Peter Jackson column

Apr 19 2007 By Peter Jackson, The Journal

As an infant I was unable to spell the word "went" and persistently wrote "whent".

Eventually, an exasperated teacher inscribed "went" on a bib and made me wear it around the school.

This would have been a gross violation of my human rights, had such things been invented then. Certainly today, such treatment would be enough to have a Royal Navy rating blubbing into his iPod.

Human rights legislation aside, children in future could be spared such barbarous treatment if an organisation called the Simplified Spelling Society, SSS, has its way.

SSS is launching a campaign to make it easier to read and write English, arguing it has failed to adapt for 500 years and that, with texts and emails creating their own simplified spellings, it is time other means of communication followed.

The society claims English is about the only major language, apart from French, which has not updated its spelling in 500 years. The result: European children learn to read and write far more quickly than the British and 40 million American adults are functionally illiterate.

One can see that the idea might appeal to business. Here, at a stroke, is a solution to the problem of a workforce leaving school unable to read and write. It could go hand-in-hand with Government policy of exam grade inflation as a way of disguising falling standards.

But, notwithstanding the superficial attractions of SSS's agenda, I don't think it will catch on. In fact, the society is launching the campaign to celebrate its 99th birthday - that is, 99 years of failing to convince people the idea has any merit.

Simplified spelling would not have helped me as a child. My problem was not a failure to grapple with complication, but, on the contrary, a need to ornament, to add an "h" to that perfectly functional "went".

And SSS's programme would only intensify the North/South divide. Do we come down on the side of the flat northern vowel in "bath", or do we change the spelling to "barth"?

If the northerners win that one, do we compensate southerners by changing the spelling of "ass", and if so, don't we create ambiguity when we write, "to sit on one's arse"?