Dry Spell

By Allan Metcalf. The other afternoon I was surprised by a phone call from a concerned citizen who identified himself as Eugene Segar of Detroit, 83 years old. He wanted to talk about reforming English spelling to make it more accessible to students and second-language learners. His message wasn’t what surprised me. The ineluctable complexity of English spelling has been evoking calls for reform for centuries. No, it was rather the realization that in two and a half years of Lingua Franca posts, more than 600 of them, I don’t remember anybody who has touched on the subject. Read more...