Besides taking cold showers in the morning as a non English speaking native I can not agree more with the late Ed Rondthaler: The nonsense of English spelling

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1979 Black on Black, 300CD (sold), 1990 Black 300SE, Silver 1989 Volvo 780, 1988 300CE (vanished by the hands of a girlfriend), 1992 300CE (Rescue).

In true British tradition, it tends to keep out the riff-raff. If you want a very good read on English and how it got that way.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_Tongue_(book)

Up until the middle of the 18th century, the concept that words had only one spelling hadn't been invented yet.

Spellings in Middle English were very variable - there were no real rules about spelling, so scribes used lots of different ways to spell the same thing. Sometimes the same word appears twice in one line of poetry, spelled in two different ways.

A man named Johnson in 1755 created a dictionary of the english language, and it became widely used, and that is the beginning of the idea that words should be spelled in one way.

What is also interesting is that my immigrant ancestor to the U.S. was born in 1600 in Bideford, England (Devon County), and his name was spelled differently in letters that were written to and by him.

His decendants in the U.S. and England ended up with the same surname spelled three different ways.

One of them is a Nobel prize winner.

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Paul S.

2001 E430, Bourdeaux Red, Oyster interior.
79,200 miles.

1973 280SE 4.5, 170,000 miles. 568 Signal Red, Black MB Tex. "The Red Baron".

The Bard used a different spelling for his last name at various times. Along with spelling by others, there are at least 20 different examples.
http://shakespeareauthorship.com/name1.html

My ancestors also had many ways of spelling their names. Sometimes they changed their names completly.

Something about staying one step ahead of the creditors.

In all seriousness, one story I heard about this was that people just did not write their names that much and many people could not read and write at all. As weird as it seems it is possible to forget how to sign your own name if you only do it once every few years and it is the only word you knew how to spell.

Charming video. English spellings strike me as a case of a cow meandering across a field, more following, and before long a highway was built on the same path. Just random.

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1986 300SDL, 362K
1984 300D, 138K

English, much like Americans, is an amalgam of many different languages, and the derivatives of those words are taken from many different cultures at many different periods of time. What you're left with is a complicated language that does an excellent job of giving someone the tools to find just the right words. As strange as it is, I absolutely love the English language; then again, I love writing.

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- Brian


1989 500SEL Euro
1966 250SE Cabriolet
1958 BMW Isetta 600

there have been a LOT of last name changes due to racial or religious discrimination. if the family came under attack due to it's last name spelling, simply change the last name to a spelling that was socially acceptable. it has happened thousands upon thousands of times.

A co-worker of mine has the last name, Miller.

His grandparents immigrated from Switzerland to the U.S., and their original last name was Mueller.

During WWII, they were afraid of anti-German sentiment, so they changed their last name to Miller to sound more "American".

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Paul S.

2001 E430, Bourdeaux Red, Oyster interior.
79,200 miles.

1973 280SE 4.5, 170,000 miles. 568 Signal Red, Black MB Tex. "The Red Baron".

I'm not sure if the name changing by immigrants in the past shows a darker side of our society; intolerance. Or immigrants adopting there new home and becoming a a full member of it . I guess it's both.

The same thing could be said for making a language harder than really necessary, making it a tool for distinguishing between classes in society. A good example is ebonics, a simplification of a language ridiculed by the upper/ruling class.

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1979 Black on Black, 300CD (sold), 1990 Black 300SE, Silver 1989 Volvo 780, 1988 300CE (vanished by the hands of a girlfriend), 1992 300CE (Rescue).

Just look at the royal family of England. They changed for the house of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to the house of Windsor in 1917. Not good to have a german family running the country during the war. (dad was a Saxe-Coburg-Gotha and mom was a Hanover).