>Unlike other language aspects spelling is not rule governed. By
>standardizing spelling across dialects we limit the extent to which
>any spelling rules can be applied across dialects.
This is not necessarily true of other languages. English is
(fortunately) nearly unique in the utter insanity of its spelling. After
tutoring Russian-speakers in English as a second language I came to the
conclusion that it must be close to what I felt when I first encountered
Chinese characters! I used to tell them that, "We stole this word from
French so it's written this way, and this word was stolen from German so
it's written another way...etc." In languages like Russian or Italian, a
"spelling bee" would be pointless, since the conventions for writing
sounds in these languages are orderly - a direct (although not
necessarily a one-to-one) mapping.
For that matter, has anyone ever compared the process of learning Chinese
characters with the process of learning how English words are spelled?
Both are somewhat, but not completely, arbitrary. In fact, I recall that
back in the 'sixties someone actually did this with non-readers in an
inner-city school - teaching them the Chinese characters for English
words, and then when they had gotten the idea of reading and lost their
terror of the printed page, switching to English letters.
Any comments?
Rochel Sara Heckert
PS Your comment on the teacher's need for perfect "surveillance" is
another reminder that as much as our schools exist to teach, they
function to separate the (supposedly genetically determined) sheep from
the goats. For most people I know the idea that how hard the child
*works* can be significant is still heresy, or at least violently
counter-intuitive.
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