My spelling is dreadful. Positively dreadful. This really shouldn’t be the case, as I’m rather well read. Still, here I am unable to spell even the simplest words that I use over and over. To deal with this problem (and I do consider it one) I keep handy a dictionary or three or twenty. I think it is about twenty not counting the unabridged OED. We lost some reference books to water damage in the tornado, so I’m not positive on the count-but there are at any given time, numerous sources where I can check my spelling-which I do.
Time Magazine (yes, I’m linking to Time magazine God help me) has a piece making the argument for permitting more variant spelling in English. Swell, now in addition to deciding if we "scraped a tyre on the kerb" or, "Scraped a tire on the curb" we can wonder if perhaps we’ve simply "skrapeed a tir on the kurb." Pardon me while my fucking head explodes. Perhaps we should just accept texting spelling. Gr8. R U RED-E? why don’t we go back to the 15th century when everyone spelled as they pleased?
I can’t believe anyone seriously believes they can get by will spell check alone. Suppose you misspell a word as another valid word-spell check won’t catch that and anyone that reads it will know you ran spell check without a careful examination first. I know this because I’ve done it enough times only to slap myself in the head wondering why I continue to do such a foolish thing.
I recognise that spelling and punctuation are important and that I’ve failed miserably with both. It would be simple enough to fall back on "Oh, my background is in science" and have it excused, but really, that’s pretty weak. There simply isn’t much of an excuse beyond carelessness on my part. If people such as myself are permitted to spell any damn way they wish it will be a worse world for it. I could understand wanting to simplify or standardise more popular spellings, but to just label misspellings as alternate seems impossible. Will editors be permitted to spell as they wish or will it only apply to primary school children whose precious self-esteem may be crushed beyond all hope by being graded on their spelling proficiency? For what it’s worth, I had to look up proficiency just now.
Next, we’ll have alternate multiplication tables because it doesn’t really matter is 2x2 is four or nine or twelve.
“Spelling and punctuation are important” - I agree & I also have difficulties but, unlike you, I blame the complexity & irregularity of the spelling system.
See: http://www.englishspellingproblems.co.uk/index.html. “The average English-speaking child takes nearly three times longer to learn the basics of reading and writing than users of other alphabetic writing systems (Seymour, British Journal of Psychology, 2003). Numerous surveys in Anglophone countries during the past five decades have established that nearly half of all English speakers have severe difficulties with writing. One in five cannot even read properly, as was confirmed in 2005 by the UK’s House of Commons Select Committee for Education.”
These are terrible statistics. Healthy self-esteem is essential for success in school and in life: is it not a pity to damage people’s life chances because of the conventions of spelling?
You talk about having many dictionaries which you regularly refer to, ditto me, but this is pretty much a English-Speaking-World phenomena laughed at by those who have languages with rational spelling systems. I have a list of 80 words that have changed in the 18th & 19th century - change does happen & is to be welcomed if those changes are to more regular forms. This is the proposal in the Time article.
I’m afraid I’m not impressed with your analogy with “alternate multiplication tables” - clearly maths does matter but it is as though we are expecting our children to do long division in Roman Numerals and getting angry when kids & others demand something more user-friendly.
Don’t “fail miserably”, upgrade the system to something more regular and give more a chance.
Comment by NJH — August 20, 2008 @ 7:33 pm
I’m afraid that the psychological argument regarding self esteem is not something I can take seriously in this context. There are many difficult tasks we must master to do well in life. If one cannot manage to spell in correctly on a job application they should not have the job.
If one in five British children are unable to read there is much more at play than spelling.
Comment by J.S.Magruder — August 20, 2008 @ 7:47 pm
“If one cannot manage to spell in correctly (sic) on a job application they should not have the job.”
Winston Churchill, Einstein (in English but possibly in German too), Steinbeck, W.B.Yeats, Charles Darwin - many of these were Nobel Prize winners & poor spellers. Luckily they were also creative and or privileged and got by.
I think that good spelling is important for obvious reasons but also that we are discriminating against perfectly intelligent people using what are in effect shibboleths.
If you spell “liaise” “liase” out you go.
Comment by NJH — August 21, 2008 @ 8:12 pm
There must be an unwritten rule of the universe that if you draw attention to spelling errors someone will find one in what you wrote. Bravo for you, excellent.
My feelings on the subject have not changed. Listing off intelligent people that could not spell still does not make a good argument. For every smart person there may well have been a thousand poor spelling dullards that would not have been able to do well had they been passed along to spare their self esteem.
I simply do not see this as a discrimination issue as you do.
Comment by J.S.Magruder — August 21, 2008 @ 10:04 pm