The English upper class has been in charge of spelling standardisation
for the best part of 400 years, and they've made an absolute hash of it.
They inserted silent letters all over the place (e.g. island), and kept
historical spellings so far past their use-by date as to be bizarre
(e.g. knight). The English spelling system is a linguistic laughing
stock. Maybe it's about time we let someone else take control.
...and the American system is better?!
It's a pity the debate has to be so politically
charged, wouldn't it be
nice if we could judge Webster's reforms by their merits?
Note that whatever it is, rising intonation is definitely not a form of
Americanisation, see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_rising_terminal
-- Tim Starling (Australian)
who cares, it's ugly.
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