A haunting on 10th January 2008

I am being haunted by Masha Bell. This person (without physical encounter I'm unsure of gender) writes frequently to The Independent upon linguistic issues with the authority of one who knows what he or she is talking about. His or her most recent correspondence has, as usual, tipped a can of worms over the subject of English spelling, once again proposing that we may only become better people, more efficiently equipped to meet the rigours of modern life, by way of a radical overhaul of the way in which we express English in print.

In this brave new world, never again will we need fret over why simple, no-nonsense words like 'throo', 'bort' or 'dellykwessence' should ever have been so illogically misspelt 'through', 'bought' or 'deliquescence'. What Masha Bell characterises as 'phontically incoherent chaos' which 'learners still have to wrestle with' would be scrapped, presumably alongside several centuries'-worth of literature (but who could care less about that? The future is what's important, after all).

Other than the obvious - that I consider Masha Bell's evangelising for stupidity to be ignorant, lazy, shrill, pompous, pointless, militantly overheated and a potentially very dangerous excuse for lousy modern education - how is this person's shade manifesting itself? What evidence have I of interesting paranormal activity from one whose universe is clearly so linear, mechanistic, unimaginative and ultimately lifeless?

Sifting through some press cuttings this morning, I found a section of The Independent's letters page from 2006, where prominently displayed in bold type was a rant from, yes, Masha Bell on the subject of English spelling. While I couldn't remember keeping this item, I subsequently found that I'd put it aside for the op-ed article on the back (Dominic Lawson with a cogent take on how nature is returning to Chernobyl, since you ask). Meanwhile, glaring at me like malevolent automism, there was the usual rant.

I would say this to the Masha of Language: read - if you've the ability - Nineteen Eighty-Four and consider the concept of Newspeak and the sheer ugliness of a tongue whose natural evolution is bypassed for a quick fix by beady-eyed politicos and cone-headed zealots. A future founded on linguistic principles that are as blindly logical as you propose, with little room for resonance, creative interpretation or even the honest mistake that reminds us we're human, will assuredly be as bland as a Milton Keynes shopping mall; joylessly puritan, bereft of literacy and with all the life, warmth and humour of a central processing unit. And please remember that, once society's critical faculties had joined on the scrapheap the warts-&-all idiosyncracies of language, it was just an easy ride for Orwell's boot-to-the-face-forever dystopian brutalities.

As beneficiary of a decent English education, I feel sorry for those deprived of the same, whether through adverse social circumstances or due to the wilful orchestration of slash'n'burn modernists. But if there is a problem related to spelling, it surely lies with poor teaching; it is hardly the language's fault if the 'txting' barbarians have breached the gates and we're all backsliding into a midden of greengrocers' apostrophes and phonetic robobabble. Far from adapting English to suit indolence and idiocy (or even those slower to learn, who very often assert themselves in manners other than the use of language anyway) the argument should be turned on its head, with a return to whatever made my generation a damn sight more literate than the present one.

We should beware the apologists for dreadful educational methods who'd willingly break something precious that cannot be remade; and be very, very afraid of the totalitarians who would exploit it.

Ghost, consider yourself exorcised. Until the next round of debate, anyway.