Quote:
Originally Posted by luqmaninbmore
Of course, one could argue that this speaks to the deficiency of the English language itself. I mean, in Arabic (and Hindi, for that matter), you don't need to learn "spelling." With very few exceptions, words are spelled how they sound. There are clear guidelines for the formation of words from the trilateral roots (there being several basic verbal 'forms' and simple rules for deriving others). Arabic evolved as a language with a very strong oral tradition; writing came later and was matched to the needs of the spoken words. I think it has a lot to do with the hybrid character of English; with so many languages from which to draw vocabulary and grammar, it would too much to ask for a consistent system of spelling. Urdu has a similar problem: there are numerous letters that are phonetically the same but quite distinct in the written Urdu script. You have to know the word in order to write it down correctly. I mean, how else would you know the name "Maz" is actually spelled "Mu'adh"? It can make using an Urdu dictionary quite difficult when you only have a spoken word or Romanized transliteration to go on.
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My second language is Spanish, which is also spelled phonetically. Even though a lot of my vocabulary has faded over years of non-use, I (or anyone else who's had so much as first-year school Spanish) can read off a page full of text perfectly ... without knowing a thing about what it means. I'll have to admit, I do like a language that makes sense. With three exceptions, even "irregular" verbs are just regular on a different pattern. There's no bring/sing/swing/ping problem. (for those who don't get it, the past tenses are brought, sang, swung, and pinged)
English started out as a way to say things like "I have wine. You have wool. You give me wool, I give you wine," or "Me lord. You peasant. You work or else." So it has random chunks of vocabulary, structure, and pronunciation from Anglo-Saxon and Norman-French. I'm not sure its two parent languages were ever really married; I think they've just been living together, and cheating on each other a lot. And some of their kids ....
Formerly, one would have a speaking vocabulary (the words actually used in everyday speech), a writing vocabulary (the more precise and formal words used in written communication -- no, I don't really talk like this!), and a reading vocabulary (all the words one could understand). The introduction of phonics for teaching reading merged them, especially the reading vocabulary, because phonics doesn't teach reading; it teaches pronunciation. If a word isn't one that the reader has ever heard before, they can pronounce it (maybe ... through, rough, though, bough?) but what good is it to be able to make a sound that carries no meaning for you? In English, the written language is far richer than the spoken language (due in no small part to its hybrid origins), but teaching people that it is merely a way of transcribing sounds does away with that. "There", "they're", and "their" all sound more or less the same, so ignorant people treat their spellings as interchangeable. They only see them as a way to write down that particular sound, not as the counterpart to "here", a contraction for "they are", and a relative of "our", "her", and so on.
Some people (especially those who taught themselves to read before the schools had a shot at them, and whose education transcended their schooling) can still enjoy the richness of written English. The rest, well, I guess they need a dictionary to read even ordinary books.
In my opinion, the worst thing anyone can do to children is give them "age-appropriate" books with no words they've never seen (or heard, for those taught to pronounce rather than taught to read) before. My parents were pretty clueless on how to raise a kid. And they were both bookworms, especially my father, who was a teacher. So, having quickly gotten bored with Little Golden Books, etc., I just read whatever I found around the house. I read everything from the newspaper to Shakespeare, and since I didn't know that little kids weren't supposed to be able to read any of that stuff, I read it anyway. I read pretty much everything that had words on it, from the classics to the backs of cereal boxes. Since I grew up reading books that were "too old" for me, I learned to read them. And the kids who were given carefully-selected books with no big, scary words in them? I guess they grew up to need dictionaries to help them read.