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Dr. Valerie Yule has used the following test to study the level of success that different groups have mastering English orthography. Most English speakers, for instance, have little trouble spelling words the way they sound but they do not do much better than beginners when it comes to identifying the particular spelling that the dictionary deems to be correct. When every sound can be represented in a dozen legitimate ways, it is difficult to identify the one correct way unless the word is so frequent that we have memorized its pattern.

An ideal alphabet has one and only one way to express a particular sound. The English writing system is polyvalent (multiple sound values) and inconsistent. Written signs or letters have more than one phonetic value and there is more than one way to spell a given sound. Accoding to a study by Dewey, one typically has 9 ways to interpret or pronounce a given letter and 14 ways to spell a given sound.

Most foreign language students have better luck spelling words in Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and German than they do in the opaque orthographic system they have been exposed to since birth. How can this be?

Most languages have reformed their spelling to eliminate inconsistencies and reduce polyvalence. As a result, people using the new conventions no longer have to memorize the dictionary in order to be good spellers.

Take the test and then ask yourself: Do you think English spelling needs reform?
 
 

16 common words Test your skill at spelling 16 common words in English The test is designed to show that most literate English speakers cannot spell their own language Experiment 1- Valerie Yule, Ph.D.

 Materials and procedure. Sixteen common words are displayed below, some without letters surplus to the representation of meaning and/or pronunciation. The following words may or may not have spelling mistakes. Your tasks is to write the words out correctly.

 The original list of 16 has been supplemented with a few of the words listed by Gallup (ALBSU/Gallup Poll, Nov. 11,1992) as the most mis-spelt words in English.

There are many studies of poor spellers and what is wrong with them, but even educated people have problems with English spelling. It is time to ask if there might be something wrong with the spelling system that we use with English.

The ‘16 Spelling Test’ consists simply of sixteen common words, and it shows that even literate English-speakers cannot spell their own language correctly. To examine the results of Dr. Yule's research using this particular test, check out Experiment 2

Experiment 3. English spelling is a guessing game. Cut spelling is much less of a guessing game because all of the misleading redundant letters have been removed. Instead of trying to match dictionary spellings, try to spell the word without any redundant letters. Don't use any double letters or silent letters in your spellings. Go back to the word table above and spell the words without surplus letters. Compare your answers to those in the cut spelling column in the Experiment 3 table below.

Experiment 4. Try to spell each word phonetically. To match up with NF (below) review the NF vowel chart Alternatively, try to match New Spelling by first reviewing the Spell Right rules for a version of True Spell.. There are several ways to spell phonemically and orthographers have come up with three types of consistent spelling systems using the 26 upper and 26 lower case letters. All of the phonemic systems are easy to learn. The hard part is unlearning TO. All phonemic systems take one of the 4 popular spelling patterns in TO and make it universal. All strive to achieve the alphabetic ideal of one and only one symbol per sound and one and only one sound per symbol. See how different systems approach the /u:/ sound in *tool.
 

Adapted from an article by Valerie Yule

Before checking out this table, you may want to go back and try to spell each word phonemically rather than trying to recall how the dictionary spelled it. Chances are you will have no problem spelling each word the way it is pronounced. The problem is that such spellings are probably wrong according to the dictionary.

The obvious solution is to amend the dictionary. Change the spelling of words that are not currently spelled the way they sound. (e.g., *island might follw the spelling pattern found in *aisle: island/ailand). Come up with a spelling system that reduces the number of spelling rules or conventions from over 80 to less than ten. As Hanna illustrated, a computer programmed with 80 spelling rules can only spell 80% of the words correctly on the first try.

The rule on most phonemic notational systems is economy. If there are two ways to spell a sound, they go with the simplest. e.g., air could be spelled eir or er, er would be the simpler but it would have a slightly differet sound. If it is close enough to communicate, that is all that matters. A phonemic system is not for exact phonetic transcription it is for communication. It will probably not capture dialects but it will convey an approximate pronunciation that is close enough to be understood by a native speaker..

The challenge for creative orthographers is to come up with a way to represent 16 sounds with 5 letters and letter combinations. There are more than enough 2 letter combinations to have a unique one for each sound. Ideally, however, the component letter sounds would resemble sound associated with the digraph or two letter symbol. New Spelling and True Spell use ae, ee, ie, oe, and ue for the long vowels. The e is silent and used as a marker. In most cases this spelling for long vowels matches at least one TO spelling pattern. LAKE/laek,... CUE/cue. CUTE/cuet. TO also used the e as a silent marker. Often, as in *lake and *pile, the marker was not next to the letter that was marked. This practice gave rise to the name "magic e" because the silent marker acted at a distance.

The IPA-Eurospels use another set of letter combinations for the so called long vowels. ei, i:, ai, ou, iu. The virtue of these combinations is that the the component letters can be pronounced, eh+ee sounds like the name associated with the letter *A. ah+ee sounds like the name of the letter *I. The sample words above would be spelled leik, ciu, and ciut (see spelling patterns)

*Cut Spelling (also called clipped spelling and reduced spelling) works by simply eliminating, clipping, or cutting out redundant letters. The result is an intuitive spelling system that anyone can master in a few hours. Eliminating silent letters (including double letters) greatly simplifies the task of spelling. Cut spelling takes two additional steps (1) It substitutes a few correct sound signs for completely misleading ones (gem/jem, phone/fon) and (2) The letters that have letter names that do not begin with the letter sound: ar, el, em, en, are treated as syllables uhr, uhl, uhn, and uhm. number/nmbr, little/litl, system/systm. In fact, most two consonants clusters are pronounced as if there was an unstressed central vowel (shwa) separating them. *dd would be pronunced duhd. *loaded/lodd, *tricolored /triclrd. *clear/cler/culeer. The /uh/ sound would be spelled conventionally in *Sofa and *ago but *number would be reduced to *numbr. *cucumber/cucmbr/ kyuk'mbr  circle/circl/sircl

All phonemic systems change the spelling of 60% of the words in English. Cut Spelling is much more phonemic than TO, but it is not a phonemic notational system. While it eliminates 80% of the spelling problems, it purposely retains the familiar TO word patterns. As a result, it also retains many of the inconsistencies of TO.

Links   Experiment 2     SimpleSpelling     Top     Cut Spelling     Spelling Verses     Spelling Humor    Nu-Folik    V-chart
 
 

Spelling Related Links                                                ©1998 BETA Web Design Local Links Chekt Speling 2 charts Letter Matrix Sounds of English ChektSpeling Nutshell  Vowel Chart Quad bibliography MapIPA Surplus Cut Spelling  Globish   contact Steve Web Links Spelling Links (delphi.com) Chekt Speling (whowhere.com)  Vowel Quadrilateral (another way to display English vowel phonemes) Simplified Spelling Society  American Literacy Council  Dispelling the bad arguments against spelling reform Reilly

 

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