Peter Whitmore: One generation of effort would spell benefit for all

Opinion

Many of us would agree with Guy Keleny that English spelling is chaotic. This, after all, is the home of such digressions from the phonetic principle as 'one', 'could', 'though', 'quay', 'choir' and 'yacht'.

I do not, however, share his view that we should cherish the absurdities of our language, dread the day when words no longer carry the imprint of their origins and rely on spell-checkers to make English usable.

By any reasonable set of rules, the spelling of more than half the words in our language is irregular. The heart of the problem is that all the vowel sounds can be spelt in multiple ways.

The long sound, as in 'feet', 'mean', 'mete', 'seize' and 'field' has at least a dozen spellings, including some rarer ones, as in 'amoeba' and 'encyclopaedia'.

Compounding this problem, some spellings can stand for more than one vowel sound, such as the ea in 'leap', 'head', 'great', and 'theatre'. Such complexity clearly creates a major hurdle to learning to read and write.

The representation of consonant sounds is more predictable, but as with vowels, some of these have more than one spelling, as in 'photo' and 'fan', 'several' and 'central', 'gist' and 'just' and 'xylophone' and 'zoo'. Some letters also stand for more than one consonant sound, as in 'cat' and 'cent', and 'get' and 'gentle'.

Sometimes consonants are doubled and sometimes they are not, causing endless spelling difficulties, and there is a plethora of words containing archaic consonants that once presumably filled a role but are now silent, such as in the body parts 'limb', 'wrist', 'knee', 'thigh', and 'calf'.

Many of us who have spent years becoming proficient in the language can now spell most words we use correctly, though even some common words like 'parallel' and 'accommodate' may still trip us up.

However, for our children, and for the millions who at any time are learning English as a second language, these vagaries form a gigantic obstacle to literacy.

I am told that Finnish children, whose language has almost perfectly phonetic spelling, can read and write words they do not yet understand. The same is probably true for Spanish and Italian children, whose languages are also very regular.

For children learning English, the reverse is true. After the Finnish children are reading and writing fluently, those learning our language still have years more work ahead to master the spelling of a basic vocabulary. Some never will, and are destined to remain functionally illiterate.

There is also mounting evidence that children suffering from dyslexia make better progress when their language has clear phonetic spelling.

How did we get into this state? Back in Elizabethan times, English spelling was quite fluid, giving the language the ability to adjust. Shakespeare reputedly spelt his own name at least five different ways.

However, particularly after Samuel Johnson published the first edition of his dictionary almost 250 years ago, spelling became increasingly frozen.

Most other European languages have bodies charged with keeping them up to date, including dealing with gradual pronunciation changes and the assimilation of foreign words. The only arbiter of correct English spelling is public usage.

At the same time, being unable to spell to a reasonable level has, in the past, been widely regarded as a mark of being poorly educated. Fear of this stigma seems to have been remarkably effective in ensuring that people learning English slavishly reproduced the existing spellings, regardless of their merit.

While the derivation of the words in our language is of interest to a small minority, for most of us English is mainly a tool, and a very important one. It, therefore, needs to be as simple and efficient to use as is reasonably possible.

We don't preserve non-functional or inefficient aspects of other tools we use. We don't build motor vehicles that are steered with leather reins (note also 'rains' and 'reigns').

Despite the logic for it, what makes achieving acceptance for spelling reform difficult is that those of us who have reached moderate proficiency in the language have a vested interest in leaving it as it is. While author and educator John Holt tells how a child he was working with burst into tears on first seeing the spelling 'one', for us such difficulties are now in the distant past.

We see the words 'one' or 'yacht' and treat them almost like Chinese pictographs, linking them with the sounds wun and yot. If, however, we are presented with words spelled 'wun' or 'yot', even though we can work out what they mean, we have to grapple with something new and unfamiliar.

Whot we need to remember tho, is that the effort wun jeneration wwd need to go thru in deeling with spelling reform wwd be far outwayed bi the benefits that wwd flo to aul future lerners of English.

* Peter Whitmore is an Auckland publisher and member of the Simplified Spelling Society.