Re: Jonathan Swift published a proposal to regulate English (22-2-1712)

On 2024-03-04, Adam Funk <a24061@ducksburg.com> wrote:

The fairly minor modernizations of the French (1990) and German
(1996) orthographies also triggered major outcries.  People react
with kneejerk refusal without even knowing what it is that they are
against.  That's one for the psychologists.  It's as if people feel
that something is taken away from them.  Very odd.

>
I think people who are good at the existing system have an ego stake
in maintaining it.

It's not clear that, on average, those who are better at spelling
object more to reform.  My entirely subjective impression is that
it's the opposite; those who would profit the most from it are the
most opposed.
You could certainly observe people loudly proclaiming that they
would continue to spell such-and-such that old way and not this new
way, but they had it the wrong way around.  Dunning-Kruger is very
strong there.
In France, the reform appeared to have been mostly forgotten until
it showed up in school textbooks a number of years ago.  Something
needs to be done!  Appeal to the Academy!  Oh, wait...
PS: You may have noticed that Stefan Ram has a very strong opinion
    on what is at this point a historical change (28 years ago!).
--
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber                          naddy@mips.inka.de