Spelling law and disorder

In this world of accelerating Future Shock, there is almost nothing that your great grandparents would understand. At home and at work, almost everything has changed.  However, there remains one bastion of conservatism, the rules of spelling. This one area seems to change little but, in fact, has been subject to various grades of the whims of authority or anarchy, depending on the language. A very brief survey of four languages will show the tectonic plates underlying the solid rock of spelling rules.

Russian has the advantage of being the native language of only one country, albeit a rather large one, with a historical tendency to have authoritarian governments. The Russian written language went through its last major reform slightly more than 100 years ago, in 1917. The Bolsheviks, upon taking power, implemented major changes in the dictionary. The gist of the changes was to eliminate unpronounced letters and symbols. Through its control of printing, these recommendations were enforced, leading to the more logical spelling and shorter books. In more modern times, there has been some incoherent policy regarding official use of е [ye] and ё [yo]. So, due to the monopolistic power of the Soviet government on Russian, spelling was rationalized and maintained.

The French language also has an academy, which takes itself very seriously, of course. However, unlike with Russian, France is a democracy and French is spoken in other countries, notably Belgium and Canada. (Africa, as usual, has no weight on this issue). The French academy recently issued some minor changes in spelling, mainly regarding accents, double l’s and dashes. See https://www.francaisavecpierre.com/reforme-de-lorthographe-du-francais/. I am sure that these changes interest the teachers of French language as well as the readers of Canard Enchainė (btw – I fit both categories), but they have no real effect on the consistency or rationality of French spelling. By contrast, any attempt to introduce the Belgium use of septante and nonante to replace the mathematically challenging soixante-dix and quatre-vingts-dix as the terms for seventy and ninety would be rejected offhand by the learned members of the academy. The French language will continue its creative and non-user-friendly spelling system.

Hebrew is an ancient language spoken as a native tongue in one country. An official language academy even exists: https://hebrew-academy.org.il/. That said, when you have two Jews, you have three opinions. Even in the Bible in the same section, the same words are spelled in different ways. Formally speaking, there are two written forms of a word: the short form without vowel symbols (what most people read) and the long form with the vowel sounds marked, used for learning and reading the Bible. Unfortunately, the Israel school systems does not very actively or effectively teach spelling and pronunciation, which sometimes creates confusion for these readers. For example, the wordבקר can be pronounced [boker] meaning morning or [bakar] meaning cattle. While context should be sufficient to distinguish the correct sounds, many people, with the acquiescence of the Hebrew academy, add a ו [vuv], the symbol for the [o] sound, in an attempt to clarify. Likewise, people also add a י [yud], the symbol for the [ee] sound, to words to emphasize that sound.  As one speaker at a conference in Beit Berel said, Hebrew speakers must and have been able to apply intelligence when reading. She was strongly against stupefying the language. So, chaos and debate have always ruled the Hebrew language and will apparently continue to do.

Then there is English. Reflecting his personal pronunciation, Samuel Johnson published the first truly practical dictionary in 1755.  Learners have been suffering ever since. To be fair, the claim that English spelling is not phonetic is not accurate.  It is phonetic for places that have guttural gh’s and kn’s. Alas, that specific linguistic group represents a very small percentage of people in the UK, not to mention the world. The reason why this strange system cannot be reformed as was Russian is that no country or academy controls the English language.  Since the British cannot impose their spelling on the US and vice versa, English has taken the typical Anglo-Saxon attitude of agreeing to disagree but with a hint of disapproval. Thus, the Oxford dictionary places the American spelling in small letters after the entry while the Webster’s write the UK spelling in small letters after the American English entry. Given the number of parties with an interest in English, I am rather convinced that this state of organized chaos will exist in another three generations. Thus, for the foreseeable future, we are stuck with memorizing, spelling quizzes, dictionaries and spellcheck.

Thus, even spelling, that dry and iconoclastic form of communication, is subject to the influence of politics and culture. How your children will spell words is truly a matter of law and disorder.