this post was submitted on 18 Jun 2026
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I don't know about Portuguese but there is a meme about English:
Which is not really historically accurate because both standards developed more or less simultaneously after independence and before standardization, the variety was greater than the difference today. But I digress.
The Voice Of America has a standardized Simplified English they use for broadcasting to regions where English isn't commonly spoken.
There was also that attempt at destupifying English spelling, a very small amount of which stuck. Color.
Getting rid of "u" in a small subset of words is a terrible way to try to simplify English. The fact that some words in standard English (as opposed to American English) are spelled the same as the source words from French is a major benefit.
Properly simplifying English would involve getting rid of the situations where one letter can make multiple different sounds. If you're changing it, a word like "colour" should start with a "k", the unambiguous letter that makes that sound. A word like "cell" should start with an "s". Really, "c" should never make either an "s" sound or a "k" sound. Maybe it could be used in place of "ch", instead of needing two different letters to make that one sound.
If you wanted another place to start in simplifying English, you could tackle letters using "oo". There's no way that "oo" should make different sounds for "pool", "flood", "book", "door".
What benefit would that be outside of linguistics?
But isn't it a major benefit that it's spelt like the Latin root?
(I'm not in favour of force-simplifying spelling conventions, I'm just curious about your reasoning :) )
It helps with translation, with knowing the origin of a word, with having a general idea how to pronounce something, etc. Fundamentally, it comes down to "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". Those letters in that order can have that pronunciation in English, so why change the spelling from the origin language if you don't have to?
If it were "cella", then maybe. But, even then, probably not. The main senses in which "cell" are used now are only indirectly related to the original word. "cella" meant a small room, or hut. It didn't mean a room in a prison or a small biological unit. It's a word with a different meaning with different spelling. It's not really worth keeping some of the letters from the original spelling for a completely different meaning, especially because the letter "c" is so bad when it comes to confusion between the "c" and "k" sounds.
Basically, it comes to the idea that if you're going to address issues in the spelling, they should be the "worst offenders", otherwise changing the spelling causes disruption for no real benefit. They should be the letters or sequences of letters that are hardest for English learners to understand.
I don't think the "o" vs "ou" in words like "colour" are even in the top 50 of those, whereas the "c" being used as a /k/ sound in colour is another matter.
I was specifically referring to this which proposed many of the changes you're talking about, but very few were actually adopted.
Some of them were adopted and seem like they were good ideas. The removal of the "u" from words like "color" seems like it was one of the changes that was made, and one of the least useful ones.
Anytime we destupify English, we do it the wrong way and end up more stupider.
I'm looking forward to getting some Asian loanwords and then correcting them to Germanic.
In 200 years people will wonder why so many English words used to describe fiction and pornography are loaned from Japanese.
There have been plenty over the decades
That's a good thing but not at all what the meme is about. It's about words like color vs colour, center vs centre, .... The American is arguably easier (and I say that as someone who learned British English at school) but it's not simplified. Simplified would imply that British is older which isn't the case. Pre-standard was "anything goes" on both sides of the pond and you can argue historically for what every you like.