Sometimes Sayings.

My saying for this week and it pales when contrasted with that from Grandad above. is:-

I bought a colour Television set when they first came out but of course the colours have faded a bit now.

By the way I get annoyed when this program as well as others highlight a word I do not spell in the American way. In English the word COLOUR has a U in it!

I too believe that the word Colour has the letter U in it and not this later 'phonetic' spelling of words that is wrong. But school teachers insist you have to accept that kids will not learn to spell correctly because they like to spell in SMS talk. So one day if they let the kids out of school and they enter the real world they know how to spell incorrectly and the bosses will never understand what it is they are trying to write.

Co0bba

I know your heritage calls for traditional English but what is correct? Try to read Captain Cook's reports or even an original Charles Dickens novel and you are tripping over wrong spelling and grammar. All languages are evolving.

Is there any reason to have words with superfluous letters, silent letters and different pronunciations for the same group of letters. The only reason is "Because that is the way we have always done it" which is no reason at all in any situation.

The reason for much of this stupidity is that English is a bastard language in the first place and atrocious attempts to Anglicize (uh-oh! spellcheck just put a "z" into Anglicise) words from 40 different foreign languages has resulted in the current shambles. At least we do not have to put up with masculine and feminine like the French and several others or formal and informal (in a grammatical sense) like the Italians and also many others.

SMS abbreviations are untenable in written English because there is no way to convey subtlety or expression.

I support keeping ALL the words, big and small and all the correct grammar but phonetic spelling? Give me one good reason why not.

Lang

Speaking of grammar

As you say our English language is a mix of everything wrong just so the plum can be firmly placed in the mouth, but, it is what we were taught and until some common sense can be made out of it we should spell words correctly.
I tend to think that the Yank way of spelling many words is right on the mark but was not how we were taught.

Old dogs and tricks.

I suppose we are very lucky in our written language because a foreigner can "have a go " at pronouncing it phonetically and get a 75% chance of jagging the word and being understood like a 5 year old on his first reader.

Anyone trying to talk to a Frenchman by reading a guide book phonetically has no hope. Any relationship between written and spoken French is purely coincidental. On the other hand you will do amazingly well in Russian and be understood most of the time (at least enough to get your message across) by using phonetic pronunciation of the words in your guide book.

I have seen some written submissions by young university educated Australians and the main problem is not the spelling but the use of totally incorrect words that sound similar to the one they want eg prostrate when they mean prostate. Some of the results are hilarious for example there is for sale on Gumtree a large guillotine advertised as A big Gelatine" . Hundreds of people write their daily reports in a cow shed instead of a notebook etc etc.

Lang

I agree with all the comments, including that English is a bastard language made up of many other languages. It is one of the Germanic languages!

However, I choose to speak the Australian version of English.

Since I saw it remaindered for 50 cents, in a bookshop many years ago, I have regretted not buying a little book about the English language. On the cover was a picture of a man teaching students the words Bought, Cough and Dough. (The first letter of each word follow alphabetically and all the remaining letters are the same but each word if pronounced quite differently)

A couple of Sunday;s ago, I was at a market in Geelong. At a stall selling nuts and dried fruit I saw bags labelled MEXS NUT. Upon looking at bags labelled PEA NUT and other nut varieties, I soon realised it meant Mixed Nuts.