Suzanne,

I am forwarding these comments by Theo Halladay.
Theo's remarks are easy to identify because she writes in the
regularized English currently being tested by the spelling society.

I call it 4-rule spelling. Stressed long vowels are spelled about
20 different ways in standard English. In 4RS, there are only about
two options: ale/day, eel/me, ile/di/dy, ode/lo, use/oo/du. Short
stressed vowels are consistently marked with double consonants:
daddy, verry, ilitterat. Redundant letters are dropped.

I would welcome comments on this approach to spelling reform.

--Steve

Suzanne wrote:

"Among Canadian participants there was a large range between very
high and very low scores on the prose literacy scale. IALS showed
that the discrepancy between people with low and high literacy
skills was far larger in Canada than in European countries such as
Denmark, Norway, Germany, Finland and Sweden."

"On the prose literacy scale, Canada ranked 5th among the 20
countries surveyed, behind Sweden, Finland, Norway and the
Netherlands ..."

http://www.hrsdc.gc.ca/en/hip/lld/nls/Resources/09_fact.shtml

"So Our composite scale was relatively high but the gap between high
and low was wide."

I have to ask if our English orthography is not part of the problem.
On average we are not so bad, but if the gap is wide that is a bad
thing.

But then one also has to ask how many people in any country speak
the national lg as their first lg, what is the socioeconomic
distribution, what other social problems do we have by virtue of a
very heterogenous population, etc. To be honest, I really don't
know. -Suzanne

TH: Wen I reed the names /Denmark, Norway, Germany, Finland,
Sweden/ as contrasted with Canada, I hav to laf.

TH: How large an indigenus population do those cuntrys hav? Ar the
public awair that Canada has a huge and groing population of Inuit,
Mohawk and uther tribal nations, at leest 40% of whom ar reported as
being functionaly ilitterat? The west coast of BC alone has 13
difrent tribal languages, sum of them stil unritten. [Linguists at
the U. of Victoria, working with missionary preests & uthers, hav
invented a number of new simbols to represent the cliks & uther
sounds of nativ languages. Did u kno about that?]

Quebec is mor sepparatist than it has evver been, with the
guvvernment actualy trying to discurrage peeple from lerning
inglish. Wer the reserch results based on mastery of french, or of
inglish? Quebec is counted in thees studdys as part of Canada, but
to all intents and purposes it is now a sepparat nation, non inglish
speeking. U may hav herd about the outcry that finaly resinded a
reesently pasd law mandating the arest of enny storkeeper in Quebec
who dared to post or leev up a shop sine in inglish.

Central Canada is stil taking in mor eestern europeans, Croatians in
particular. Vancouver has a large and groing comunity of Shiite
moslems. Vancouver's sattelite city of Richmond is all chinese.

There is a steddy influx in the west, leegal and ileegal, from
China, Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam, Indonesia and uther parts of
southeest Asia. About the only groups that ar not moving into BC ar
hispanics and blaks. I supose that wil cum.. Thees immigrants soon
lern to speek inglish, but that dusnt meen they can reed or rite it
corectly. Once they hav establishd themselvs in a town or part of a
city, the older peeple in particcular dont bother to lern to reed &
rite inglish.

The adults lern arithmetic & how to reed numbers, & they reccognize
by memmory a certan vocabulary of semmagrams (?) that ar street
sines, direction sines, shop names and prices. This is enuf for
most of them to get along, esp. the older wimmen. They can
understand the spoken language on TV pritty wel, so they keep up
with things, & they esp. rely on their own TV & radio stations. TV
and radio can leed to isolation in that way, paradoxicly.

There is nuthing dislexic about the avverage wite Canadian whose
ancestors came from the british iles. Most of them ar industrius,
obeedient students. They take better to the scool dissiplins on the
avverage than americans do. They ar apt to be loyal to the TS
traditions from the old cuntry, & also eeger to prove their hi
levvel of education and civilisation. Hence the wide gap between
the best and the poorest students of the language.

Wat goes for those of british & uther european desent also goes for
the children of the oriental immigrants. Their parents ar likely to
push the children to succeed, and that meens they must work hard to
master reeding and riting the inglish language. So we offen find a
discreppancy rite within the same family, in spelling, between
illiteracy and award-winning mastery.

--Theo