Spelling Problems

Spelling Problems? Then Change the Spellings in the Dictionaries

If you have spelling problems, it would be understandable if you considered words like “rough” and “dough,” and cursed at how the English language makes guessing at the spelling of a word so difficult. It’s a problem that has frustrated foreign learners of the English language and even native speakers. Some of these people have actually tried to reform the English language so that spelling problems could more or less be fixed.

The list of celebrities who have tried to help English, and its learners out is long and distinguished. Benjamin Franklin wanted to change the whole English alphabet. President Theodore Roosevelt had the power to do it. He asked the Government Printing Office to change the way 300 words were spelled in all government printings. The word “fixed,” for example, he wished to see spelled “fixt”. The printing office though was so outraged at how the English language was being butchered that they just ignored the order. As much as eminent personalities in the English language have tried to come to some kind of understanding in what to do with these kinds of spelling problems, no one seems to actually agree on anything except that there is a problem. The only success ever, came to Noah Webster, who took the British “u” out of all sorts of words that it never belonged in. There was no more “labour” or “ardour”. These became the much more reasonable “labor” and “ardor.”

Where all these eminences failed, eight-year-old school boys and school girls seem to have succeeded. For no fault of their own. In adapting itself to phone text messages and the even shorter Twitter messages, the wayward spelling system of the English language has eventually met its match. If the spelling to the word “great” never made much sense to you, teens will turn it into “gr8.” Problem solved.

Webster actually wanted to reform spelling very completely. “Machine” for instance, he preferred to see spelled “masheen”. Nobody bought that. One thing that appears to be clear to the many spelling reform societies in America though, is that texting spelling isn’t going to be around for long. The full keyboards on Blackberries and other phones are only the beginning they say. Pretty soon, technologies can make it easy for not only spell full words quickly, but fit a lot more content to a message so that the abbreviations are not really deemed necessary. Perhaps the greatest technology fixes for spelling problems is the spread of speech recognition software. One day soon, people just won’t need to spill anything any longer. Computers will take care of it.

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