'Enuf is enuf': Protesters in bee suits outside Spelling Bee want to make English simpler

FOXNews.com ^ | June 4, 2010 | Associated Press

[metmom]

WASHINGTON (AP) — The nation's capital always draws its share of protesters, picketing for causes ranging from health care reform to immigration policy.

But spelling bee protesters? They're out here, too.

Four peaceful protesters, some dressed in full-length black and yellow bee costumes, represented the American Literacy Council and the London-based Spelling Society and stood outside the Grand Hyatt on Thursday, where the Scripps National Spelling Bee is being held. Their message was short: Simplify the way we spell words.

Roberta Mahoney, 81, a former Fairfax County, Va. elementary school principal, said the current language obstructs 40 percent of the population from learning how to read, write and spell.

[RJR_fan]

phonetic spelling obliterates word geneology. It destroys the meaning. Literate people can tell if a word has Latin, French, or Olde English roots - this adds texture and meaning to our lives...

Kemal Ataturk's "language reform" was, in the words of one sympathetic observer, "a catastrophic success." Yes, it made the Turkish people much more literate, almost overnight. OTOH, it cut off their literary connection to a thousand years of history. Which, come to think of it, was the point.

[RJR_fan]

No, it’s “double-plus ungood.” To some extent, newspeak is modeled on Esperanto.

[RJR_fan]

Let’s hear it for thorn and eth! And don’t forget ash!

[netmilsmom]

>>phonetic spelling obliterates word geneology. It destroys the meaning. Literate people can tell if a word has Latin, French, or Olde English roots - this adds texture and meaning to our lives...<<

Brilliant! and so true.

[metmom]

Most of us learn English just fine and can spell IMHO those who have problems need to be tutored by their parents or by paid tutors. If neither work perhaps they have some other learning disability that needs to be addressed?

If they get back to teaching phonics and language of origin, that would be a start.

Then you just memorize the rest.

[a fool in paradise]

And let’s round pi down to an easier to remember 3.0000000.

Dumbing down the populace. That’s the goal of socialists.

Remember nearly 20 years ago when they tried to push through ebonics in schools in the Clinton Error?

[BattleHymn]

Yoo beet mi to iyt! I knoo Twayn wood end up in heer sumwear.

[Tigerized]

Look how well Ebonics went over.

I, for one, am sick and tired of the left diddling our language. Remember when Gay used to mean Happy? A Bum was a bum, and not Homeless? People were Short and not Vertically Challenged? Retarded meant what it said, and physically handicapped people weren’t Otherly Abled?

Of course, this crap spawned a whole bunch of confusing oxymorons, such as Politically Correct. Which it ain’t.

[Dallas59]

I never mastered newspeak./s

[Salvation]

Put some ice on it and teach the kids!

[Houmatt]

A stupid child grows into a stupid adult that doesn't question its government is doing.

This is no accident.