Simplified Spelling Society
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The Simplified Spelling Society is an organization which promotes English spelling reform. The Simplified Spelling Society (SSS) or (TSS) started in 1908 with the aim of updating English spelling. The Society publishes leaflets, newsletters, journals, books and bulletins to promote spelling reform of the English language. Their spokespersons feature regularly on TV, on radio and in print.
While the society advocates a more phonemic writing system for English it is not accurate to say that the advocate a near dictionary spelling. The general consensus is that highly phonemic representations of English are too radical and would be rejected by the general public. The society would be content to reduce the irregularity of English spelling.
You can find an example of a phonemic representation of English pronunciation in any English dictionary. They are usually easy enough to read and pronounce but some of the pronunciation spellings don't look anything like the traditional spellings. Deciphering these sound-sign by sound-sign slows down reading until one learns the new word-sign.
One can teach children a dictionary key first. This would be comparable to teaching written Italian to an Italian child. It takes only 3 weeks to learn and can be fully mastered in 3 months. The difference is the the English child would only be code literate. He or she would not be literate in the traditional orthography. The Italian child would be fully literate in Italian. Literate means that the student would understand anything written in Italian as well as he (or she) could understand it when read aloud.
It usually takes the student of English another 3 years to achieve this level of competency.
This in a nut shell is the rationale for spelling reform. It accelerates literacy.
Once code literate in a dictionary key, the English student would have to learn the other high frequency spelling patterns for each phoneme. See English spelling. There are usually 14 plausible spellings for each phoneme but usually only 4 are high frequency and only 2 are high frequency in certain positions.
Going this route, every child would be reading above grade level by year one. In one study, everyone in the class was reading above a 3rd grade reading level at the end of the first year. This was the result that Sir James Pitman hoped for with the ITA initial teaching alphabet. Children progressed twice as fast in the transcribed readers but when the student had to transition to the traditional writing system in the 3rd year, that advantage was lost.
The ITA failed to accelerate traditional literacy. However when a dictionary key is taught using synthetic phonics in a writing to read program, there is every reason to expect that it would accelerate literacy.
Someone completing this program of study would not know when and where to insert silent letters and they still might be a little confused by the code overlaps. If such irregularities could be eliminated, it would reduce the amount of time it takes to learn to read and write.
If you asked the student to spell /'pIdZ@n/, They might right pijn, pijun or pidjin. They are all plausible phonemic spellings. In English the spelling of unstressed diminished vowels is always ambiguous. *pidgeon is the traditional spelling. *pidgen might be the reformed spelling that advocates of spelling reform might recommend.
The reduction in irregularity advocated by the spelling society does not eliminate all the ambiguity in English spelling so some memorization and study would still be required.
What is the position of the Spelling Society with respect to the various alternative spelling systems that have been produced over the years? Is it promoting any specific scheme?
The Spelling Society does not currently advocate or recommend a specific solution to the alphabet problem. It provides a forum in which the authors of alternative schemes for representing spoken English can have their invented spellings reviewed. Over 100 ways of respelling English have been devised over the years. They run anywhere from regularizing a few words to a nearly 100% phonemic dictionary key spelling. Most schemes fall in between these two extremes.
Does the Spelling Society have any guidelines or principles for new writing systems for English.
The Spelling Society considers that the fundamental justification for any reform of TS is that it will improve literacy and cut learning costs. In addition to being faster for children and foreign students to learn, it must not place unnecessary obstacles in the way of those already familiar with TS. Reconciling these two objectives requires compromise and imagination.
SSS protestors from various parts of the English-speaking world have regularly taken good-humored action against orthodox English spelling and its promotion e.g., by demonstrating, most conspicuously in the form of 'BeeMan,' at the annual Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington.
The Committee of the Society recently agreed, in its centenary year, to experiment with dropping the prefix 'Simplified' from the Society's title,
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[edit] britic
One of the spelling systems found in the Society's archive is "britic",[1] a system devised by Reginald Deans, a spelling reformer, who sought to achieve a one-to-one correspondence of sounds and letters in the alphabet, while using symbols commonly available on a typewriter/keyboard.
There are hundreds of possible spelling reforms for written English. Those that have undergone peer review are listed as Personal Views.
The Spelling Society (www.spellingsociety.org) does not advocate, recommend, or endorse any particular scheme or notation for the representation of spoken English.
From 1908 to 1960 the house stile of the society was New Spelling. In 1960 the society stopped endorsing schemes. They still have a way to endorse schemes as worthy of examination. Schemes that pass this peer review are published as Personal Views (to distinguish them society views or group views).
For details on the society's position on various salient topics, read the SS Position Paper.
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[edit] References
- ^ Lung, Richard; West African & Britic; retrieved on 2008-05-26
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