Spelling is ruining the English language

[Trilby]

why is phonics spelled p h o n i c s and not fonix?

and 'onanism' doesn't mean what you think it means, either.

[Undertoad]

All my life I've spelt viola with a io. Now I have to learn a new way?

What's harder, learning or re-learning? And that's one problem with this modest proposal; having learned English during the period when the brain is in its formative years, re-learning will be harder for everyone.

And the re-learning won't stop either. Wanna bet there was a time when viola was pronounced vy-oh-law? The language changes, finds new words, finds new pronunciations, and that's a pretty powerful force of humanity.

[glatt]

Uranus was pronounced differently when I was a kid.

[DanaC]

i pronounce it Vy ola.

[wolf]

Kingswood, if this is your hobby, perhaps you need a new one.

[Jill]

Originally Posted by Kingswood

My copy of the Concise Oxford Dictionary, tenth edition, includes that word. Is it in your dictionary?

For someone so pedantic about the English language, its origins and its spelling constructs and "broken" rules, you really, seriously put up 'hacienda' as an English word that doesn't follow the "'i' before 'e' rule, just because your dictionary has it in there? That's like a bunch of Danes debating the ridiculous letter 'd' rule and someone trotting out the word 'sandwich' as an example of something, because it's in the Danish dictionary.

Hacienda is not an English word any more than Sandwich is a Danish word. The fact that each language has taken words from other languages and used them without change, and therefore added them to their dictionaries because they've fallen into common use, does not qualify them as those languages' words. Most especially when whining about how they don't follow the rules of the language they've been adopted into.

[The Teapot]

Wouldn't it just be simpler to keep the current spellings as the offical and accept any spelling which is logical?
Aside from place names, would that really be a problem?

[Bad Luck McGhee]

I agree that spelling was visited upon the world by some evil entity. I have 3 Bachelor's degrees. I just recently realized that the word THEIR isn't spelled THIER. I was floored. Spellcheck had been righting my wrongs for so long that I didn't realize it until a friend pointed my mistake out to me when I had written a note by hand a work. I still haven't recovered from the shock and shame.

[Juniper]

I am also one of those lucky folks who learned to read before starting school. My mom always said that I was taught by Sesame Street.

When I did start school, I didn't pay much attention during reading lessons. Usually the teachers just let me huddle in the corner with a book while everyone else worked. I remember something about this phonics thing, but I figured I didn't need it so who cares?

I learned the whole-language method and I guess I read so much that all the spelling rules became intuitive. Seemed like I just had to see the word once and I had it in my data bank. Oddly enough this didn't help me in spelling bees, I think because I didn't study for them. I remember that in a 4th grade spelling bee I was done in by the word "tassel." I spelled it with an "le." Boy did I feel stupid.

Teaching phonics/whole language methods should be chosen on an individual basis. Some kids learn one better, some the other. My kids are also whole-language and learned to read pretty easily, but the school insisted on teaching phonics and I think that really screwed them up as far as spelling.

Another gripe I have with the school is this--when kids are very young and just starting to write, we are prohibited from correcting their spelling. They write phonetically, and we're just supposed to be so happy that they're writing anything that we fear correcting might stifle their little authorial voices. Therefore it takes at least 4 years of actual spelling grades to break them of this habit of just writing anything and never bothering to check its spelling or even think for a few seconds first. I remember when my daughter was absolutely astonished in 4th grade when the teacher took off points on a paper she'd written for spelling errors. It had never happened before.

It is my personal opinion that schools today place way too much emphasis on developing kids' self esteem and way too little on doing things properly from the very beginning. Whatever happened to penmanship, for example? I remember getting graded on how closely my writing resembled the "ideal." Now all they care about is if it's readable. Which is OK, I guess, but "readable" is rather subjective, isn't it?

[Kingswood]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

All my life I've spelt viola with a io. Now I have to learn a new way?

What's harder, learning or re-learning? And that's one problem with this modest proposal; having learned English during the period when the brain is in its formative years, re-learning will be harder for everyone.

You raise a good point here. Once one gets to be a certain age, the ability to learn diminishes. For this reason, it is usual for spelling reforms in other languages to be optional for those who have mastered the current orthography. In some languages that have regular maintenance of their spellings, one can guess the approximate age of a writer by the spellings they use in certain words.

The ability to read any new spellings is not likely to be compromised much. Anyone who reads much fiction will encounter intentional nonstandard spellings in works by contemporary authors from time to time, whether it is eye dialect to convey the exact manner of speech of a particular character, or Terry Pratchett's use of nonstandard spellings in the Discworld series in a medieval or semi-educated style. In Discworld, we have such spellings as Granny Weatherwax's instructions on a bottle of medicine: "Onne Spoon Onlie and that Smalle", or the "cagèd whale" in Guards! Guards!. Authors would not use such spellings if they received too many complaints, their editors told them to revise the spellings, or the books didn't sell.

[Kingswood]

Originally Posted by The Teapot

Wouldn't it just be simpler to keep the current spellings as the offical and accept any spelling which is logical?
Aside from place names, would that really be a problem?

Welcome to the Cellar. I especially recommend the Image of the Day.

As for the point you raise, for spelling reforms in English it is an approach that can work quite well.

It would make the most sense for those words where a particular misspelling of a word is already in widespread usage, with some of these particular misspellings being almost as common as the standard spelling itself. Minuscule is the standard spelling, but miniscule is seen so commonly that it is often found in edited text and a few dictionaries even include it as a variant. If a reform was introduced that gave the miniscule spelling the status of an acceptable variant spelling, it would find ready acceptance because many people already use this spelling.

[DanaC]

Well hello Teapot. That's an interesting monika

Welcome to the Cellar.

[DanaC]

Originally Posted by Kingswood

It would make the most sense for those words where a particular misspelling of a word is already in widespread usage, with some of these particular misspellings being almost as common as the standard spelling itself. Minuscule is the standard spelling, but miniscule is seen so commonly that it is often found in edited text and a few dictionaries even include it as a variant. If a reform was introduced that gave the miniscule spelling the status of an acceptable variant spelling, it would find ready acceptance because many people already use this spelling.

I kind of agree with this. Except, I don't see it as a matter of spelling reform per se...more that certain spellings shift across time and eventually the mispell becomes the standard. This does happen anyway. It happens all the time. Words fall in and out of use, spellings become outdated. The use of hyphens for example in many words have fallen out of favour and are no longer included in the dictionary listings of those words. I'm quietly confident in the people who compose and monitor the dictionaries. I think they do a fairly good job of maintaining relevance to the living language.

[eta] this process seems to be speeding up in the age of the internet with its online dictionaries.

[dar512]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

What's harder, learning or re-learning? And that's one problem with this modest proposal; having learned English during the period when the brain is in its formative years, re-learning will be harder for everyone.

We can't even seem to manage switching to the metric system in the US - for the reasons UT mentions above. I don't foresee any wholesale spelling changes.

Originally Posted by Kingswood

Welcome to the Cellar. I especially recommend the Image of the Day.

As for the point you raise, for spelling reforms in English it is an approach that can work quite well.

It would make the most sense for those words where a particular misspelling of a word is already in widespread usage, with some of these particular misspellings being almost as common as the standard spelling itself. Minuscule is the standard spelling, but miniscule is seen so commonly that it is often found in edited text and a few dictionaries even include it as a variant. If a reform was introduced that gave the miniscule spelling the status of an acceptable variant spelling, it would find ready acceptance because many people already use this spelling.

I don't know how you pronounce "Minuscule", but the way I pronounce it would make "Miniscule" phonetically incorrect, compounding the problem you're complaining about.

How do you propose to phoneticize the spellings of words that are pronounced differently in different parts of the country? Will you go by majority rule, and add an "R" to "Wash"? How will you spell "Warm"; "Warm", "Werm", or "Wuorm"?

The other day, on my board, I mentioned that I was building a pullet brooder, and my friend from Michigan asked me what a pullet is, and whether it rhymes with "Mullet" or "Bullet".

As far as I know, pullet, mullet, and bullet all rhyme. But in her region, apparently they don't.

How do you spell to solve for regional variations, if you're spelling phonetically?