If Mark Liberman finds the antics of the Plain English Campaign annoying, SC bets he'll really love the half-dozen cranks who make up New Zealand's "Spell 4 Literacy". They're busy protesting this year's National Spelling Bee. Your host wishes he was kidding:
Christchurch man Allan Campbell was one of several people planning to picket the event, calling for spelling to be updated.
Mr Campbell is one of six New Zealanders who make up Spell 4 Literacy, a branch of the international Simplified Spelling Society, advocating English spelling change to make it more consistent and intuitive.
Spell 4 Literacy is part of a larger organization known as the Simplified Spelling Society, which advocates the self-exposition of lunatics the usual gamut of English spelling reforms. The Society is drawing on its worldwide resources to stage its biggest-ever protest of the National Spelling Bee this year, and expects a full dozen people to participate as a result. Judging from this 2004 article in USA Today, they've gotten good at drawing a little attention to themselves, but really, cuudn't they pik on sumwun their own size?
UPDATE: EFL Geek points to some previous posts of his own on the same topic, dating to last year's Bee. Your host tries to be good about crediting other linguistics bloggers when they have priority on a story, but sometimes falls short. Go check out what he uncovered, including the Yahoo! discussion group that the Simplified Spellers maintain.
(Edited at 1:50 a.m. on 6/3/05 to add update material.)
I find Lieberman's remarks puzzling. Notice he appeals to us to "read it carefully". That is the whole point of the Plain English Campaign -- of you have to read and reread it carefully to discover that it is in fact "impeccable, syntactically, semantically, logically, and rhetorically", there has been a failure of communication, especially when this wasn't a piece of writing capable of being read and reread, but a speech that should have been immediately understandable.
I am behind the general ethos of the Plain English Campaign, although it involves tolerating the frequent lapses when the principle of good communication gets confused with the linguistically nonsensical "Proper English" farce.
As one with experience in Education, I can only wholeheartedly back anyone who wants to see an end to drivel and nonsense-talk that dominates so many institutions.
Posted by: Dave Rattigan | June 04, 2005 at 12:37 PM
Blogged: http://scambled.blogspot.com/2005/06/speaka-de-english.html
Posted by: Dave Rattigan | June 06, 2005 at 02:42 AM
I know what you're saying, and part of me is glad that there are people out there dedicated to denouncing pompous jackassery. It's just that they can be annoyingly good at descending into self-parody, which I think is Prof. Liberman's real beef.
Posted by: Semantic Compositions | June 06, 2005 at 09:20 AM
Having read the archives Mark Liberman posted, I can see the beef they have with the PEC now. I do wonder if there are any societies or organizations out there who manage to protest gobbledy-gook without sliding into silly proper English territory.
Posted by: Dave Rattigan | June 06, 2005 at 10:51 AM
The night of the fight, you may feel a slight sting. That's pride f*cking with you. F*ck pride. Pride only hurts, it never helps.
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Posted by: Name | April 03, 2009 at 09:19 AM
The night of the fight, you may feel a slight sting. That's pride f*cking with you. F*ck pride. Pride only hurts, it never helps.
4c5cac9b7366b82ddd59356fa94477b8
Posted by: Stuart | April 03, 2009 at 09:25 AM