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Spelling is the bridge between the spoken and the written word. It’s how we convert one into the other.
All children learn to speak as a normal part of growing. You start with glugging mama dada sounds, then you move on to baby talk, and eventually you can make complete, meaningful utterances. It just happens naturally, like getting two sets of teeth (not at the same time!), and learning to sit, crawl, and walk.
That’s not true for reading and writing. These have to be learned.
Learning spelling starts at an early age. Most of what you need to know was locked and loaded into your neural pathways long before you started reading this.
Learning to spell
To be able to spell you must break into a word and understand its parts. You are like a surgeon,
opening the patient up in order to examine what’s inside. Pulling a word to pieces helps you figure out which letters could be used to make its different sounds, and also what the word might mean. If you meet a new word you can work out what sounds those written letters might make.
Without realising it, a good speller is aware of a word’s
1. Sound (phonics)
2. Appearance (graphics – letters used)
3. Meaning and ‘family’ relationships (connections to other words with related meanings)
4. Origins (how the word got to us).
About 10% of English words these days are not spelt the way they sound. Think about it: by now you automatically know things like: ph sounds the same as f; the k in kn is silent; ough has lots of pronunciation possibilities, the suffix ed shows past tense and the e is usually silent; the prefixes un or anti usually turn a word into its opposite, and so on.
Let’s be honest, English spelling is a mess. There's almost no point in learning ‘rules’ for spelling because so many of them are breakable.
It’s because modern English is a rich brew, it developed from a mashup of other languages. We have imported foreign (there’s one!) spellings, and we’ve changed the way words sound over time, while the spelling stayed the same. The result is a whole pile of inconsistencies, and that’s what causes the confusion. Just look at this:
I drank champagne with a charming bachelor who came by parachute.
‘C’ and ‘k’ are both there, making the same sound. And as for the ‘ch’ combination….
All those ‘ch’ words have a French connection. The hard ‘ch’ (as in charming bachelor) is in the words that got here several hundred years ago. The ch pronounced as shhh are more recent arrivals. They haven’t shed their ‘frenchness’ yet.
Seven sources of spelling confusion:
If spelling challenges you, it might help to see a list of what you’re up against.
One letter can make different sounds: flat, star, any, about.
Pairs and clusters of letters can ook alike but sound different: dinosaur, laugh, mauve.
he same sound can be made by different letters and letter clusters: ginger, jab, lodge,
stage.
The same letter cluster can be pronounced in many different ways: there are nine (yes nine) different ways to pronounce ough. Cough, enough, plough, dough, trough ….you can find the rest for yourselves.
Words are spelled differently but sound the same: base, bass
Words sound different but are spelled the same: bow (hair) bow (fold yourself over); desert (leave), desert (very dry geographical region where you should not go alone).
Silent letters. Lots of these. For example: The h in wh combination (which, what) the b in
comb, lamb, limb; the u in guitar, guess, guest; the w in wrap, write, wrong, to name just a few.
Silent letters are responsible for some of the craziest spellings we have in English: aisle, eight, would, yolk, yacht, gnash, receipt, debt, island…. Google ‘why is English spelling so weird?’ for more on this, and if you want to while away a wet afternoon, look at ‘etymology online’. You can read the history and relationships of all these crazies and discover why they are spelled that way. It’s interesting.
Silly sentences to prove the point
How many examples of the seven can you find in the sentences below?
I learned the list by rote then wrote it, but I didn’t write it right.
Few people knew that the feud was over a pool cue.
We asked if we could we lessen the lesson time, but the Principal said no on principle.
The coward cowered, “Don’t desert me here in the desert! I’m too weak to last the week!”
“Certainly sir, suit yourself” said the tailor to Mr Taylor, “but there’s sure a surge of interest
in serge suits”.
We’ve sold the shoes you wanted soled.
“You might have died or lost an eye trying to ride at that frightening height”.
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