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

Adam Funk <a24061@ducksburg.com> wrote or quoted:

I think people who are good at the existing system have an ego stake
in maintaining it. People who know you're supposed to write (in BrE)
"colourful" but "coloration" can feel superior to those who don't.

  You are full of it when you portray those who support
  the retention of normal spellings (the majority of the
  population, including many experts, who gave good reasons for
  their opinion) as mentally disturbed. Maintaining the normal
  spellings is what everyone usually does, for good reasons.

  There may be something to that ego stake. A secretary may be
  proud of the fact that she can type so quickly. But this is
  no argument for changing the position of the keys.

  Around the year 2000, the school ministers of the federal states
  of the Federal Republic of Germany decided that various normal
  spellings of words in schools should now be regarded as errors.

  Today, children generally make many more mistakes than before
  this change in schools.

1972  7
2002 12
2012 17

  Error rates according to the Giessen longitudinal study
  ("Gießener Längsschnittstudie")

  Some want to explain this by the idea that people generally
  learn less well today. However, it turns out that the mistakes
  are made precisely where changes have been made:

  "Comparable spelling performance with words not directly affected
  by the spelling reform contrasts with significantly poorer
  performance with the s-words that were changed by the reform.",
  quoted (translated to English) from: "Rechtschreibleistung
  vor und nach der Rechtschreibreform: Was ändert sich bei
  Grundschulkindern?" ("Spelling performance before and after the
  spelling reform: What has changed for primary school children?");
  by Harald Marx; University of Bielefeld; 1999

  But there is no need to argue any further here, because the school
  ministers have long since recognized their mistakes!

  "The education ministers have long known that the spelling
  reform was wrong." said Johanna Wanka (President of the
  "Kultusministerkonferenz" [The so-called "conference of
  school ministers"] in 2005)

  "We should not have made the spelling reform." said Hans
  Zehetmair (a former supporter of the reform) in 2003, as
  Bavarian Minister of Education and Cultural Affairs.