobby is mountain climbing and I've been to the Loj many times and heard many a hiker question the odd spelling. This explains the odd spelling:

The Adirondak Loj got its spelling from Melvin Dewey, inventor of the Dewey Decimal System. Dewey was a main officer of the Lake Placid Club and wanted to have his simplified spelling used to name the Loj. Instead of the conventional “Adirondack Lodge” spelling, the unique spelling of the Adirondak Loj is in place to this day.