How Now Brown Cow

I can’t remember where I saw it, but their there was something on TV or the Internet the other day about people who are trying to change the official spelling of certain words to make the English language less complicated. I’ve always bin been fascinated buy by words, in and of themselves, so this subject peeked peaked piqued my interest.

I’ve amused myself on numerous occasions by thinking about the inconsistencies in the weigh way words look similar on paper butt but are pronounced differently. I’ve also wondered whether laziness or just lack of imagination was responsible for sew so many words that have entirely different meanings but sound exactly alike. Maybe there simply aren’t enough separate and distinct sounds to make a fresh word for each thing we need to right write or speak about. (Yes, I know I ended a sentence with a preposition; but that's for another blog entry.)

I’ve imagined ancient conversations that went something like this:

1st man: “Sir, what do you call the top of that mountain?”

2nd man: “That? Oh, that’s a...um...that’s called a ‘peak.’”

1st man: “Naw, that can’t be right. A peek is what I take when milady's bathing in the stream.”

2nd man: “It is a peak. I’m the word expert; if I say it’s a peak, then it’s a peak.”

Curiosity and a quick Google search lead led me to the Simplified Spelling Society. Wow! These guys have it all laid out for us, complete with examples of unpredictable spellings and a history of how the English language ended up in this condition.

The SSS people make a good case for changing words we’ve learned the hard way, and the suggested spellings would no doubt be easier to learn. But what would happen to the fun? For example, without the inconsistencies, I couldn’t have written this:


Hough Nough Broughn Cough

The English language isn’t easy,
learning it is tough.
The spelling’s so confusing I
can’t understand some stough.

Variety’s the spice of life
I’ve often thought, although
I like my words consistent as
the tides that ebb and flough.

I read about an apple tree
“with gently swaying boughs,”
so shouldn’t those four-legged things
with udders be spelled “coughs”?

No, those are cows, so Webster says,
a hacking sound’s a cough.
Should not the light switch on my wall
be labeled “on” and “ough”?

There is no pattern I can find;
I’ve searched it through and through.
It simply isn’t logical.
Does this make sense to yough?