2010-09-19

September 19th, 2010 5:31pm

Rudimentary literacy acquisition in English takes the average child roughly three years, while in Finnish it can be accomplished in just six months.

— Wy are English wurds so hard to spel? Masha Bell, a doughty campaigner for English spelling reform, has counted at least 3700 English words with ‘unpredictable’ spelling, many of which simply have to be learned by rote. <a href="http://economist.com/blogs/johnson/2010/09/english_spelling_reform">The Germans simplified their language - should anglophones do the same?</a> (via <a href="http://theeconomist.tumblr.com/">theeconomist</a>)