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When Enough Is Enuf: The earnest, oddball effort to reform English
spelling.<br>
OCTOBER 30, 2008 <br>
By CULLEN MURPHY<br>
Wall Street Journal<br>
Bookshelf<br>
review of:<br>
<b><i>Righting the Mother Tongue</b> <br>
</i>By David Wolman <br>
<i>(Collins, 211 pages, $24.95)<br><br>
<a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122533218527282911.html" eudora="autourl">
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122533218527282911.html</a><br><br>
</i>Prefaces a review on the history of English spelling reform with some
digs against Esperanto:<br><br>
<i>"</i>A friend of mine once set out to learn Esperanto, the
presumptive world language whose adoption, it was often claimed, would
usher in a new age of understanding and harmony. He mastered the
rudiments and then set off for a week of immersion at the World Esperanto
Congress, in Beijing. I'm pretty sure that he never intended to make a
full leap of commitment -- it was more a linguistic version of adventure
camp -- but for a few months his greetings consisted of a cheery <i>Bonan
matenon</i> ("Good morning") or <i>Kiel fartas aferoj?</i>
("How are things going?"). He also learned to say <i>Mi bezonas
tradukiston</i> ("I need an interpreter"), perhaps the most
useless phrase in Esperanto.<br><br>
"The notion that by reforming the way people employ language you can
reform almost everything else is a durable canard that has survived a
thousand years of contrary evidence."<br><br>
And so, to bed. <br>
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