Having visited her website, I have determined Masha Bell's gender. She seems to be highly regarded, having written a book which has received much acclaim from certain areas of the teaching profession.
Why am I not surprised at this?
From Ms Bell's website you're quickly whisked to Amazon, from where you can buy her book. Its marketing is supported by one John Hodgson, who helpfully writes:
"Eeven if we did no more than finish the job of deleeting the remaining redundant, decorative e at the end of words (giv, hav, liv, siv, definit) we would make lerning to reed eesier. We could eesily simplify it quite a bit mor and save much swet, menny teers and vast sums of munny into the bargain, while rasing litteracy standards at a stroke".
Got that? Its elegance just jumps off the page and demands to be savoured, doesn't it? My question is: if cretinous rubbish such as this is allowed to prevail, will anybody 50 years hence have the faintest idea of how to read Rankin, Amis or McEwan, let alone Dickens, Austin or Shakespeare? Or will the Bell/Hodgson axis of idiocy raise sufficient revenue from somewhere to translate to their cherished newspeak centuries of literature? Or will the great works of past and present simply be allowed to wither on the vine? Most people with an ounce or two of grey matter can read and follow - if with a certain concentration - the literature of two or three hundred years ago. Will the same be said once the spelling Taliban has done its worst?
Dowtless Jon Hojson wud insist that I hav tayken his wurds owt ov conteckst. I would argue that, in this instance, context is NOT all; that he, Masha Bell and every other scorched-earther proposing drivel of this sort, fired by the light of zealotry, are showoffs; infantile verbal/literary equivalents of Liam Gallagher or Pete Doherty, desperate to gain attention via ever-more outrageous pronouncements lest teddies petulantly be thrown from cots.
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