I begin with a confession. If this article of mine had to undergo the test of plagiarism, probably, it wouldn’t see the light of the day as I have drawn references largely from the internet. Couldn’t resist the move as the details gathered comprehensively capture the complexity of the English Language as far as spellings are concerned.
I begin with an intriguing example – Ghoti. How would you pronounce that? According to urban legend, it was George Bernard Shaw, the Irish playwright, who coined the term in his quest for spelling reform. He pronounced it as “fish” because of the sounds touGH; wOmen; and naTIOn. It probably wasn’t Shaw, but it does make an interesting point about the absurdities in English spelling.
English spelling can present problems for writers, even for those who are born into English-speaking cultures because the 26 letters of the English Language have 44 sounds. Other languages, such as Italian or Korean, by comparison are quite phonetic – most letters are pronounced, and most letters are pronounced in a consistent way. Why go as far as Italy and Korea. Consider Karnataka and Kannada. Kannada is completely phonetic. Every word is written just as it is pronounced. A sister is akka – ka with otthakshara; a word serving as a notice is akaa without the otthakshara.
There are a number of letters in English that are not pronounced or pronounced differently in certain words. This pattern of irregularity affects about 25% of English words, but within that 25% are about 400 of the most frequently used words.
It is interesting to note that prior to the 18th century, “poor” spelling might have gone unnoticed. Until that time, there was considerable flexibility in the way people spelt words. Shakespeare, for example, spelt his own name in several different ways. Our students prove to be the true descendants of Shakespeare by having their own versions. The best that I’ve come across is Shakesfear. I take it as a portmanteau word which describes how Shakespeare makes students shake with fear! Our students who could barely tolerate Shakespeare till now may experience a new-found love for him on knowing that he was lenient with the idea of correct spelling.
The invention of dictionaries in the 18th century “froze” the language. Thereafter, a line was drawn between “correct” and “incorrect” spelling.
There are other causes of spelling error apart from the irregularities of the language itself. People misspell for a variety of reasons. They may not understand the parts of speech or word classes. For example, they might mistake the verb advise for the noun advice.
It could be the result of mispronunciation. If, over a long period of time, enough people say goverment instead of government or vunerable instead of vulnerable, then the words may eventually be spelled that way. Magnificient is yet another widespread spelling error erupting out of wrong pronunciation.
As discussed in an earlier post, it can be a malapropism when the person simply does not understand the correct meaning of a word, and mistakes it for another word.
There are two more country cousins of malapropism – eggcorns and mondegreens.
“Eggcorns” are a type of language error, usually based upon a mishearing of the original word. A mondegreen is a word or word group based upon a mishearing of texts such as poetry or music. In the Scottish ballad The Bonnie Earl O’Murray’s final lines:
They hae slain the Earl Amurray/and laid him on the green
was misheard as
They hae slain the Earl Amurray and Lady Mondegreen.
Now comes the million dollar question: How can we improve our spelling?
There are a few useful tips such as i before e is a lie or the mnemonic aid that tells us ‘separate means part’, indicating that in separate, after p, it is an a and not an e! But the hard fact remains that even spellcheck cannot check all our errors!
You must rise the bar by spelling begger and suger correctly. ☹️
You must raise the bar by spelling beggar and sugar correctly.????
