[etni] Re: English spelling too difficult for children
- From: ETNI list <etni.list@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: Etni <etni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 10 Jul 2010 07:32:33 +0300
Ruthi wrote:
> so how come once people could spell fine? Is English spelling more
> inconsistent today than once upon a time?
This appears to be a common misconception (hope I spelt that
correctly) - that once there was no, or little problem with English
spelling whereas nowadays there is. This is a problem that has been
going on for over a century.
Let's look at two quotes from way back in the 1960's
"If the professors of English will complain to me that the students
who come to the universities, after all these years of study, still
cannot spell friend, [I say to them that] something's the matter with
the way you spell friend."
(Dr. Richard Feynman, physicist. From a lecture at the University of
Washington, 1963).
Evidently, university students couldn't spell correctly in the 1960's.
And they still can't.
"Any [English] spelling-book gives you five thousand words commonly
mis-spelt. There is no spelling-book in Germany. There is no
spelling-book in Italy."
(William Barkley, The Two Englishes, 1965).
The list of quotations addressing this problem go on and on. You can
see many more at -
http://www.spellingdearest.com/wst_page10.html
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