Posted by David Brooks on November 06, 2000 at 15:52:50 from 216.64.124.149:
In Reply to: Re: For lovers of English English posted by Dave Thewlis on November 04, 2000 at 21:26:38:
I've also seen variations of this based on George Bernard Shaw's long push for "logical" spelling. He's the one who demonstrated English's foolish rules by spelling "fish" as "ghoti"
Having said that, in the current issue of Atlantic Monthly magazine, an article about languages quotes somebody-or-other who speaks a dozen or so tongues fluently. He said that English is, hands down, the easiest language to speak badly: That is, you can learn to communicate at a moderate level more swiftly with English than any other major language, which is a valuable trait. Learning all its oddities, however, is another matter ...