Spelling is ruining the English language

[The Teapot]

The problem is people see two extreams.

Either you have a stagnent, strict, conservative language, in which you preserve the meanings and thus protect yourself from the 'slippery slope' of communicative collapce.

On the other hand you have the everything goes aproach, in which you avoid the counter productive and pointless dogma of literacy, but can lead to some serious comunication problems.

Anyone who read Lord of the Rings at twelve can tell you that you can only read 'thou' so many times before the desire to scratch out your own eyes begins to overpower.

However, as I see it language evolves and there is nothing you can do about it. You can have in place structures to slow the mutation of words, but eventualy you're going to have a language in writing that doesn't make any sence in comparison to the verbal one.

I think the fear that its all going to become uninteligable is silly, because if people don't understand, it isn't going to pass on its message, which puts a natural cap on how much language can change.

Lets not worry too much about being 'right'.