How 2 spell wrds

I read with interest a debate recently about the complex nature of spelling within the English language. There is an argument in some quarters to change the way we spell words to make them simpler for people to learn. The argument goes that changing and simplyfying our spelling will improve literacy rates amongst children. As a user of the language I am the first to admit that a lot of our words are sound different to how they look. Take my recent article on knights for example, just what rational is there behind the “k” in knight? Advocates of the scheme believe that phonetic spelling is the way forward, spelling words just the way they sound. Wimmin not women, lern for learn, slo for slow and so on. The argument however is full of holes, not the least of which is the spelling of “phonetic” in the first place.

Being a good northern boy that I am, I pronounce some words differently to people from other parts of the country. Take the old favourites grass, bath, laugh and graph for example. My southern wife inserts an “r” into the pronunciation of these words, phonetically making them grars, barth, larf and grarf whereas my phonetic spelling would be gras, bath, laff and graf. So already we have one country (actually one household) that would need two different spellings for one word. The crux of the phonetisists (if that’s a word) argument is that spelling is purely to allow the annunciation of the written language: essentially the purpose of writing is to be read out loud (or lowd).

We can read words two or three times faster than we can speak them, and the reasons for this is in part the rules of our language and spelling that tell us how to treat individual words. We treat some words as a “whole” rather than breaking down the consituent letters. Words like “and”, “if” and “the” are treated as one symbol much like “%” and the letters themselve are not so important. Other words like “guest” and “gesture” rely on the silent letters giving us the correct meaning. There has even been research that suggests we do not need to see the whole of the letters in a word in order to interpret its meaning. How many times do you miss a simple spelling error in a document that you have written, even when you’ve re-read it (and how would phonics treat “red” and “read”?) How many times have you struggled to read a text (or txt) message sent in text speak?

What this boils down to is that we are dumbing down our education system to suit the lazy. If we give kids in school the message that if you can’t do something we’ll just change the rules and make it easier for you then we are heading for a meltdown. Instead of working out how we can change our spelling, we should be concentrating on how to improve the skills of those that are both teaching and learning.  

This entry was posted on 19/07/2007 at 08:11 am and is filed under Random stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.