Health-care reform is set to become my King Charles’s Head. I am going to find it difficult to write anything without it coming up in the middle. Fifty-seven million people in the United States of America without healthcare insurance and we — at least those blocking reform — call ourselves a Christian nation. Shame, shame, shame. But, spurred by a well-merited criticism of my last blog, I want to write about something else that has been on my mind and which I intended to raise at some point. So why not now?
I have in my possession a school report from when I was about 10 years old. My mother was a schoolteacher and we took school reports very seriously in my family. They were not glanced at, signed, and then forgotten. They were returned, stored safely, and discussed on pertinent occasions in the future. The report, said he modestly, is pretty good. “Sports” is a bit off, but generally I was nicely on track. However, then we come to “Spelling.” “B, Michael is improving.” Well, there was room for improvement and I am afraid it did not go far. As my perceptive critic noted, I simply cannot spell. On this occasion, I got “miniscule” for “minuscule,” but this is nothing. Some words I just blank out on. The other day, I could not for the life of me spell “cloathes,” you know those things you put on. I can never spell “campaing,” the thing that was the end of Napoleon in Russia. And you may ride in an automobile, but I ride in a “vehcule.” And when it comes to, well you know what it is when you have had too many prunes and it begins with a d, I cannot get close enough to look it up in a dictionary.
I don’t know why it is. There are some words I have the hang of. I know how to spell “parallel.” And “embarrassment” is never self predicating. But in general, I am a mess. I think I usually know when I have something wrong, but as miniscule shows not always. And I doubt now that I have lived and misspelt for seven decades that things are going to change much.
Do understand, I am not writing this post in a welter of self pity. Don’t write comments of sympathy — or scorn for that matter. I live with my bad spelling and by and large it does not bother me. Although there was a nasty moment when I did my test for citizenship and the chap asked me to write: “Abraham Lincoln was president during the Civil War.” I kid you not, I did not know whether to write “Lincoln” or “Lincone.” (Mark you, I was so damn nervous, I could not remember my address. The poor officer asked, in bewilderment: If you and Lizzie are married, why do you live in different houses?)
Spelling has been a pain in the backside, but something I can and have lived with. The fact that I could not play games for toffee was something that I regretted and cried over. Open the innings for England? I could not open the innings for Lizzie’s gardening club. Imagine being at an all-boys, English, boarding school in the 1950s and being truly, truly dreadful with any kind of ball, big or small, round or oval. Boys and masters alike worshiped the jocks. And the rest of us were forced to turn out on Wednesday and Saturday afternoons in the miserable cold of an English winter in the North, and to cheer. It was then that I developed my love of the movies. (Going to the movies, except on special occasions, as when a master’s wife had her first baby, was forbidden. An interesting reflection on the values of the day was that if you were caught, the penalty was three weeks gating — not allowed to leave the school premises — but if you were caught smoking, the penalty was one week of gating.)
But I digress. I have often wondered why I cannot spell. I read easily and quickly, and I read a lot. I can write. It was not easy at first, but I learned how to do it. You may or may not care for my style, but it is mine and I practice it with ease. I am not showing off but comparing my relative skill or non-skills when I say I can easily write two thousand words a day and at a pinch five thousand. But I cannot spell! Thank goodness for spelling functions on computers. I thought that perhaps when I learned to type — I did not do so until I was 49 (and went back to high school to learn, an achievement of which I am very proud) — it might change things. Perhaps I would see words in a different way. No such luck. I don’t think I am dyslexic or if I am I don’t know that I am. (Although, it has been a long time since I worshiped Dog.)
I wonder if today teachers have skills to nip in the bud, as it were, the non-functioning of people like me. I had dedicated teachers as a child, so it certainly wasn’t for want of trying on their part. So there you are. My weakness exposed for all to see. No pity please. Just laugh at it, as I do — that is, when I am not thinking about health care.
9 Responses to Speling Tests
jffoster - January 24, 2010 at 11:38 am
I have a Ph D in Linguistics and I don’t spell very well — in fact most linguists do not, especially in English. The English orthographic “system” is maybe only about 70% predictable, even though it does generally reflect underlying morphophonological forms to some considerable extent. (e.g. advisor, manager, editor, grammar all end with the same vowel but derived forms are advisOrial, managErial, editOrial, grammAtical, &c). Moreover, English spelling wasn’t even standardized in the days of the Founding Fathers of the United States and Benjamin Franklin spelled his name several ways. Finally, don’t worry about it. Spelling is pretty close to trivial. My first revolt against gross overemphasis in spelling cam in the tenth grade in El Dorado High School (El Dorado, Arkansas) when in terror of sputnik they were going to beef up education. So they had a National Spelling Bee and all the high school students were supposed to compete for being selected a delagate. It was done in Home Rooms and I deliberately threw the test, scoring something like 40 out of 200 or so. The only grade we got in Home Room was for “citizenship” and I got a C that grading period also because I refused to sell magazines to benefit the pep squad, but mainly because I had thrown the National Spelling test, had openly suggested that beefing up Science was far more important than spelling, and the HR teacher knew it. I had her for Spanish too, and got As there. And I could and still can spell in Spanish a hell of a lot easier and more accurately than in English. I can spell in German, Russian, Turkish, and even Welsh better than in English. French is a bit harder, for some of the same reasons English spelling is harder — lots of homophonous morphemes in French because of widespread consonant loss. Spelling is pretty close to trivial.
lee77 - January 25, 2010 at 8:03 am
Michael – MANY thanks for sharing! I, too, read a lot, and generally am regarded as a good writer. I find I can often recognize incorrectly spelled words (including my own), without being able to correct the mistake. (If people give me something to review, I impress – or irritate- them by finding the typos.) I still recall my grade school spelling test, and being unable to spell ‘of’ (‘ove’ was my version). Like you, I haven’t fretted too much about it, but I certainly appreciate spell checkers!
ksingh - January 25, 2010 at 10:12 am
I’ve taken some of those grammar and spelling tests they give you at job interviews for editor positions, and I always fail. I have a graduate degree in English, but I get so hung up on those tricky little attendance/attendence type questions.
cwinton - January 25, 2010 at 10:34 am
their, their, texting wil sav us from neding to spel wel
dank48 - January 25, 2010 at 12:55 pm
I for one don’t see how one can overlook “minus” before writing “minuscule,” but MWNCD gives “miniscule” as a variation. It also lists “most” (= “almost”), “alright,” “flutist,” and a lot of other abominations. So what? Language, like climate, is constantly changing, and I remember when teachers insisted on the apostrophe in “Hallowe’en,” as if it mattered. As a lifetime good speller who makes a living cleaning up other people’s spelling, grammar, capitalization, punctuation, syntax, usage, clarity, accuracy, etc., I have to say that spelling seems to me to be utterly devoid of intellectual content. It’s a convention, not a moral issue. Frankly, as a literary trash collector (at least, I try to collect it), if everyone else were perfect spellers, I would be in trouble. Shakespeare spelled his own name about a dozen different ways, not once the way I just did, and yet he somehow enjoys a considerable reputation. As William Safire observed about language, when enough of us are wrong, we’re right.
johntoradze - January 25, 2010 at 1:34 pm
Per Merriam Webster’s dictionary, a “minuscule” is a non-capital letter and it also refers to certain medieval writing styles that are small. A majuscule is a capital letter. The word minuscule has also been used to mean very small as early as 1705. The word “miniscule” was first recorded to be used to mean “very small” in 1893. “Miniscule” has been commonly accepted as a variant since the 1940′s, however, when written with an “i” instead of a “u” it can only mean “very small” and does not have the double meaning of a non-capital letter, nor does it refer to the medieval writing styles. In 1985, an article examining use of these two variants in newspapers found miniscule outnumbered minuscule 3 to 1. That indicates that the 305 year old spelling “minuscule” is now an archaic variant, like “chimley” and “knowledgy”, and should be abandoned when referring to things that are “very small” reserving this spelling for letter descriptions. So there you are. Your spellchecker, (courtesy of Microsoft) is wrong, as is the spellchecker for this web page.
dank48 - January 25, 2010 at 5:02 pm
I see nothing in MW that says “miniscule” can’t be used to refer to non-capital, i.e. “rather small” letters or, for that matter, to medieval writing styles. God knows I wouldn’t, but I wouldn’t use “miniscule” for any purpose.For what little it’s worth, my opinion is that we should stick to whatever spelling (and other usage conventions) we’re comfortable with, and let others do the same. My refusal to use such barbarisms as “dunno,” “coulda,” “could of,” “gonna,” and so forth should be balanced by recognition that if others wish to pursue the will o’ the wisp of phonetic spelling, it’s their funeral, not mine. And their freedom to use such forms in their own writing has nothing to do with my preferences.On the other hand, in preparing mss for publication, it’s a good idea to realize that, while “correctness” may be merely a convention, so are driving on the right and stopping when the light turns red.
jgherder - January 25, 2010 at 8:30 pm
For the record, I did not tell Michael Ruse that he could not spell, nor did I malign the clarity and beauty of his prose, question the quality of his thought, or impugn his moral character. A simple “yes, you are a hopeless pedant” or ironic “thanks for sharing” would have sufficed.Now that I have my priorities straight, you will all be pleased to know that I will cease my trivial insistence on correcting those students who write such phrases as “Zeus dethrowned his father,” resign my fatuous post as a professor of the humanities, and devote my intellect and energy to something more important and rewarding of my attention, like lobbying in Washington for health care reform.But at least I can embrace my new career feeling like WAY less of a pedant than I did, say, six or seven comments ago.
22199474 - January 26, 2010 at 11:45 am
Tru, speling may be overatted, but there’s also a common syntactical error in the fifth paragraph:Spelling has been a pain in the backside, but something I can and have lived with.