Writing is on the wall for spelling

In the Education section of today's Irish Independent

If you are a fuddy-duddy traditionalist, upset that 'doughnut' is now commonly spelled as 'donut' by young whipper-snappers, then look away now.
Standardised spelling, if such a thing ever existed, seems to be in decline in Irish schools and colleges. And some people want to dump old-fashioned English spelling completely.

Martin O'Grady, lecturer in psychology at Tralee Institute of Technology, says the standard of spelling and grammar of Irish students at third-level colleges now leaves a lot to be desired.
Recently he has come across students referring to corporal punishment as 'corporate punishment', bonfire as a 'bombfire', and many students don't know the difference between 'their' and 'there'.

Last year the Department of Education's chief examiner lamented the disintegration of basic grammar and spelling skills on display in Junior Cert English papers.
Recent surveys in Britain suggest that around half of adults are unable to spell commonly-used words such as 'embarrassed', 'liaison' or 'millennium'.
More than a quarter of those surveyed struggled to spell 'definitely', 'accidentally' and 'separate'. One in three was not confident enough to fill in an application form without resorting to a dictionary or spell-checker.

There is no reason to suggest that we are any more literate here.
So, is it time to make spelling simpler? Should the English and Irish simply follow the example of Portugal, which recently simplified its spelling system.

Back in the 19th century, an American dictionary compiler, Noah Webster, set out to simplify the spelling of certain English words. His revisions led to American spellings such as 'color', 'center', 'favor', and 'traveler'.

Now there is more talk of reforming the complicated spelling system of the English language. This time, the reformers are mostly English.
A group of teachers and scholars has called for an end to difficult spellings such as 'receipt', 'through', 'cough' and 'scissors'.

The Spelling Society estimates that €25m is wasted every year in Britain teaching archaic 15th century spellings to 21st century schoolchildren.
Dr John Gledhill, secretary of the Spelling Society, told The Guardian: "If we simplified many of the difficult current English spellings by letting them follow basic English spelling rules, the English language would not change in any way, but English spelling would become easier to learn and easier to teach.
"More people would become literate and confident about writing, and children would have more time to learn many other useful things -- and to play.''

The Spelling Society is merely following the example of the Irish playwright, George Bernard Shaw, who claimed that the retention of archaic English spellings was merely a wicked plot to keep the poor illiterate. Shaw highlighted the absurdities of English spelling by explaining how the made-up word "ghoti'' should be pronounced "fish''. Why "fish''?
- The "gh'' as in laugh,
- The "o'' as in women,
- The "ti'' as in motion.
The Dubliner left £1m and the royalties from his plays to the cause of rationalising English spelling, but somehow his new alphabet (or alfabet) never caught on.

Shaw was also dismissive of those who insisted on proper punctuation. Referring to the use of apostrophes, he said there was "not the faintest reason for persisting in the ugly and silly trick of peppering pages with these uncouth bacilli''.

Textspeak is commonly blamed for a perceived decline in standards of spelling and grammar among youngsters. The Chief Examiner's report for Junior Cert English, published last year, said: "The emergence of the mobile phone and the rise of text messaging as a popular means of communication would appear to have impacted on standards of writing as evidenced in the responses of candidates."

The Chief Examiner argued that textspeak was causing Junior Cert pupils to become "unduly reliant" on short sentences, simple tenses and a limited vocabulary.
He said text-messaging posed a "threat to traditional conventions in writing" because of its use of phonetic spelling and lack of punctuation.
The harrumphing BBC presenter John Humphrys was more blunt in his denunciation of text messagers, describing them as "vandals who are doing to our language what Genghis Khan did to his neighbours 800 years ago''.

Text messaging may be an easy target, but recent research suggests that it may actually improve literacy rather than reduce it.

In a study for the British Journal of Developmental Psychology, researchers at Coventry University found that 12-year-olds who used textspeak improved their "word reading, vocabulary and phonological awareness''.
There may be much hand-wringing about spelling and grammar, but John White, General Secretary of ASTI, says there is no such thing as standardised English spelling.
"English spelling is changing all the time. The spelling of words is quite different now to what it was during the time of Shakespeare and Jonathan Swift. There has been a big scare about text messaging, but the important thing is that language is appropriate for the setting.
"You would not use legal language in a love letter, and text language may not be appropriate for certain types of writing, but that does not mean that it is wrong.''
John White, a former English teacher, says it should be acknowledged that the way we spell words changes. But he says any attempt to reform the current spelling system would be doomed to failure.

Sean Byrne, lecturer in Economics at Dublin Institute of Technology, says the major problem is not poor spelling.
"Many students do not know how to express themselves clearly. Pupils at second level seem to spend to less time writing essays and reading.
"Instead they are giving factual answers to questions in exams. That is regrettable, because good writing is a skill that is needed in most workplaces.''
- Kim Bielenberg