Comments on: Real Academia Española contemplating eliminating accents

By: Tom

Tom — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 16:14:22 +0000

Split infinitives have never been a real problem. To properly understand them, you need to look at the American schooling system.

By: Lavengro

Lavengro — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 15:15:28 +0000

There is a lot of English spelling that we’re stuck with, for a variety of reasons, and so it should be got right for the sake of clarity and linguistic cohesion. But there is a fair amount (such as the examples that I have given) that have no logical or linguistic justification. They could be simplified tomorrow and no-one would suffer a jot. But they can’t be simply because some people fear that their spurious credentials as educated people will be undermined if such distinctions are abolished. Such is class warfare in the UK.

It’s not only spelling. There are people who can bore for England on the subject of apostrophes, or split infinitives, or ending sentences with prepositions, or less and fewer, without any real idea of what they are wittering about.

You might like to see this: http://tinyurl.com/yzpwjar

By: Trevor

Trevor — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 14:42:28 +0000

So not the moderately clever and well-educated? I’d like to imagine that I’m above discriminating against bad spellers, but mediocrity dies hard.

By: Lavengro

Lavengro — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 09:37:20 +0000

It is so that language snobs can show off how clever and well-educated they are by making pointless distinctions between word forms: practice (noun) and practise (verb); dependant (noun) dependent (adjective); proceed and precede (from the same Latin root), and so on.

By: Trevor

Trevor — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 23:37:51 +0000

Perhaps that is because they are concerned more with semantics than aesthetics.

By: "el Primo"

"el Primo" — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 23:21:03 +0000

English orthography is an incoherent mess.

By: Lavengro

Lavengro — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 21:00:18 +0000

That is a matter of opinion.

By: Tom

Tom — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 20:41:33 +0000

Or perhaps just abolish the academies? English does fine without one.

By: Trevor

Trevor — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 16:28:00 +0000

In a particularly dull bookshop, just after I arrived, I read an edition of the letters he wrote around the time he was doing all this stuff, and the extent to which it was a political rather than linguistic project gave me one of those Ah! moments.

By: "el Primo"

"el Primo" — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 15:51:37 +0000

Did they read Pompeu Fabra’s mind? Quite an achievement.