Apply the rules of stupidly spelled words to the entire English launguage, modeling them after such abominations as "psychiatry", "gnome", "honest" etc.
The purpose of these spellings is to keep the riff-raff out of the spelling pool so why not go all the way?
I think in days of yore people would write and speak in Latin for just this purpose. "Of course you don't understand what I'm saying, you're a prole."
This would be another approach.-- doctorremulac3, Sep 23 2017 why the OED is flexible https://en.wikipedi...rgeon_of_Crowthorne [pertinax, Sep 24 2017] // english //
Sp. "English"
[+]-- 8th of 7, Sep 23 2017 //prol// Sp. "prole".-- MaxwellBuchanan, Sep 23 2017 The proles could be educated only to speak and understand Newspeak. That would be a simple and effective solution.-- 8th of 7, Sep 23 2017 No. The reason people wrote in Latin during the Middle Ages was much the same reason Chinese and Russians write in English today. Had it not been for Latin, Galileo would have had to learn Polish (or possibly German) to read Copernicus, so he probably wouldn't have.
And the reason for counter-intuitive spellings today is not to exclude people, but to connect them ... with other times and places. For example, the silent letters in "knight" remind us, silently, that Sir so-and-so is supposed to be a servant (German "knecht").-- pertinax, Sep 23 2017 Ah, that would explain why when I was a kid growing up in the ghetto they'd speak latin at the local church.
As far as spelling knight with a k to remind us that Sir So-So was supposed to be a servant, it's not working.
Spelling errors however have been corrected.-- doctorremulac3, Sep 23 2017 I had a go at this here a while back.
English only pretends to have an alphabet. In reality, each component of a word is a collection of symbols which represent an idea, a little like Chinese, except that with Chinese the shapes of the characters sometimes give you a chance to guess the meaning or pronunciation. This does not occur in our language.-- nineteenthly, Sep 24 2017 //actually quite weird//
Not really. The dictionary started out as a sort of open-source project. It was the Linux of the nineteenth century. There's an entertaining book about this.-- pertinax, Sep 24 2017 //Stephen Fry recount//
Yes, but that was a post-factum decision. It wasn't why the church was using Latin in the first place.-- pertinax, Sep 24 2017 It is. Little ever changes in the world of fossilized bugs. They ain't makin' 'em no more ...-- 8th of 7, Sep 24 2017 [Ian], your problem would be solved if they could only find fossilised insect automata.-- nineteenthly, Sep 24 2017 Pertinax, I'd be interested to know if there's a reference to all words with horrific spellings explaining silent letters and such. Any such resource? I'm guessing at least some are just borrowed from other languages where we changed the pronunciation but didn't bother to change the spelling.-- doctorremulac3, Sep 24 2017 // The precise details of how proto-insects acquired flight and became flying insects are unknown //
Did they not just buy airline tickets, then ?-- 8th of 7, Sep 24 2017 //precisely how entertaining?// It seems a movie was made of it, though I haven't seen said movie.-- pertinax, Sep 24 2017 // a reference to all words with horrific spellings //
Not exactly. I mean, the OED provides the history of each word, but it includes words which are easy to spell, and not just horrific ones.-- pertinax, Sep 24 2017 //launguage// now was that on purpose?
Also: the English spelling of modelling might have also been intended to keep some new continent populations guessing. See also "colour" and so on.-- Ling, Sep 24 2017 // some new continent populations guessing. //
What about the incontinent ?-- 8th of 7, Sep 24 2017 We don't let them guess. Our experiment in letting them vote didn't turn out so well, so we're not going to extend privileges further.-- RayfordSteele, Sep 25 2017 random, halfbakery