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Short Stuff: Simple Spelling Movement · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the short Stuff. I'm Josh, and
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: there's Chuck, and there's Jerry, and dats here and spirit
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: and this is short stuff, which should be spelled exactly
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: like it's spelled right now. Yeah, Should another simple spelling
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: movement come along, Chuck?
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, although they may drop an F.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you're right, although that could be stuff, but there
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: is no such word as stuff, so I guess it
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: wouldn't be a problem.
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, But that's what we're talking about. We're talking about
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: the idea that English is a really tough language to learn,
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: and that there have been many movements over the years
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: to simplify things and spell things out a little more phonetically.
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: And back in nineteen oh six, none other than Teddy Roosevelt,
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: who was president, got into this idea, and he was
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: a very very popular president who had some other very
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: famous people on board at the time as well.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: Right Andrew Carnegie, Mark Twain, William James, the father of
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: psychology and named Supreme Court justice. Basically, a lot of
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: thinkers in America came together to basically put their might
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: behind this what was another progressive movement at the time,
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: and Teddy Roosevelt was an enthusiastic supporter of it, He
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: issued a what he later called an experiment, an executive
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: order to the printer of the United States, the official one,
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: and said, all federal documents from now on have to
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: be printed using the simplified spelling of these three hundred words,
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: and gave them a list. And it ended up not
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: going very well at all.
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, this kind of just goes to show
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: you that you can be super super popular as a
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: public figure or as even a politician, and if you
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: come up with an idea that people think are dumb,
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: even back then, they turn on you pretty quickly. Because
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: people hated this idea. He was all over the newspapers
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: being made fun of all of a sudden. And this
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: is a guy got like a lot of great press, right.
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: He was in you know, political cartoons. It was one
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: where he was laying knocked out in a boxing ring
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: with a anthropomorpize dictionary had just knocked him out. And
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: Congress certainly didn't like it because they he had sidestepped
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: Congress with this executive order and they were not having it.
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: No, not at all, Like you said, he was mocked
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: for it, and his political opponents in Congress just jumped
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: all over this because he was a beloved president, like
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: you said, and there wasn't a lot that they could
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: use against him, and this was great. So because there
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: was an election coming up, He's like, Okay, I'm backing
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: off you guys win. We'll just stay with the dumb
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: rules of grammar and spelling that English has, and let's
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: talk about that a little bit.
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: You want to, Well, they actually even brought a bill
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: against him where they cited Websters like, they demanded that
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: all federal documents be written according to Webster's or other
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: generally accepted dictionaries of the English language, which is ironic
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: because Webster himself was a proponent of making spelling simpler
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: at one point, and it was also something I know
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: that we've talked about. Benjamin Franklin had also championed this
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: earlier in his career.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and both Noah Webster and Benjamin Franklin had already
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: found out that people don't like the concept of simplifying
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: English for some reason, even though there's reason after reason
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: to do this. Chuck, you want to talk a little
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: bit about how English is kind of screwy.
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I mean, anyone who's ever learned the English
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: language knows that the spelling doesn't make a lot of
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: sense a lot of times, and the rules contradict one
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: another all the time. It's a tough language to learn.
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: And you can look no further than the final three
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: letters G H T at the end of words like
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: kought and though and draft and drought to know that
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: there's just doesn't seem to be any rise, rhyme or reason.
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: You know, if you learn English and learn how to
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: spell in English, you're basically just taught, like you just
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: got to memorize this stuff. There are no rules of
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: which are going to help.
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: You out exactly. And that is the reason why I
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: didn't realize this. But spelling bees are almost entirely an
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: American phenomenon. They're almost entirely in English speaking phenomenon because
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: it's so tricky to spell English words, and that even
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: countries that do hold spelling bees typically hold them as
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: English spelling bees. Yeah, which is really saying something about
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: how difficult it is to remember all this stuff in
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: spelling the English language.
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, although to be fair, they're spelling, they're not spelling
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: things like draft, you know.
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: No, No, they're spelling anti disestablishmentarianism.
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that one's not too hard.
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: Actually no it's not, but it's the one that always
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: gets thrown out because it's fun to say.
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: The hard part for me would be, uh, doing it
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: in my brain. I would have to write it down,
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: I think Itily was a champion spelling bee.
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: Kid, as was my gal.
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so they're both great spellers. I'm an okay speller,
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: but yeah, I would have to write it down. I
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: have a hard time doing that in my brain.
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, way hard. It's much harder to do it just
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: in your brain, for sure. I think you have to
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: be like a visual person to be able to kind
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: of see it in front of you too. That's got
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: to help. Yeah. The thing I think that I don't
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: know if we said it or not, but the group
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: with Andrew Carnegie and Mark Twain, they founded what was
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: known as the This is Official the Simplified Spelling Board.
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: And what the Simplified Spelling Board was trying to do,
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: as far as they were concerned, was just kind of
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: hasten what was already an organic, naturally occurring process of
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: making it easier to spell English words. And a really
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: good example that I saw was that in Elizabeth in
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: England or Bethan, depending on where you are speaking English.
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: Fish was spelled fyshe and at some point, naturally, there
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: was no board telling everyone to do this, which I
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: think ultimately is what people's problem is with this. It's
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: somebody saying we're going to do this now. Just naturally,
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: it happened that people started spelling fish fish instead. It
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: makes way more sense. It is easier to spell f y.
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: She was clearly the invention of a madman, so that
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: happens anyway. I mean, that's also the reason why in
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: the United States we don't spell like honor or color
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: with an ou like they do in the UK or
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: Canada or Australia, or we don't spell program with an
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: extra me at the end, because at some point the
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: people in the United States said, we're just going to
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: start spelling this. It's just easier this way. And so
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: what the simplified spelling board was saying is like, we're
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: just trying to move all this along to its inevitable conclusion.
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: Do we have to wait like a thousand years before
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: it just happens on its own.
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: No, but we do have to wait a very short
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: time while we take a break and then short stuff
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: will be right back.
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: So again, this is not the first and only time
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: people have proposed simplified spelling. There have also been other
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: initiatives to not only simplify the spelling of English words,
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: but also to kind of straighten out some of the
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: weirder rules of grammar too. And there's a guy named
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: James Ruggles. He was an Ohio teacher, and he said,
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: we're gonna spell no k n o W the way
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: that it should be spelled n oe in the present tense,
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: like I know chuck is great, but instead of k
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: n e W for past tense, we're gonna say nod,
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: like I've always knowed that chuck is great.
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So you know, they're in presents part of the problem.
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: If you're a literate human and you look at something
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: phonetically or say something like I knowed that it makes
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: you sound like you're, you know, maybe not so smart, right,
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: So you know that's that's kind of the issue, is
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: that the people always pushing for this are probably like
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: the hyper literate, and they're not gonna push for something
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: that looks like it's not well.
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but what's weird is you do have occurrences of
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: people in history like Mark Twain and Andrew Carnegie like
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: it's weird. Yes, there's like a roadblock in that. Yes,
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: people who are well versed in English literacy do do
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: see this as kind of like there's something wrong with it.
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: But those are also the same people who have kind
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: of started initiatives in the past. So I don't know
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: what the deal is. I don't know if we're ever
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: going to do this to you.
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: I don't know. I mean, what I wonder is how
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: far Twain and that board was pushing things, because it's
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: one thing to spell you know, thought or though thcho,
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: which is how people do it on text now or
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: thhoe maybe, and then to say like I knowed that guy,
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: you know what I mean?
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, No, I do know you mean.
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, one's a little further I think than the other.
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: Well, so yeah, I'm not exactly how farther or pushing
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: it either, but I do know that they backed off
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: big time after Teddy Roosevelt got his his campaign hat
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: handed to him by Congress, right, Yeah, So it just
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: died down for decades, and it wasn't until the seventies
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: that it came up again from a guy named Edward
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: ron Thaler, and he was the chairman of the American
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: Literacy Council. He not only saw a need to simplify
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: spelling for the sake that it could be simplified, he
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: traced the problem of having trouble learning English and a
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: literacy rates to dropping out of school and then turning
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: to a life of crime. So to him, simplifying English
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: would actually help alleviate America's crime problem, which was a
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: big deal from the seventies to the nineties.
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and he thought, like, the computers are coming along now,
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: this will be the perfect time to make this transition
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: because we can have computer programs sort of just convert
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: this stuff automatically into the simplified form, and then before
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: you know it, everyone will just sort of, you know,
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: adopt this as it becomes the regular thing in computers.
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: Right, So, America seems to be doing pretty good. There's
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: a ninety nine percent literacy rate among Americans. That seems
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: to be like fairly where it is throughout the English
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: speaking world. But something that I didn't realize check that
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: that just talks about basic literacy, like just being able
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: to read, like you can sound out words and read,
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: you understand the basic building blocks of English grammar. Ninety
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: nine percent of Americans know how to do that. But
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: when you talk about functional literacy, it drops precipitously.
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this number surprises me me too. Apparently twenty one
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: percent of Americans are functionally illiterate, which, yeah, that's that
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: seems high, but you know, if that's the stat that's
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: the stat.
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And to be functionally illiterate means that you can read,
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: but you have trouble navigating life as an adult in
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: the English speaking world, say like reading tax forms or
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: something like that, because you're basically literate but not functionally literate. Yeah.
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: Twenty one percent of Americans, by the way, equal seventy
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: one million people.
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a lot of folks. So yeah, I mean
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: there's a case to be made. I think people are
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: doing it on their own a little bit, like I said,
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: through texts, But I don't I don't think, like you know,
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: proper graded spelling is ever going to change that much.
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: I think that ship has kind of sailed.
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah for sure. Before we go, thank you very much
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: to History dot Com, Time, Paleo, Future, Smithsonian, Uh, and
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: the Uncle John's Bathroom Reader, who is takes this to me,
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: Oh god, when I was probably fifteen. We're finally getting
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: around to do it.
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: Shocking. Yeah, this is how many years later is that? Oh?
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: Like Tony?
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: Okay, great, Happy birthday.
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: Short stuff is out.
• 12:35
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• 12:38
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