Spelling

There has been somewhat of a kerfuffle over the decline in spelling skills. Not surprisingly, those who have an uncanny ability to spell everything correctly get on to their high horses and look down on us, poor inferior spellers. I regret to say that I’m a shocking speller at times. I am lucky as my wife belongs to the former group, so I can always call for advice. But seriously, everybody should realize that English spelling is chaotic, and all those who go on about the importance of Greek, Latin, French, German and so on only rub salt into the wound.

For instance, the –ence/-ance problem. Frenchified words are easy: Renaissance, nuance and so on.

Those words without this “Frenchiness” such as guidance, excellence, nuisance, intelligence and so on can be a minefield, especially for people who read little. For many, words like bourgeoisie, reservoir and cacophony strike terror into the heart. Homophones such as “through” and “threw” are other obstacles to be surmounted. The regular verbs are spelled/spelt regularly but pronounced /pronounst/ differently. Some like “traffic” change to “trafficking”.

L.A.Hill and J.M.Muir’s “English Sounds and Spellings” (Oxford University Press 1962) runs the whole gamut but doesn’t enter into the pitfalls or the reasons for bad spelling.