Enough is Enuf - BookWyrm

Hardcover, 304 pages

english language

Published April 15, 2025 by Dey Street Books.

ISBN:: 978-0-06-336021-1

A brief and humorous 500-year history of the Simplified Spelling Movement from advocates like Ben Franklin, C. S. Lewis, and Mark Twain to texts and Twitter.

Why does the G in George sound different from the G in gorge? Why does C begin both case and cease? And why is it funny when a philologist faints, but not polight to laf about it? Anyone who has ever had the misfortune to write in English has, at one time or another, struggled with its spelling.

So why do we continue to use it? If our system of writing words is so tragically inconsistent, why haven’t we standardized it, phoneticized it, brought it into line? How many brave linguists have ever had the courage to state, in a declaration of phonetic revolt: “Enough is enuf”?

The answer: many. In the comic annals of linguistic history, legions of rebel wordsmiths …

A brief and humorous 500-year history of the Simplified Spelling Movement from advocates like Ben Franklin, C. S. Lewis, and Mark Twain to texts and Twitter.

Why does the G in George sound different from the G in gorge? Why does C begin both case and cease? And why is it funny when a philologist faints, but not polight to laf about it? Anyone who has ever had the misfortune to write in English has, at one time or another, struggled with its spelling.

So why do we continue to use it? If our system of writing words is so tragically inconsistent, why haven’t we standardized it, phoneticized it, brought it into line? How many brave linguists have ever had the courage to state, in a declaration of phonetic revolt: “Enough is enuf”?

The answer: many. In the comic annals of linguistic history, legions of rebel wordsmiths have died on the hill of spelling reform, risking their reputations to bring English into the realm of the rational. This book is about them: Mark Twain, Ben Franklin, Eliza Burnz, C. S. Lewis, George Bernard Shaw, Charles Darwin, and the innumerable others on both sides of the Atlantic who, for a time in their life, became fanatically occupied with writing thru instead of through, tho for though, laf for laugh, beleev for believe, and dawter for daughter (and tried futilely to get everyone around them to do it too).

Henry takes his humorous and informative chronicle right up to today as the language seems to naturally be simplifying to fit the needs of our changing world thanks to technology—from texting to Twitter and emojis, the Simplified Spelling Movement may finally be having its day.

1 edition

Chris reviewed Enough is Enuf by Gabe Henry

None

4 stars

Gabe Henry's book can be repetitive as after all a lot of people tried to do basically the same thing, but it also underlines that there is a strong link between comedy and spelling reform - Gabe is a comedian himself so there may be a bias, but the link is there e.g. the Phunny Phellows, who included Mark Twain, and who Gabe suggests were the first ever stand-up comics.

Why spelling reformers would want to abolish j I don't know. J is almost a counter-example to the 'no fixed sound for a letter' rule - it has basically one sound (with a few, usually loan-word, exceptions) throughout its uses.

I'm intrigued by SoundSpel which is maybe the best one I've seen. It was championed by "Uncle" Ed Rondthaler (1904-2009 and yes that is correct.) and is fairly close to my proposed new spelling (PNS) of a while back. It …

Gabe Henry's book can be repetitive as after all a lot of people tried to do basically the same thing, but it also underlines that there is a strong link between comedy and spelling reform - Gabe is a comedian himself so there may be a bias, but the link is there e.g. the Phunny Phellows, who included Mark Twain, and who Gabe suggests were the first ever stand-up comics.

Why spelling reformers would want to abolish j I don't know. J is almost a counter-example to the 'no fixed sound for a letter' rule - it has basically one sound (with a few, usually loan-word, exceptions) throughout its uses.

I'm intrigued by SoundSpel which is maybe the best one I've seen. It was championed by "Uncle" Ed Rondthaler (1904-2009 and yes that is correct.) and is fairly close to my proposed new spelling (PNS) of a while back. It lacks a few things e.g. both voiced and unvoiced th are written [th], and both c and k represent /k/. Q for /kw/ is a nice touch and more real-world than PNS, where qu becomes cw as in [cween] and q is the /x/ sound in loch. PNS doesn't have k except in loanwords like kilometre. Its vowel pairs are consistent, not IPA-strict. SoundSpel does use doubled vowels (aa, ee etc) which PNS does also.

'plow' may be American but to me it also looks more rural (despite a local pub - in the heart of the nearby village - being called The Plough).
SoundSpel is described as 'American Spelling,' being an example of one subset of modified spelling, that is, the wish to move away from a British-dominated language. The US is independent, they say, and should have its own language, or at least its own spelling. Webster made a start, but a small one.
One of its proponents was Dewey, creator of the decimal system of that name. He failed to radicalise orthography but he does seem to have, as a by-product, invented winter sports as an American pastime (previously it had just been in Europe; he put Lake Placid on the map).

Starts in the Middle Ages when spelling wasn't really a thing and ends in the near-present with txtspk. For some reason mentions that CS Lewis was born in Ireland but evades that George Bernard Shaw was actually Irish and didn't think much of the English's ability to speak their own language (I once argued, unfortunately, that minority languages didn't matter, based on Irish English having become a major literary tongue). Nicely mentions Slade and their apparently 17 consecutive hits with 'humorous' misspelings (Cum on Feel the Noize, Gudbuy t'Jane, Mama we're all krazy now etc.).
Not as long as you think because a lot of it is notes and references.

Subjects

english
language
spelling

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