Re:Reforming English Spelling
by java-man on Friday October 23, 2026 @12:22PM
(#50211478)
Yep.
http://www.i18nguy.com/twain.html
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Not Mark Twain, but (believe it or not) Dolton Edwards in Astounding Science Fiction, Sept 1946.
"Dolton" was an amusing pseudonym. See this thread from a few years ago:
Re:Reforming English Spelling
by heikkilevanto on Friday October 23, 2026 @05:23PM
(#50215549)
Some (un?)reliable sources on the Internet claim that it was actually written by a man named M.J. Shields and published as a letter to The Economist in the 1940s
Yes, that's covered in the thread I linked to. The Economist letter was in 1971, and contributed wording that made it into the meme later on.
> Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.
It actually looks pretty good. It's written for comical effect, but it highlights nicely how _bad_ English orthography is.
It's basically how Spaniards and Italians would spell English :D
As a native Spanish speaker, I agree
A bit of a tangent, this was written by an Italian singer to sound like English without being English: https://vimeo.com/1071644859
Unfortunately the Youtube upload of that performance seems to have been copyright struck in the past couple of months after being up for 13 years...