I've always assumed "euthanize" derived from the way it is pronounced by the person using it, that is from their accent. As my very old-fashioned, no doubt, teacher used to say,
you won't spell incorrectly if you speak correctly. Probably not a PC attitude today, but it does have some truth to it.
Radish: Good to have your contribution on this hoary old topic.
The notion expressed by your teacher is only partly true; the problems arise with English orthography being anything but phonetic or consistent, and with wide variations in pronunciation – whether through breeding/upbringing, regional accent, or education – leading the struggling speller to folly.
Examples:HOUSE – Which is "correct" (not merely "received") pronunciation: howss, hōsse, hooss, hice (Her Maj described Windsor Castle as "a nice hice") – and how would you orthographically represent those pronunciation variants using "standard" English conventions?
CEREMONY – Do you say CE-re-m'y or ce-re-MOAN-y? How would you spell your pronunciation – again using "standard" English conventions?
If one grew up conditioned to speak RP and had a good grasp on the orthographical conventions and absurdities of English – i.e. one was an educated upper-middle-class urbanite or a blue-blooded toff with a silly walk – perhaps your teacher's maxim might hold water, but given that describes far fewer people than the millions who speak a range of Englishes, all of them "correct" in their contexts and all of them plagued by our bizarre spelling system, it shows either the teacher's arrogance or ignorance, perhaps even elitism.
Webster attempted spelling reform in 1806 in the US but didn't get very far; GB Shaw likewise championed an orthographic revolution in the UK from 1908 with his "Shavian alphabet", but found the task too daunting. Lindgren tried it in Australia in 1969 with little success. Earlier would-be reformers included Sir Thomas Smith, Secretary of State to Edward VI and Elizabeth I, in 1568; John Hart in 1569; William Bullokar in 1580; Dr Alexander Gill in 1621; and Charles Butler in 1634.
Perhaps the reformers couldn't accommodate the many regional pronunciation variants in their "simplified" spelling systems. It would be a nightmare, and quite impossible methinks.
There has been no shortage of supporters of spelling reform movements and societies, many of them literary folk or otherwise respected and influential people. If the task proved beyond their efforts it wasn't for lack of trying; perhaps human perversity resists most such changes. Until everyone speaks exactly the same English, exactly the same way, all such reform efforts are bound to fail.
Among the supporters of spelling reform have been:
• Orm/Orrmin, 12th century Augustine canon monk and eponymous author of the
Ormulum, in which he stated that, since he dislikes the way that people are mispronouncing English, he will spell words exactly as they are pronounced, and describes a system whereby vowel length and value are indicated unambiguously. He distinguished short vowels from long by doubling the following consonants, or, where this is not feasible, by marking the short vowels with a superimposed breve accent.
• John Milton, poet.
• John Wilkins, founder member and first secretary of the Royal Society, early proponent of decimalisation and a brother-in-law to Oliver Cromwell.
• James Howell was a documented, successful (if modest) spelling reformer, recommending, in his
Grammar of 1662, minor spelling changes, such as “logique” to “logic”, “warre” to “war”, “sinne” to “sin”, “toune” to “town” and “tru” to “true”, many of which are now in general use.
• Benjamin Franklin, American innovator and revolutionary, added letters to the Roman alphabet for his own personal solution to the problem of English spelling.
• Samuel Johnson, poet, wit, essayist, biographer, critic and eccentric, broadly credited with the standardisation of English spelling into its pre-current form in his
Dictionary of the English Language (1755).
• Charles Dickens, author.
• Isaac Pitman developed the most widely used system of shorthand, known now as Pitman Shorthand, first proposed in Stenographic Soundhand (1837).
• US President Theodore Roosevelt commissioned a committee, the Columbia Spelling Board, to research and recommend simpler spellings and tried to require the US government to adopt them; however, his approach, to assume popular support by executive order, rather than to garner it, was a likely factor in the limited change of the time.
• Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson, was a vice-president of the English Spelling Reform Association, precursor to the (Simplified) Spelling Society.
• Charles Darwin FRS, originator of the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection, was also a vice-president of the English Spelling Reform Association; his involvement in the subject continued by his physicist grandson of the same name.
• John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury, close friend, neighbour and colleague of Charles Darwin, also involved in the Spelling Reform Association.
• HG Wells, science fiction writer and one-time vice-president of the London-based Simplified Spelling Society.
• Andrew Carnegie, celebrated philanthropist, donated to spelling reform societies on the US and Britain, and funded the Simplified Spelling Board.
• Daniel Jones, phonetician, professor of phonetics at University College London.
• Mark Twain, a founding member of the Simplified Spelling Board.
• Robert Baden-Powell, 1st Baron Baden-Powell.
• Upton Sinclair, author.
• Melvil Dewey, inventor of the Dewey Decimal System, wrote published works in simplified spellings and even simplified his own name from Melville to Melvil.
• Israel Gollancz, scholar of English Literature.
• James Pitman, a publisher and Conservative member of parliament, grandson of Isaac Pitman, invented the Initial Teaching Alphabet.
• Charles Galton Darwin, KBE, MC, FRS, grandson of Charles Darwin and director of Britain's National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in World War II, was also a wartime vice-president of the Simplified Spelling Society.
• Mont Follick, Labour member of parliament, linguist (multi-lingual) and author who preceded Pitman in drawing the English spelling reform issue to the attention of the parliament. Favoured replacing
w and
y with
u and
i.
• Isaac Asimov, author.
• HRH Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, one-time patron of the Simplified Spelling Society. Stated that spelling reform should start outside of the UK, and that the lack of progress originates in the discord amongst reformers. However, his abandonment of the cause was coincident with literacy being no longer an issue for his own children, and his less than lukewarm involvement may have ended as a result of the Society's rejection of attempts to “pull strings” behind the scenes.
• Robert R McCormick (1880–1955), publisher of the
Chicago Tribune, employed reformed spelling in his newspaper. The
Tribune used simplified versions of some words, such as "altho" for "although".
• Edward Rondthaler (1905–2009), commercial actor, chairman of the American Literacy Council and vice-president of the Spelling Society.
• John C Wells, London-based phonetician, Esperanto teacher and former professor of phonetics at University College London: past president of The English Spelling Society.
• Valerie Yule, a fellow of the Galton Institute, vice-president of The English Spelling Society and founder of the Australian Centre for Social Innovations.
• Doug Everingham, doctor, former Australian Labor politician, and author of
Chemical Shorthand for Organic Formulae (1943), and a proponent of the proposed SR1, which he used in ministerial correspondence.
• Allan Kiisk, professor of engineering, linguist (multi-lingual), author of
Simple Phonetic English Spelling (2013) and
Simpel-Fonetik Dictionary for International Version of Writing in English (2012).
• Anatoly Liberman, professor in the Department of German, Scandinavian, and Dutch at the University of Minnesota, advocates spelling reforms at his weekly column on word origins at the Oxford University Press blog. Current president of the English Spelling Society.
• Masha Bell, writer and independent literacy researcher, retired teacher of English and modern languages.