Spelling is old-fashioned

Dear Editor,

Dianne Bardsley, main judge at the NZ Vegemite Spelling Bee, is quoted (March 30th) as saying “there is nothing old-fashioned about correct spelling.” Not so.

Our present ‘correct’ spelling is a hybrid of barely co-ordinated letter combinations representing words from hundreds of languages, including Anglo-Saxon, which have accrued over the years with little attempt to adapt them to English norms.

So, for example, because we did not respell them to represent their original French pronunciations in English terms or adapt their spelling to new English pronunciations we have a new pronunciation of champagne with a silent g, and a c for an s, and an unchanged pronunciation of depot with a silent t. An unchanged Paris spelling has led to a new pronunciation.

If our ‘correct’ spelling was up-to-date and not old-fashioned, these unnecessary complications would have been dealt with.

Our written words would be logical and regular in their spelling, and predictable for children learning literacy. They would not have to be memorised as now (especially by spelling bee contestants!). We would not continue to have the 20 per cent-plus illiteracy rate which is the bane of all English-speaking nations.

And while we Spelling Society members congratulate Christopher Jury on winning the NZ final, and wish him luck in Washington, we would also point out that the Scripps National Spelling Bee is, as you report, the Olympics of spelling, for the elite spellers. It does little for the ordinary pupil.

Two identical surveys conducted recently by the Spelling Society, one each in Britain and in the US, show little difference in spelling standards in these two countries, one with almost a century of national spelling bees, the other with very few such contests.

— Allan Campbell, Christchurch