The reason for love? And dove, above, done, wonder, come and some.

Have you ever wondered why we spell love, some, done as we do rather than *luv, *sum and *dun? The reason may surprise you.

Middle English manuscript was less rounded than ours is nowadays and it was largely made up of vertical strokes, called 'minims'. Also 'u' and 'v' were often interchangeable - written as 'v' at the beginning of the word and 'u' in the middle. So you can imagine that that letter strings of 'uv', 'um', and 'un' were pretty hard to work out - just a row of minims. So to make it easier to read, scribes started to make the 'u' into a more rounded 'o' in several words: love, dove, glove, above, shove, cover, oven; done, one, wonder, money, son, monk; come, some, etc. They are all spelled with 'o' but make the short 'u' sound, as in cut. (This explanation from David Crystal in The Encyclopedia of the English Language, p40.)

That still leaves the question of the final 'e' in some of the words above. In Old English, if there was a final 'e', it was pronounced. Words ending with this sounded 'e' were later dropped and that meant that a final 'e' could be used for other orthographic purposes. We know that the most common of these is to make the preceding vowel long, as in huge as opposed to hug or rate instead of rat. But the 'e' is also used for several other purposes. And one of these seems to be to tell us that the preceding vowel has been messed with in some way. Another reason for the final 'e' in some of these words is that there's an orthographical rule that English words can't end in 'v'. So an 'e' is added to make the spelling 'legal' in such words as give and live (vb).

Going back to the medieval manuscripts, at that time the letter 'i' had no dot and so Frank Smith (Writing and the Writer) suggests that's why women is spelled as it is - an 'i' (without a dot) between the four minims of a 'w'** and the three minims of the 'm' would be really hard to work out. And just think what the word minim would look like!

**'w' was sometimes written with a completely different letter (sorry, Blogger doesn't have that font!) and sometimes with 'uu'.

Spelling bees - how do you spell...?

The spelling bee is a very North American concept. These spelling competitions have never really become popular in the UK, but in 2005 the BBC did run a series called Hard Spell. Children competed against each other to find the best speller - it went on for weeks and drew good audiences I think. But it seems once was enough for the British public.

The Times newspaper has an online spelling bee - compete against yourself or others. I'll give you the link but it comes with a warning: if you are quite a good speller - it's very addictive, if you are not a good speller - it's depressing. If you're really sure you've got time / self-esteem to spare: http://www.timesspellingbee.co.uk/Default.aspx .

While I was playing with the Times spelling bee game (I told you it was addictive) I was trying to work out HOW I knew the spellings that I knew.

Sound
It was partly by sound, but certainly not exclusively. And sometimes I had to distort the real sound (like saying com-fort-able instead of comf-table to spell comfortable), not something we want to encourage in second language learners.

Sight
It was also partly visual - I could usually see the word in my head, at least the rough shape of it. If I took time to glance at the word on the screen, I could tell immediately if it was wrong, even if I didn't know the right spelling.

Patterns
Sometimes I just followed orthographic patterns. I knew to write the suffix 'able' not 'abel', and of course I knew that I needed a 'u' after 'q' in acquaint. I knew that acknowledgement had to keep the 'e' before the suffix to keep the 'g' soft (in British English).

Morphology
Other morphological rules really helped, as they are generally very regular. I knew prefixes had to be added to whole words and when I needed to double a letter before a suffix. I also had a bank of prefixes and suffixes in my head that I could select from. Sub and terra were useful for subterranean. Such chunks have become fairly automatic - I don't have to think about them letter-by-letter.

Lexical spelling
Sometimes I had to relate a word to another semantically linked word: for zealot I had to refer to zeal, I got the 'c' in vivacious because I thought of vivacity.

Etymology
Some understanding of etymology can help too. Although the English word facile isn't one I write often, the French word facile is much more common, so I probably referred to that. There are also certain Greek letter strings that I needed such as 'ch' for /k/ in chronology, or the 'y' in dialysis (like the more common analysis).

Learning by doing
It was also quite a kinesthetic process. My fingers just typed many of the words, or at least parts of those words. The ones I got wrong (oh yes, there were certainly several of those!) tended to be words that I never normally write and that I couldn't relate to any other words or parts of words. And I think my spelling was worse than usual because the words were out of context. I believe that if I'd been writing them as part of a text they would have been more likely to flow out accurately - but perhaps I'm just making excuses!

Teaching and learning spelling
So what does all this tell us about teaching and learning spelling:

• sound indicates spelling sometimes but is probably the least reliable route. And if your pronunciation isn't too good anyway, it could mislead you.
• visual methods of spelling should be encouraged - it's what good spellers do, and weaker spellers can learn to 'see' words too.
• it's worth learning, or at least noticing, some orthographic patterns - great to refer to when we are unsure.
• for long words, breaking them up morphologically can really help. Learners need to know a range of affixes and rules for adding them to words.
• semantic links between words need to be explored and spelling patterns will emerge that often explain a spelling that at first looks completely irregular
• an acknowledgement that English is rather a mongrel of a language and an awareness of some common spellings handed down from different languages can be helpful
• the more we write, the better our spelling gets as it becomes increasingly automatic - both in terms of words and letter strings, so learners need to write often and meaningfully. Writing for an audience will encourage them to aim for accuracy.

And all that, my friends, is what my book (soon to be published) is about - with plenty of activities to help learners discover and practise. For more about it click on the cover below:

Spell it like it sounds?

If somebody asks "How do you spell hot?" You might answer, "As it sounds", meaning it's phonetically very regular. But it depends who's saying hot. The way a North American says it may be very different to the way a southern English person says it for example. And many learners of English find it difficult to distinguish individual sounds precisely, especially vowels.

But does anyone have as much trouble spelling something 'as it sounds' as this policeman:



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNoS2BU6bbQ

:-)

Waht Can Teatchers Do to Halp Bor Spillers?

This Saturday, 17th October, I'm giving a presentation about teaching spelling (of course!), called

"Waht Can Teatchers Do to Halp Bor Spillers?"

at the BELTE conference, in Brighton UK.
http://www.englishuk.com/en/training/news-events/introducing-belte

If you're coming, do come and say hello.

Johanna

National Punctuation Day - International English Spelling Day?

Happy National Punctuation Day!!!

Yes, really! Today (24th September) is National Punctuation Day in the USA. It aims to remind people how to punctuate properly and bake cakes in the shape of punctuation marks! If you don't believe me, look here: http://www.nationalpunctuationday.com/index.html .

And for those of you who are EFL/ESL/ESOL (etc) teachers, here is a great lesson plan based on this auspicious occasion: http://www.eslholidaylessons.com/09/national_punctuation_day.html.

It got me wondering...

What about a National Spelling Day?

I googled National Spelling Day and could only find mention of a Korean one and lots of questions asking why there wasn't one. (It was a very brief search so if you know of one I've missed, I beg your pardon).

So what about having an International English Spelling Day?

When?

• Maybe the twelfth of February - that's pretty hard to spell.

What would the aim be?

• to nag people about their 'dreadful' spelling? (the decline of standards, blah, blah, blah)
• to press for spelling changes? (I don't go for this but know many who would)
  
• to laugh at funny spelling mistakes people make? For example, here's one I read earlier this week: "He was rushed to hospital in a comma." (Not a funny subject I know - and you'll be pleased to know he's back home and recovering nicely - but created a great visual image. Topical too - this being National Punctuation Day.)
• to teach one element of spelling each year? Hmmm... slow progress.
• what else? Feel free to comment below.
  

How would people celebrate International English Spelling Day?

• deface menus, signs, greengrocer's shops, etc., to correct misspellings?
• raise money for charity by paying for each spelling mistake they make during the day?
• erect new sculptures around towns which spell words that people have difficulties spelling?

The possibilities are endless. I'd love to hear your suggestions. The dafter, the better.

Homophones - How not to teach them.

Last week I blogged about homophones and what they are. This week I want to look at how to teach and learn them and this can be summed up in one word - don't!

What???

Danger! Homophone lessons.

It's true homophones can cause confusion but lessons on homophones can introduce confusion where there was none. By pointing out to learners that 'there', 'their' and perhaps 'they're' have (about) the same sound but different spelling, we may be drawing attention to a difficulty in spelling that they have never had - and it could even spark off that confusion. It could plant a seed of doubt that stops them automatically writing 'there' (in, for example, "There are four people in my family"). They may find they have to stop and think about it now, and may come to the wrong decision.

Sure, if learners are already confused, we can acknowledge that different words sometimes have the same sound. But lists of homophones, or gap fill exercises where learners have to choose between two homophones, are not going to help them.

So what's the alternative?

Focus on other words that LOOK the same rather than SOUND the same. And show how words that look the same are often related:

So show that:

• here, where, there are all related to place and all contain h-e-r-e.
• hear, ear, heard are all related to perceiving sound and all contain e-a-r.
• two, twice, twin, twelve, twenty, between are all related to 2 and all contain t-w.
• one, once, only, none, alone, lonely are all related to 1 and all contain o-n.

This is much more learnable than looking at these confusing homophones:

• hear/here,
  
• where/wear,
  
• there/their,
  
• heard/herd,
  
• to/two/too,
• one/won,
• none/nun.

So beware! The internet is full of these lists and interactive games for practising homophones. They may be fun for good spellers but for the confused, being super-confused is no fun.

Homophones, homographs, synonyms and other spelling challenges

I would imagine that all languages contain synonyms - different words that have the same or very similar meanings. But English probably has more than its fair share of homophones (words that sound the same but have different spellings and different meanings) and homographs (those which are spelt the same but have different pronunciation and different meanings).

I have tried to simplify the differences between words with the same spelling and/or the same pronunciation and/or the same meaning here:

This diagram is inspired and adapted from one here.

You can see that we have three elements to consider: meaning, pronunciation and spelling. Sometimes they overlap, sometimes they don't. If we have two words that are exactly the same in meaning, pronunciation and spelling, then they are just two identical words. If the three elements are all different, then of course they are completely separate words. But you will see from the diagram that there are six other alternatives.

When spelling we have to watch out for:

• homophones: make sure you have the right spelling for the meaning you want to convey. These are probably the trickiest types of words and spell checkers can't help you with these;
• alternative spellings - there are a few words that have two possible spellings- I guess that's good news really - if you don't know how to spell one, spell the other! And some of these differences are between US and UK English, eg colour and color;
• homographs: remember sometimes one spelling can have two different pronunciations and meanings - try not to get confused by this;
• alternative pronunciations - again don't be misled by the differences in pronunciation, the spelling of these doesn't change.

In the next few postings we'll look at some homophones and some of those alternative spellings.

Meanwhile a challenge for you:

How many words that are homophones can you find in this posting (NOT including the diagram)? For example, I (eye).

Write them in the comments below.