Understanding English Spelling

Here is your Christmas present for any teacher or government
official. They may use the 164 pages of appendices analysing
spelling as a door-stop, but her story is lively reading and can set
neurones twitching. Dull it is not.
She writes for any reader and only one word is jargon.

Masha Bell begins 'As a result of falling in love . . ' and her
Life with English Spelling is the result. She is a Lithuanian who
can spell in four Continental languages and has taught two, but she
discovered spelling and teaching English to be a veritable pit.
This book is the result of several year[s] of steady digging in the
pit. After the story of her own experiences, Masha explains how she
set about finding the size of the spelling problem in English, and
what caused it. Part III tells of disputes over teaching methods,
why people make spelling mistakes, a brief history of the English
language and English spelling which includes some new learning for me
and I thought I knew a lot, explanations of spelling changes n the
USA and why the ITA Initial Teaching Alphabet experiment has
collapsed, recent and important research on the costs of English
spelling, and then, briefly, her comments on how they could be
reduced without the world turning to dust and [d?]ashes, or indeed,
changing English spelling very much.
She does not go into this in any detail; there is hardly room for
it. I would put my own oar in and call for an International English
Spelling Commission, and funded research into how spelling can meet
the real needs of all users and learners internationally to ensure
that improvement is truly user-fr[i?]endly, and not just what Seems a
Good Idea at The Time. Masha points out baleful consequences of the
spelling ideas of Richard Mulcaster in the 16th century, in other
respects an enlightened educator. Mulcaster opposed the contemporary
campains of John Hart, Sir Thomas Smith and the like to make English
spelling more orderly. He argued that popularity should determine
choices between the abundance of alternative spellings that were
around, and his 'intellectual prestige' won out. Certainly reform
must investigate and take account of what is popular and the current
trends, but vox populi can't necessarily spell well for the future.

Masha does not take[s] anyone else's word for it. Almost all
the work in the book she has done herself, list after list after
list. But they are very good lists, well set out, and enough to show
why so many learners give up or are given up as readers and writers.

There are many reasons why the ITA experiment has been
abandoned, but Masha goes to the heart of it. This was originally an
experiment comparing 873 children learning to read and write in ITA
with 873 learning with conventional spelling, and finding the ITA
children learned faster, read and wrote better, and fewer failed.
The experiment proved what it had set out to prove [ö] that a sensible
spelling would be of inestimable benefit. But a long-term solution
to acquiring literacy in present English spelling it was not. Too
many children tumbled when they were cast inevitably into reading and
writing with traditional spelling. They could even be worse off,
having become accustomed to using reason rather than rote memory.

Masha points out the problem of expecting children to learn
to spell and read 3,700 common but unreasonably spelled words. She
could also have pointed out that their existence renders all the
other words suspect and dangerous [ö] who is to know that they are not
bobby-trapped too.

She illustrates the ridiculous expedients that can be used as
mnemonics, such as how to spell 'necessary' 'with one collar and two
socks'.

She mentions but does not go into what has happened when
teachers have tried to sidestep the whole spelling business and teach
Whole Language, so that learners guess by context and can acquire
dangerous habits of wrong guessing [ö] stimulating the theory that
people construct their own meaning from what an author writes, rather
than reading what he/she actually wrote.

Since spelling sets different problems for readers and for
writers, there are two separate appendices. Appendix [']R on Reading'
has an index to reading problems and word lists, and lists 2032
potentially difficult words for readers. Appendix [']S on Spelling['] has
an index to spelling problems and word lists, and lists 2695 common
[word] words with tricky spellings. These well-sorted lists could be
useful for teaching traditional spelling [ö] but even more useful to
help clear up the mess.
The three-page bibliography is a brief but comprehensive and
discriminating selection from the immense literature on spelling.
There are indexes for graphemes, sounds, subjects and names. To give
some idea of the scope of the book, names range from Caesar, Julius,
Carnegie, A, Caxton W, Darwin, Charles, two Deweys, Queen Elizabeth
1, King James 1, Fowler, Franklin, Grimm, Hart, Jefferson, Johnson, S,
Jonson Ben, Murray, two Pitmans, Roosevelt, Shakespeare, Swift, and
Tennyson, to Blunkett D, Carney E, Hannah, P R, McGuinness, Diane,
Seymour P H K and more.



I found one spelling mistake but I can't remember where it was.

Understanding English Spelling by Masha Bell is an outstanding analysis of the regularity and irregularities of the English spelling system. Ms Bell's unique background has given her an insight into the spelling difficulties faced by those who are learning to read and write English; both young native speakers and foreigners alike.
The book begins with a description of how she became interested in the subject, and goes on to explain the years of research that she did in order to discover why learning to spell English is so difficult for the majority of us. This part of the book is written in a clear style, which is easy to understand and enjoyable to read.
In later chapters she goes on to explain how our present spelling evolved, and in doing so she dispels many of the myths that surround English spelling today; for example, that it was the spelling of Shakespeare, or that it derived predominantly from Latin and Greek. Indeed, she shows that the majority of our present spellings resulted from printing errors or the the whims of individual type-setters.
In the final section of the book, Ms Bell carefully explains the numerous rules governing our spelling system, and more importantly, she lists all those words that break those rules and cause such problems for our young learners. In all, some 3695 irregular spellings are listed and explained, and for teachers (of which I am one) this alone would make the book worth buying. Each group of words that are spelt irregularly is listed in a table, with the unpredictable part of the word underlined or highlighted.
As far as I am aware, this is the first time that an attempt has been made to analyse our spelling system in this way. The result is both fascinating and thought-provoking. I believe that this book should be read by all those involved in government and education. My fear is that, as many of those same people are so entrenched in the misinformation and myths that surround spelling, the book will fail to reach them.
For all those with an interest in English as a language, and with a sufficiently open mind, this book is a must read. I strongly recommend it.