The Challenge of Spelling in English
The American spelling bee does not sting, though it makes many children cry, does not produce honey, though it holds other sweet rewards, and does not swarm, though millions of Americans crowd around it every year like worker bees around their queen bee. This bee is not an insect at all; it is a contest of orthography. The contest is simple: a word is spoken and the contestant has to spell it. The contest is hard: the word is from the English language. Spelling bees have been a part of American culture for hundreds of years. In his book American Bee, James Maguire (2006, 54) writes: “The spelling bee, whether fierce or flirtatious, congressional or genteel, is a genuine American folk tradition”.
To take part in the Scripps National Spelling Bee, participants must be younger than 14, in eighth grade or lower, and have won a local spelling bee representing a school that is registered with Scripps. Spellers need not be U.S. citizens and need not be from public schools. The action of the event entails a short walk to a microphone by a speller, the uttering of a word by the official pronouncer, and the subsequent spelling or (more likely) misspelling of that word. The rules listed on the official website demand “an effort to face the judges and pronounce the word for the judges before spelling it and after spelling it. The speller while facing the judges makes an effort to utter each letter distinctly and with sufficient volume to be understood by the judges. The speller may ask the pronouncer to say the word again, define it, use it in a sentence, provide the part of speech, provide the language(s) of origin, and/or provide an alternate pronunciation or pronunciations. The speller may also ask root word questions…” In short, the action that captivates us is a boy or girl uttering a series of letters that hopefully is a word.
The Essay on Spelling Bee
Anza Tang Virgina Duym English 1100 08 September 2012 What Motivated Me Pressure? Yeah I know what that is, I have felt that ever since I started my first day of school. Being the oldest sibling and cousin, my family has always watched every move I make. It has been difficult being the oldest one and everyone was tough on me because I am the one that will be the first in the family to actually ...
Of course, the wonder felt at the spelling bee is not just for the contestants but for the English language itself. The words these kids spell are goliaths. They are multi-syllabic monsters of unknown meaning and origin—at least until the etymology are requested—and very few of the words in the spelling finals have ever been uttered by anyone watching. And there seems to be no end to the bizarre words the English language houses.
It is easy to be swept up in the obvious triumph of those who spell. They are champions. But isn’t their field of honor a bit odd? What have spelling champions done? They have used the language correctly. Are we in such awe of good spelling that we cannot attribute it to the human mind alone? One could object to these questions in the context of the spelling bee by pointing out that the types of words encountered at the National Spelling Bee are Herculean in their difficulty, outliers of the language and not firm ground upon which to speculate about language. Isn’t it odd that success in spelling fairly common English words is considered an extraordinary feat? When you spell a word, you are not creating language, you are repeating an agreed upon usage, following convention. Should any aspect of using language correctly be this hard?
Why is spelling so hard?
Blame the alphabet. You can never tell what sound a letter is going to make. Some-times a letter doesn’t make any sound at all, is silent—and then you’ll find a letter (like the “x” in box) that makes more than one sound in one appearance. As Bryson (1990, 120) points out: “We have some forty sounds in English, but more than 200 ways of spelling them. We can render the sound ‘sh’ in up to fourteen ways (shoe, sugar, passion, ambition, ocean, champagne, etc.)… If you count proper nouns, the word in English with the most varied spellings is air with a remarkable thirty-eight: Aire, Ayr, heir, e’er, ere, and so on.”
Blame the dictionary. Before the dictionary, there was no way to establish correct spelling, and spelling varied widely. The dictionary became a snapshot of the language, and words, once they were collected and fixed, didn’t change as rapidly. Sounds, though, were not captured and so continued to change even while words stayed put in the dictionary.
The Essay on English Spelling
1. Give an outline of the views on English spelling presented in text 1 and 2. Text 1 ”Proper spelling? Its Tyme to Let Luce”, an article from the website of the American magazine WIRED, written by Anne Trubek, published January 31, 2012. Trubek claim that our language is forever evolving, and it’s only normal and a part of the evolution of languages. She believes that it would be great if we ...
Blame the Dutch typesetters, who were paid by the line and so stuck additional letters into words. Blame the printing press. According to Peters (1968, 274), “The discrepancies between the way we currently pronounce and spell words may be attributed, in large measure, to the fact that our spelling, mostly inherited from Late Middle English, has remained more or less fixed since c. 1650, unlike the pronunciation of those Late Middle English words.” Peters uses as an example of this pronunciation slippage the word knight which, in the Middle English period was pronounced the way it looks.
Blame it on the history of the English, those British Isles invaded many times by many different languages and then invading other isles and continents with other languages with which to mix. Colonies were like a linguistic semi permeable membrane. Take a typical English sentence and you have a smorgasbord of international snacks. For example in that last sentence, smorgasbord is from the Old Norse words for bread, butter and table; the word international is from the Latin for to be born, nasci; and snack from the Middle English meaning pretty much what it means today in English.
To be an effective English speller, an understanding of all these linguistic origins is helpful. That’s why, in spelling bees, the first question from a contestant faced with a difficult word is often about its derivation. Sometimes when words are brought into English, their original spellings are maintained, and sometimes they are given new, English spellings. Sometimes words that did not come from Latin were given Latinate aspects (just because we like Latin so much)—thus the “b” in debt, the “p” in receipt, the “s” in island, and the “c” in indict.
Each word in English seems to have its own compass, some pointing to phonology, some to morphology, some to history, and some pointing one direction in one syllable and another in the next. Someone who can spell in English either understands the polar north of entire fleets of words or, more likely, has memorized the individual words they need to know. Either way, spellers of English, though they may not realize it, are constantly navigating the challenging waters of intercultural communication. And it is a sea full of wrecks.
The Term Paper on Origins of English
I was a lunatic to have dreamt of such thoughts. My mind was braising through every memory that lurked my mind at that very moment. As I looked out my bedroom window, the night -so magical, so mysterious. The moonlit sky encrusted with shimmering diamonds, and Luna the moon, a cosmic chandelier smiling down at me as she floats high overhead. The rustling of palm leaves, brushing the windowsills, ...
Why not fix spelling?
Spelling reform is a sound idea that has occurred to every school kid who ever had to spell English and has been championed by some of the brightest, most powerful people in American history. Ambitious simplifiers of the orthography include the ever sensible Benjamin Franklin, dictionary writer Noah Webster, President Theodore Roosevelt, steel magnate Andrew Carnegie, and essential American writer Mark Twain.
They all failed.
Menken (1992) calls Noah Webster the father of the simplified spelling movement but notes that those most influenced by him urged the immediate adoption of the revised spellings ar, catalog, definit, gard, giv, hav, infinit, liv, tho, thru, and wisht. That was in 1876. This was from the group who had control of the dictionary. (One out of eleven isn’t bad.)
In 1906 Andrew Carnegie, one of the wealthiest men in the United States, funded the Simplified Spelling Board, and President Theodore Roosevelt, following the board’s recommendations, ordered the adoption of 300 new spellings by certain government agencies. They resisted.
Menken (1992) gives much credit to the spelling bee for the resistance to spelling reform in America, saying the tradition generates an “interest in and respect for spelling prowess” (493).
It is certainly true that a revised spelling system would be the death of the bee. Watching people spell a reasonable language would be as uninteresting as watching kids count objects. The spelling bee relies upon linguistic complexity.
The simplified spelling movement in America, while not exactly thriving, is still around. The Spelling Society maintains a web-site (www.spellingsociety.org) with pamphlets, news releases, and examples of their proposed spelling. One of the most photogenic of the Spelling Society’s activities is their yearly picket of the National Spelling Bee Finals in Washington, DC. A few orthographically out-raged individuals march in front of the building where young spellers compete and wave protest signs with slogans such as “spelling shuud bee lojical,” “enuf is enuf,” and “spell different difrent.” Predictably, the impact of this campaign seems to be minimal.
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Acronyms, Idioms and Slang: the Evolution of the English Language. Although the English language is only 1500 years old, it has evolved a tan incredible rate: so much so, that, at first glance, the average person in America today would find most Shakespearean literature confusing without the aid of an Old-English dictionary or Cliff's Notes. Yet Shakespeare lived just 300 years ago! Some are ...
While all the famous American spelling reformers sought to simplify the spelling system, couldn’t we leave the alphabet as is but stop enforcing it? Couldn’t we just go back to the way things were in the great days of freedom in English when Chaucer and then Shakespeare ruled? I’m talking about the legalization of misspelling. Tolerance of diversity. But that would lead to chaos, right? If we did not all agree upon standard spelling conventions, how would people read? If I started spelling jus any wich way, haw wode we comunekate?
Is spelling necessary?
Let’s try a little experiment. What happens if we damage the words in a sentence? Can you still read them?
See f you cna read ths sentence whre I wlil change ne aspect o every ohter word.
That was a sentence with eight spelling mistakes. Now what if we damage every single word in a sentence?
I thi sentenc I’l remov th fina lette o ever wor t se i yo ca understan i.
Did you get that? Did it take you significantly longer to read than this sentence, which is pretty much the same length? What if we replace all the vowels with one vowel, say “e”?
Cen yee reed wreteng thet hes enle ene vewel er es et tee cenfeseng?
What happens if we take out the vowels altogether?
Wtht th vwls w stll cn rd wrttn txts bcs thr r s mny thr fctrs nvlvd n rdng.
Now that sentence repaired:
“Without the vowels we still can read written texts because there are so many other factors involved in reading.”
It takes a lot of damage to the mechanics of writing to disable the communicative aspect of the written language.
I am oversimplifying a complex activity to highlight one fact: correct spelling is not necessary for reading, and conversely, reading does not lead to “good” spelling. How is it possible that one could read all of Moby Dick but still not be able to spell whale? Because we do not spend a lot of time with each individual letter in the word whale in order to read it.
So if spelling is not an essential factor in successful reading, why is it needed at all beyond the spelling bee? Is it one of those odd skills, like juggling, that makes one popular at parties but has few practical applications? Woe (and whoa) to those who think so. While not necessary for communication, spelling is very important.
The Term Paper on Discuss With Examples How The English Language Has Changed Over Time
... world, many new words entered the English language. From the ... more uniformed spelling, and eventually a spelling closer to ... English is Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Unlike Old English, modern English-speaking people can read Middle English, ... languages. In the late 17th century and during the 18th century, certain important grammatical changes occurred. The formal rules of English ...
Just ask Dan Quayle. Many people still remember a mistake he made at an elementary school spelling bee he was presiding over when he was the U.S. vice president. One of the words in the competition was potato. The boy given that word spelled it correctly, but the vice president corrected him, insisting there was a final “e” on the word—“potatoe.” The boy who spelled potato better than the vice president became something of a national celebrity, was a guest on many talk shows, and even led the Pledge of Allegiance at the 1992 Democratic Convention. That Dan Quayle lost the 1992 election cannot be blamed on his spelling ability, but the national attention his spelling mistake attracted demonstrates how often spelling is used as a measure of intelligence.
If a job applicant’s resume contains even one spelling error, it will seriously impede his or her chances of getting the job, even if spelling is not required for that job. Spelling is treated as a cosmetic aspect in these situations; misspelling is the equivalent of wearing a tee-shirt to a business school interview or chewing gum while answering questions.
Spelling, easy to notice, easy to count, is also one of the easiest aspects of language to identify. Is spelling important in successful written communication? No. But, of course, language communicates much more than just the intended message. Language usage often indicates, for one thing, one’s place in society. Correct English orthography is a sort of accent of the educated.
Conclusion
What do spelling bees and the American culture of spelling tell us as teachers of English? For one thing, they remind us that learning a language and using it are not at all easy. Language is hard. Language is hard because it is immense, the result of human history; it is smoothed over once in a while, perhaps, but it is still quite bumpy. It is complex because it is a part of human society with rules that go beyond grammar to manners. Spelling reminds us that to learn English is to study history and anthropology. All our students are studying sociolinguistics. Pity them.
English is a language without a governing body, but it is often taught, both as an L1 and an L2, as though it were governed by a small group of people who passed their laws directly to teachers. We teach English this way because we as teachers want to be authorities ourselves, and it is impossibly, embarrassingly difficult to be an authority on something that is too big to see all at once and too dynamic to ever pin down.
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The most popular rule of English teachers is “i before e except after c.” That seems pretty good—a rule with one exception. The student speller is ready to venture forth into the language, pencil in hand. But wait, that student should also know that when there is a sound like “ay” as in neighbor or weigh, the rule does not apply. Oh, wait, students should also know that there are some exceptions such as foreign, height, and weird.
At some point, when the number of rules begins to approach the number of words, the fact that language is rule-governed is no longer comforting. Be honest with your students. Tell them that a few rules are not going to be the key to learning to spell. Instead, just as with reading, to learn English spelling, students will need a variety of strategies. They will have to memorize a lot and should focus on words most common to their specific needs and most commonly misspelled by users of English everywhere.
Fowler (1944) is most practical when it comes to spelling. He suggests that a list of spelling words be made “by each person who finds himself in need of it, out of his own experience & to suit his own requirements” I’m surprised that more users of English don’t produce their own lists. It seems to me such lists should be accessories as common as handkerchiefs or cell phones. We could laminate our spelling lists and carry them in our pockets, producing them on occasion.
I like Winnie-the-Pooh’s social approach to spelling in The House on Pooh Corner. When he wants to give his friend, Eeyore, a birthday present, he asks wise Owl to write the message, explaining “Because my spelling is Wobbly. It’s good spelling but it wobbles, and the letters get in the wrong places. Would you write ‘a happy birthday’ on it for me?” Owl cautiously asks Pooh if he can read and then writes: “HIPY PAPY BTHUTHDTH THUTHDA BTHUTHDY” while Pooh looks on “admiringly.”
References
1. Bryson, B. 1990. The mother tongue: English and how it got that way. New York: Perennial.
2 .Fowler, H. W. 1944. A dictionary of modern English usage. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
3 .Koda, K. 2005. Insights into second language reading: A cross linguistic approach. Cambridge: Cam-bridge University Press.
4 .Maguire, J. 2006. American bee: The national spell-ing bee and the culture of word nerds. Rodale
5 .Mencken, H. L. 1992. The American language. 4th ed. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
6. Milne, A. A. 1957. The world of Pooh. E. P. Dutton and Co., Inc.
7. Peters, R. 1968. A linguistic history of English. Bos-ton: Houghton Mifflin Company.
8. Stevick, R. 1968. English and its history: The evolu-tion of a language. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, Inc.
9. Stubbs, M. 1981. Language and literacy: The socio-linguistics of reading and writing. London: Rout-ledge and Kegan.
10. Strunk, W. 1918. Elements of style. Ithaca, NY: Pri-vate Printing.
11. Wood, B. 1971. Introd. to English spelling, road-block to reading, by G. Dewey. New York: Teach-ers College, Columbia University.
12. Eran Williams lives in Pretoria, South Africa, where he serves as the Regional English Language Officer for southern Africa.
