Spell it out — literacy is the real problem

THE idea of simplifying spelling and dropping ‘surplus’ letters (June 8) is fraught with difficultly.

You give the example of changing ‘read’, to ‘reed’, but that is already a different word, likewise ‘son’ and ‘sun’.

This would create rather than reduce confusion.

English is spoken all over the world with a multitude of different accents in different places and by different classes.

Would we change ‘thin’ to ‘tin’ to suit the Irish or ‘column’ to ‘colom’ to suit the English, or ‘aunt’ to ‘ant’ to suit the Americans?

Furthermore, the problem only exists with a few common words — the study mentions 200.

Most English words follow certain rules of pronunciation. Also, the sounds represented by letters are inconsistent. To make English phonetic would require twice as many letters and a complete overhaul, but it would have to be based on a particular accent.

The Chinese, with numerous regional dialects, have a written language based on pictograms, which is the same everywhere, with obvious advantages.

We shouldn’t be too pedantic about correct spelling; text messages have changed this, and computer spellcheckers mean it is no longer a real problem.

The real problem is people don’t read any more. Slowly and imperceptibly we are becoming semi-literate. This is what the academics should be worrying about.

Michael Job

Rossnagrena

Glengarriff

Co Cork