In DC, even the Spelling Bee draws protesters.

[Ponce]

I am now very proud of my spelling power if (if not my grammar) and it took me a long time to make it but now they want to change it to the way that I used to spell hahahahahah......The English language is being changed to acomodate foreigners and blacks an not for the right reasons.)
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In DC, even the Spelling Bee draws protesters.

WASHINGTON – 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.

"Our alphabet has 425-plus ways of putting words together in illogical ways," Mahoney said.

The protesting cohort distributed pins to willing passers-by with their logo, "Enuf is enuf. Enough is too much."

According to literature distributed by the group, it makes more sense for "fruit" to be spelled as "froot," "slow" should be "slo," and "heifer" — a word spelled correctly during the first oral round of the bee Thursday by Texas competitor Ramesh Ghanta — should be "hefer."

Meanwhile, inside the hotel's Independence Ballroom, 273 spellers celebrated the complexity of the language in all its glory, correctly spelling words like zaibatsu, vibrissae and biauriculate.

While the protesters could make headway with cell phone texters who routinely swap "u" for "you" and "gr8" for "great," their message may be a harder sell for the Scripps crowd.

Mahoney had trouble gaining traction with at least one bee attendee. New Mexico resident Matthew Evans, 15, a former speller whose sister is participating in the bee this year, reasoned with her that if English spellings were changed, spelling bees would cease to exist.

"If a dictionary lists 'enough' as 'enuf,' the spelling bee goes by the dictionary, therefore all the spelling words are easier to spell, so the spelling bee is gone," Evans said.

"Well," Mahoney replied, "they could pick their own dictionary."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100603/ap_on_re_us/us_spelling_bee_protest

First post of the day.............good morning to one and all.

[undgrd]

Roberta Mahoney, 81.



This issue will work itself out soon based on the bold item above.
;D

[Ash_Williams]

Making words easier to spell will further serve to divide the lawyers (and other professions where literacy is a must) from everyone else. If you make common mistakes (the kind that the average college graduate will make frequently) you will have your resume tossed into the waste bin and will find it far more difficult to move past a certain point in life. If a kid is spelling "fruit" as "froot" it will likely condemn them to a life in the lower class.

[Ponce]

wat r u sain?......may as well practice ::)

[Quantum]

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.

"Our alphabet has 425-plus ways of putting words together in illogical ways," Mahoney said.

The protesting cohort distributed pins to willing passers-by with their logo, "Enuf is enuf. Enough is too much."

According to literature distributed by the group, it makes more sense for "fruit" to be spelled as "froot," "slow" should be "slo," and "heifer" — a word spelled correctly during the first oral round of the bee Thursday by Texas competitor Ramesh Ghanta — should be "hefer."


Doubleplusgood!

http://www.newspeakdictionary.com/

[Awoke]

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.

I would think it's fair to assume that it is not the "language" itself that obstructs 40 percent of the population from learning english.

It's their "culture", or lack thereof.

[madfranks]

Doubleplusgood!

http://www.newspeakdictionary.com/


Very nice! From the Newspeak Dictionary:

The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of IngSoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible. It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought -- that is, a thought diverging from the principles of IngSoc -- should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words. Its vocabulary was so constructed as to give exact and often very subtle expression to every meaning that a Party member could properly wish to express, while excluding all other meaning and also the possibility of arriving at them by indirect methods... Newspeak was designed not to extend but to diminish the range of thought, and this purpose was indirectly assisted by cutting the choice of words down to a minimum. Newspeak was founded on the English language as we now know it, though many Newspeak sentences, even when not containing newly created words, would be barely intelligible to an English-speaker of our own day.

[Ponce]

I am with you on that Awoke........like they had to LOWER the standard of college entrance examinations for blacks and minority to be able to make it.

[Saul Mine]

http://i45.tinypic.com/zlbss7.jpg

Dyslexic protesters just want one hug.