TITTLE TATTLE

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXI, 4 May 1938, Page 8

TITTLE TATTLE

By “TATTLER"

CORRECT SPELLING

Spelling—correct spelling. I had better remark—has never caused me any trouble. I recall that when I was young I won a prize at a spelling bee. You. reader, can therefore understand that I was both surprised and amused when ’Varsity students here and in America competed in a radio spelling bee. There were twenty-four in all. Quite a number of them boggled and floundered when they attempted to spell correctly some of the words which could have been spelled without hesitation by thousands of elementary schoolboys. Do students at the Universities learn to spell correctly? Or is it supposed that they have acquired the art before they proceeded to Oxford. Cambridge, or other high seat of learning? Whatever the cause may be, the fact, as displayed in the radio bee. is that some of them cannot “spell for nuts.” Words which they were asked to spell arc constantly appearing in print—in books, newspapers, and periodicals: and many of them enter into ordinary conversation. Yet sons of men occupying leading positions in the State failed, to the accompaniment of laughter in New York and in London. Considering that the education of the bad spellers must have cost two thousand pounds or more, one cannot but express amazement that their education has not included proper spelling of our "mother tongue.” Here are a number of the words which baffled students in this country and in the States: Loneliness (spelled lonliness). pusillanimity (spelled pusilanimity); embarrassment (embarassment), anonymity (anonity), truncheon (trunchion), and trachea (trackir and trachire). Other words which were spelled incorrectly included mulligatawny, isosceles, labyrinthine, pettifoggery, braggadocio. daguerreotype. beatitudes (pronounced by an American speller "beatitoods”). obeisance, and sesquipedalian. Why do people spell incorrectly? The popular supposition is that a person who cannot spell accurately is either an illiterate or reads little. Neither may be the case. Even people who read newspapers or books every day cannot spell, and even the best educated people are handicapped by inability to spell correctly. It is on record that, when he was the Prime Minister. Lord Palmerston asked his colleagues in the Cabinet to write this sentence: "It is disagreeable to witness the embarrassment of a pedlar gauging the symmetry of a peeled potato.” Not one of the eleven men. who. with the Premier, were responsible for the good government of the country, spelled correctly all the words in that short sentence!

It is related of a well-known authoress that she excused fulfilling an engagement by saying that she was occupied “pouring” over books: whilst another. bearing a name one often sees in print, wrote asking a friend to “wring' her up! The fact is that with a host of people spelling is a matter which is regarded with indifference. If they cannot spell accurately they do not admit that spelling is beyond them: they laugh and exclaim. "After all. what does it matter? You know what I mean, although a word or two may be improperly spelled.” One of these don’t-care kind of persons was an old duchess, who used to say to her cronies: "You know, my dear, when I do not know how to spell a word I always draw a line under it. If it is spelled wrong it passes for a good joke: if it is spelled right it does not matter a fig.” I often say to friends that most people read with their eyes only. Reading to them is a pastime, and they think little of what they read. They will spend an hour reading a morning newspaper, and when you ask them “What is in the paper to-day?” they will reply "Nothing!” and they mean nothing, for the reason that whilst their eyes have been busy their brains have been more or less inactive. It may be written that the bad speller sees and reads each word as a whole and docs not memorise it. He knows what a word represents when he sees it in print, but when he is required to write the word he is confused, hesitates, and is lost, and he resorts to writing the word he cannot spell ovei and over again in a number of guises. Me may write the word half a dozen ways and not, write one which looks to him better #ian any other. The truth is that the man's eyes lack focussing power, and that his sight prevents him seeing clearly the correct letters in

their proper order. Hence his confusion when he wants to write “receive,” I and he writes, instead, “recieve.” In a i sentence, bad spelling is a defect of the : eyesight. As an eminent man wrote: "More traffic passes through the Eyegate than the Eargate.” I was surprised recently to read the theory that “correct spelling goes with an aptitude for music.” Strange, that, for the reason that our spelling is not phonetic. If we spelled according to sound —to the music of our voice—we should spell such a word we know a/ "tough” "tuff.” Let me confess that the English language is full of pitfalls to the unlearned or the unthinking. I could Jiave “flummoxed” the radio spelling bee competitors over and over again by asking them to spell ordinary, common, every-day kind of words. For instance, 1 I would have included some of the following in the test: Phthisis, soliloquy, parallel, paraffin, diphtheria, syllable. ! reconnoitre, harassed, gauge (a word i very often spelled inaccurately), rhododendron. hieroglyphics, liaison, naphi (ha. heinous, accommodation, kaleidoscope. niece, pursuivant, and terrain. I’ll be bound that there would be many boggles and failures by the contestants. : Some years ago one of the simplified : spelling organisations drafted a list of one hundred words spelt according to phonetic- principles. Here is the list: Accurst, acknowledgment. addrest, sffixt, altho, anemia, artizan, assize, be- | havior, bleet, bluist. bun. bur. candor, , carest, catalog, chapt, clapt. clipt. coeval, contest, coquet, cropt. crost. crusht, casht. decalog, demagog, deprest, dipt, discust. domicil, dript. droopt, dropt, ecumenical. encyclopedia, envelop, epaulet, esophagus, esthetic, exprest. fagot, fantasm. fantasy, fantom. fuli ness. gild, gipsy. good-by. harken, heapt. hiccup, husht. imprest. instil, kist, lacrimal, lasht, licorice, lodgment, lookt. maneuver, medieval, mixt. odor, omelet, parafin. past, pedagog. phenix, pigmy, possest. primeval, protest, program. prolog, quartet, rapt, rime, ript, sepulcher, silvan, skilful, smolder, snapt, splendor, stedfast. subpena. sulfate, sulfur, supprest. synonym, tho, thoro, thoroly, thru, thruout. transgrest. washt, whipt. winkt. wisht. Although the English language has been declared to be "a national misfortune, unintelligible, unhistoricdl. unteachable.” I fancy that most people would prefer it as it is than as it would be if phonetic spelling were adopted. Phonetic English would certainly appear a hotchpotch to modern