Thread: Spelling

Katerinka: American students tend to read novels and write compositions in their English classes. Grammar is usually not taught, although I had one teacher in the eigth grade who was an exception(it is there where I learned what direct and indirect objects are). As for spelling, there is not so much emphasis on spelling rules as on learning random vocabulary words and being tested on spelling them correctly. A fair amount of kids seemed to have problems spelling in the earlier years, but I don't remember anyone in high school who couldn't spell more or less correctly.

I do believe that English is not that difficult to become functionally fluent in. Of course, it may take many more years before people get the articles and tenses completely correct.

Originally Posted by waxwing

Anyone remember the "magic e"? Is it just me? Nobody else seems to remember it.

No, what is it?

Originally Posted by djmihow

English spelling is pretty messed up. Imagine if we followed the sounds of letters what the spelling of things would like like?

We did follow the sounds of the letters - once upon a time. English actually did sound something like it's spelled now. As I recall from a linguistics class, once spelling was forcibly standardized by printing houses in the 1700's, it simply wasn't changed again - though some spellings are older still. I'm pretty sure "knight" hasn't been pronounced as it's spelled since...say, before 1400! And even then, the values of some letters have shifted. Basically, the language has changed radically but the spelling's stayed much the same.

So yeah, it's messed up...

The magic e
Take the word mat. Add the magic e. You can't hear the e, but it magically changes the previous sound. mat becomes mate.
'a' becomes 'ay' (mat/mate)
'o' become 'oh' (not/note)
'e' becomes 'ee' (met/mete)
'i' becomes 'ai' (like the word I) (bit/bite)
'u' becomes 'oo' or 'yu' (cut/cute)

Often it's turning a single vowel sound into a diphthong, if you notice.

Well I won't claim that set of rules is absolute by any means.
The thing is, these rules won't help you to spell better - they're for kids learning to better pronounce new words when they see them on a page for the first time. I show them to my students from time to time, but I think it's only helpful to a certain type of person.

I remember being taught this rule now. I don't think that our (my) teachers used the "magic" theme to help us understand though. I have a feeling that this rule has less exceptions than others.