Is English spelling difficult?
ENGLISH SPELLING is exceptionally complex and difficult. The main reason for spelling difficulty in English happens to be the lack of consistency between its pronunciation and spelling. No single letter of the English alphabet represents only one sound. The same letters are not used to spell the same sound.
/S/ Sent Cent Scent
/K/ Knight (silent) Cake Arc Occupy Saccharin Echo Lack Acquire Khaki Bouquet Viscount
The 44 sounds (20 vowels and 24 consonants) in English are represented by 26 letters only. For most of the words in English, the spelling cannot be inferred from their pronunciation. The vowels in English are highly ambiguous whereas consonants are very low in ambiguity. Another factor that causes difficulty in English spelling is the prevalence of silent letters - letters that appear in spelling but not in pronunciation.
Eg: knife, palm, island
When some words from foreign languages were adopted in English, their spelling was almost retained in tact whereas their pronunciation changed from time to time.
Eg: debt - derived from Latin word `debitum'
The third reason for the difficulty in English spelling is the prevalence of homonyms - two or more words having the same spelling and pronunciation but different in meaning.
Fair Market beautiful satisfactory
Homephones - two or more words having the same pronunciation but with different spelling and meaning add to the difficulty in English spelling.
/rait/ - right - correct, right side
/rait/ - write - to form letters or words with pen or pencil
/rait/ - wright - market or repairer
The following homonyms
Stationary - stationery, Disease - decease, Advice - advise, Hair - heir - hare, Oar - ore - wore.
Cause confusion and difficulty in English spelling.
The mother tongue interference is another inevitable reason for the difficulty in English spelling.
The following English letters b d f g h s z do not have their corresponding equivalents in Tamil; so the natives of Tamil Nadu thus spell the following English words erroneously.
Coffee - copy, hotel - otel, public - puplic
p t k s
b d g z
In Tamil, there is no voiceless and voiced sound difference whereas it exists in English. So some people of Tamil Nadu substitute the voiceless for the voiced sounds and thus erroneously spell the following words:
Pottle for bottle, kovernment for government sero for zero
American spelling and some advertisements containing deviant spelling also add to the difficulty in English spelling. As the American spelling is used in computers, our people are very much confused in correctly spelling the following words in English.
British Spelling American Spelling
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Travelling Traveling
Nationalise Nationalize
Colour Color
Theatre Theater
Some of the advertisers use erroneous spelling in English to attract their customers.
Eg: Moov, Krack, Kwality Ice cream, Coffy Bite, Home Lite Matches, Tru-Tone Hairdye.
Though there are various reasons for the difficulty in English spelling, the predominant cause happens to be the lack of co-ordination between its pronunciation and spelling.
Dr. R.V. Baskar,
Professor of English,
Dr. Mahalingam College of
Engineering and Technology,
Pollachi - 642 003.
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