November 5, 2019 - 53 - "Truth in Spelling"

      We lived in Germany for six months back in 2001-2002.  (Special assignment with Michael's work.)

     For the first three months I took German lessons.  Three months, of twice a week lessons, even with studying in between, does not a speaker make.

     As with all language it's a 'use it or lose it' proposition.  When I was there I could maneuver my days pretty easily with the level of language I spoke.   New words would pop into my awareness many times a day and I had a pretty serviceable vocabulary.

     At this point I'm back to the 'please/thank you/count to ten' level of language.  It wasn't a beautiful language. It was hard for me to wrap my head around the structure of the language.  And I felt their biggest attack on reason was how they combine 3 or 4 words into one. 

     But I did admire the fact that if you knew the German alphabet, and you knew how a word sounded, you could combine that information and spell the word perfectly.



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     That's so different from English.  In German there were no silent 'e's.  There were no: Is it 'f', 'gh',  or 'ph'? conundrums.

      Germans are very direct people, and that fact is reflected in the way they spell.

     I love that.

     I feel sorry for anyone learning English.  Hell, I feel sorry for a native speaker.  You never know when a word will trip you up out of the blue.

     There are no hard and fast rules.  You just have to memorize how things are spelled.  There's no hearing it and writing it as it sounds.  My dad's school stressed phonics and, brilliant though he is in so many things, the man can not spell.  He will tell you:  "I can't spell kat."

       Sounding things out, then trying to spell them, is a very bad idea if you're working with English.

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      Of course, worse than English spellings, is the issue of proper names.  Then there are zero rules.

     Or maybe there are rules from every single language in the world that someone's name was filtered through.  The village smitty may have been written as Smith, or Smithe, or Smythe...or who knows what. 

      Take a name like Stephen vs. Steven.

     It really feels to me they should somehow be pronounced differently.  And even that these should be different sorts of people from each other?

     If Stephen King were Steven King...would he write differently?  Would he be as famous?

     We know a man named Bryan...but, though I truly do know the spelling of his name, and though this is the most familiar spelling to me, based on people I've known with this name...  For some weird reason in my mind he should be a Brian. 

     If there were any rhyme or reason in this crazy world of ours we'd all discuss Sigmund Frood's thoughts on the human psyche.  Or, maybe we'd spell it Sigmund Froid.  One or the other.

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     And here's where I'm going to have to admit to you that I have no ending for this post.  It's actually more of a beginning. 

     This one is now the repository for any future thoughts on crazy-spelling.  Be excited. 

     Do you have any particular spelling issues that trip you up more than others?

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"My spelling is Wobbly.  It's good spelling but it Wobbles, and the letters get in the wrong places." 

-A. A. Milne

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"I quit school in the sixth grade because of pneumonia.  Not because I had it, but because I couldn't spell it."

-Rocky Graziano

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"I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way."

-Mark Twain

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