Writing Systems-How They Change And The Future Of Spelling

By Valerie Yule

Writing Systems and how they change Contents:
Writing systems and their changes How change is made Nature of English spelling Improvements to English spelling Matching writing systems to people’s needs and abilities The future Experiments you can make
About Valerie Yule’s work on writing systems A fantastic source of information. Masha Bell (U K) What a repository of information and wisdom you are!!! Robin Schwarz (USA)
You make a substantial contribution to the international research in improving English spelling . . Long time scientific and education research and practical work with an inherent novelty and obviously great potential for societal use and benefit. Lyubomil Ivanov (Bulgaria)

• Language: English
• Publisher: ReadOnTime BV
• Release date: Mar 31, 2013
• ISBN: 9781742842073

Book preview

Writing Systems

and how they change

with particular reference to English spelling

Valerie Yule

First Edition

Writing Systems

Copyright © 2012 Valerie Yule

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Smashwords Edition

The information, views, opinions and visuals expressed in this publication are solely those of the author(s) and do not reflect those of the publisher. The publisher disclaims any liabilities or responsibilities whatsoever for any damages, libel or liabilities arising directly or indirectly from the contents of this publication.

A copy of this publication can be found in the National Library of Australia.

ISBN:  978-1-742842-07-3 (pbk.)

Published by Book Pal

www.bookpal.com.au

Valerie Yule,  M.A., Ph.D, Dip.Ed., M.B.Ps.S.   Academic positions at Melbourne, Monash and Aberdeen Universities in departments of Psychology and Education; Teacher at all levels, from preschool to adult and migrant literacy and PhD supervision; Clinical child psychologist at the Royal Children’s Hospitals, Melbourne and Aberdeen; Schools psychologist chiefly but not only in disadvantaged schools, Present research on imagination and literacy.

FOREWORD

This book is written for the general public as well as for the relevant academic disciplines, with as little jargon as possible. Most people know very little about the rhyme or reason of English spelling, or even if there is any rhyme or reason at all. This book looks at the future of English spelling as well as its past, and sets it in the context of other writing systems of the world - how they develop, how they have been reformed, the importance of spelling in society as a barrier or an aid to literacy, and as a marker and privilege reserved for elites.

The actual evidence for the many assumptions and preconceptions about the nature of English spelling need to be investigated, and whether it is possible to improve it.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I thank all those who have contributed to my thinking, and to evalusations of this manuscript. They are too many to mention them all, from Dr Sam Hammond of Melbourne University, Professor John Downing of Victoria University and Dr D. E. Everingham, to Dr Steve Bett, Ms Masha Bell and Sr. Zé do Rock. I thank the schools, hospitals and universities where I have carried out my research.

A special thanks to Kristina Tutic for her help in the tedious task of finalising and formatting the manuscript.

My thanks are due to Ron Tandberg and Andrew Weldon for permission to use their cartoons. Other drawings are my own.

AIMS

The aims are to examine the possibility of improving English spelling by removing unnecessary difficulties and improving its current visual and auditory modes. That will make it more useful for readers, writers, learners and English-language learners, by meeting their needs and abilities. As an international lingua franca, updated English spelling can be kept very close in appearance to present spelling and preserve our culture. This has been believed to be impossible. Now, it can be shown to be possible.

Difficult? Let’s see what else in science is difficult, yet still being achieved.

Why hasn’t English spelling been improved since 1755, while almost every other major language in the world has improved its writing system within the last 150 years? Reform has been prevented by the wrong tactics taken by four generations of English spelling reformers, and the reluctance of psychologists and linguists to attempt research in other directions. Other major languages have been reformed by updating, not by radical change.

What sort of spelling would best suit the English language and also be a best fit for the needs of readers, learners, writers and international communication? This question was first asked in my article in the Harvard Educational Review in 1986. Now this book looks at the needs and abilities of the users of English spelling, and the evidence for what sort of writing system could be most user-friendly for them.

What would happen to our heritage of print? Would present-day readers need retraining or relearning in spelling and reading? Looking at the range of spelling reforms that have been proposed, we can see why an improvement of present spelling is at present both more feasible and more useful than any radical changes.

So how can updating spelling come about? We can look at the trends in the ways spelling is changing already - on the Internet, in commercial advertising, how children spell naturally, and the changes that have been made in dictionaries.

We can see how the teaching of literacy has been bedevilled into constant swings of fashion changes because none solve the problem of English spelling - and how teaching could be transformed and improved if English spelling was predictable and consistent.

By going counter-intuitively and accepting arguments against reform, as ways in which reform could be attempted, we put forward an example of possible updating for investigation.

A small change could remove the difficulties that really hinder learners. This book proposes a method that results in fewer than 3% of letters in words in everyday text being changed, and 6% of letters in words being removed as surplus. Beginners start with a Dictionary Pronunciation Guide, and go on to a scheme that allows present spelling, and all that is currently in print, to remain accessible.

Methods of inexpensive implementation and an International English Spelling Commission are discussed.

Today, there is constant media interest in spelling. Cognitive research has demonstrated an urgent need for updating English spelling. Government inquiries into literacy in USA, UK and Australia show the crisis of large sections of the population are illiterate or functionally illiterate when literacy is increasingly necessary for employment. There is also growing international dissatisfaction with English as the international lingua franca.

To my grandson Patrick, who at the age of seven saw a Mobil sign at a garage, and cried,

Look, that says OIL and it has two silent letters!

And also to the millions who find English spelling an oppression and a barrier to full literacy, and to all those hundreds of pioneers who have sought to remove those barriers.

SYNOPSIS

This is a book for the general public, as well as the relevant academic disciplines, with as little jargon as possible.

Most people know very little about the rhyme or reason of English spelling, or even if there is any rhyme or reason at all. Here we look at the future of English spelling as well as its past, and sets it in the context of other writing systems of the world – how they develop, how they have been reformed, the importance of spelling in society as a barrier or an aid to literacy, and as a marker and privilege for elites.

This book looks at actual evidence for the many assumptions and preconceptions about the nature of English spelling and whether it is possible to improve it.

Why hasn′t English spelling been improved since 1755, while almost every other major language has improved its writing system within the last 150 years? Reform has been prevented by the wrong tactics taken by four generations of English spelling reformers, and the reluctance of psychologists and linguists to attempt research in other directions for change. Other major languages have been reformed by updating, not by radical change.

What sort of spelling would best suit the English language and also be a best fit for the needs of readers, learners, writers and international communication? This question was first posed in my article in the Harvard Educational Review in 1986. This book addresses the needs and abilities of the users of English spelling, and the evidence for what sort of writing system could be most user-friendly for them.

What would happen to our printing heritage? Would present-day readers need retraining or relearn spelling and reading? We look at the range of spelling reforms that have been proposed, and show why an improvement of present spelling is at present both more feasible and more useful than any radical changes.

So, how can spelling reform come about? We can observe trends in the ways spelling is changing already – how people misspell, on the Internet, in texting, in commercial advertising, how children spell naturally, and changes that do occur in dictionaries.

We can see how the teaching of literacy has been bedevilled into constant swings of fashion changes, because none solve the problem of English spelling - and how teaching could be transformed and improved if English spelling was predictable and consistent.

By going counter-intuitively and accepting the arguments against reform as ways in which reform could be attempted, an example of possible updating is put forward for investigation.

A small change could remove the difficulties that really hinder learners. A method that results in change in fewer than 3% of letters in everyday text, and 6% of letters removed as surplus, allows present spelling, and all that is currently in print, to remain accessible. Beginners start with a Dictionary Pronunciation Guide that leads into easy spelling reading.

Methods to implement such a spelling reform with no cost or disruption are discussed. An International English Spelling Commission could monitor research and implement findings.

STRUCTURE OF THE BOOK

The book shows that research is possible to find an optimum spelling for the English language, to meet the needs and abilities of readers. Argument is not enough. All types of reader would benefit by spelling modifications that increase predictability and reveal the underlying structure of the orthography more consistently. A network of studies and experiments investigates questions for spelling design that are still unresolved, and particularly the proposition that letters surplus to the representation of meaning and phonology could be deleted from words in English spelling.

The first step of the argument is a survey of options and examples for spelling in a cross-cultural review of writings systems and their relation to the languages that they represent. The nature and adequacy of traditional English spelling as a vehicle for the English language is examined, followed by reviews of theory and research on the needs and abilities of readers and learners that must be considered in orthographic design.

The argument then moves to consider orthographic change, and reviews the nature and consequences of orthographic change in other modern languages, where trends are towards simplification and consistency. It is shown how English spelling is changing, with similar trends to simplification. Orthographies are really technical instruments to communicate messages that are sent and received within the constraints of the neuropsychological capacities of humans and the technology of machines, but they also reflect the changing cultures in which they operate and fill strategic functions in societies.

The third step of the thesis, to demonstrate the feasibility of research, is the investigation of a specific spelling modification that is supported by the evidence and arguments presented. A series of experiments and studies examine the effects of deletion of superfluous letters from words, for readers of texts, words and word-pairs, with a preliminary exploration of what categories of letters may be found empirically to be surplus or even disadvantageous to readers. The central experiment is a lexical decision task for thirty adults, which is replicated, and validated by three types of control experiment.

The experiments are complemented by pilot studies of children, poor readers, and adult learners of English as a foreign language. Studies of made attitudes, of the needs of writers, and of previous research on practice effects in reading modified text and comparisons with other types of orthographic modification.

The studies and experiments disprove some traditional and Chomskyan claims for advantages in conventional English spelling, while supporting others, and have implications for theories of reading in education and cognitive psychology. The experiments bring out some of the unsolved issues in the nature of reading processes, and the problems that must be faced in research on spelling design. It finally concludes with a ′spelling without traps′ that would clarify the morphemic and the phonemic structure of the English language and be minimally disruptive as a practicable step towards an optimal English spelling.

Chapters have end pieces of curiosities, quotations, spelling games and cartoon illustrations for your enjoyment.

This book is exceptional in providing dozens of experiments relevant to spelling change. Most of these can be replicated by anyone.

Since completing my PhD thesis, titled Orthography and Reading: Spelling and Society in the Faculty of Education, Monash University 1991, I continued my investigations with revisions and reviews of the relevant literature in cognitive psychology, education, dyslexia, disadvantage and international writing systems. My qualifications in education, linguistics, psychology, English and history, and practical experience in teaching and research give me a unique position to write on English spelling.

CONTENTS

FOREWORD

AIMS

SYNOPSIS

STRUCTURE OF THE BOOK

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INDEX OF TABLES

INDEX OF EXPERIMENTS

CHAPTERS

1. INTRODUCTION

2. WRITING SYSTEMS

2.1 Comparisons.of writing systems

2.2 Alphabetic writing systems

2.3 Syllabic writing

2.4 Mixed writing systems

2.5 New orthographies

3. HOW WRITING SYSTEMS CHANGE

3.1 Orthography and society

3.2 Problems of changing modern writing systems and language

3.3 Some successful modern reforms of writing systems

3.4 Revolutionary changes in writing systems

3.5 An unsuccessful campaign for script reform

4. THE NATURE OF ENGLISH SPELLING

4.1 What’s the problem with English spelling and can it be fixed?

4.2 Some curiosities of English spelling

4.3 Homophones and the design of English spelling

4.4 The origins of spelling

4.5 Spelling and the structure of words

4.6 Theories of English spelling

5. SPELLING AND SOCIETY

5.1 English spelling and society

5.2 How English spelling is changing

5.3 It’s in the dictionary!

5.4 Trends in advertising spellings

5.5 Spelling critics and campaigns for spelling change

5.6 Why English spelling has resisted reform since 1755

5.7 Changes in international English spelling

6. SPELLING AND LITERACY

6.1 Spelling in theories of reading

6.2 Reading without spelling

6.3 Does spelling regularity help readers?

6.4 Speech and reading

6.5 What the eye sees in reading

6.6 Units of meaning

6.7 Should international English spelling use continental or English vowel spellings?

6.8 The advantages of using a diacritic over ‘a’ ‘e’ ‘i’ ‘o’ ‘u’ for ′long′ vowels, as an aid for learners

7. SPELLING AND LEARNING TO READ

7.1 Orthography and child development

7.2 Does English spelling make reading difficult to learn?

7.3 Experiments in spelling and learning to read and spell

7.4 Learning to read: conclusion

7.5 Studies

8. THE FUTURE

8.1 Assumptions that need to be challenged

8.2 Recent developments in spelling

8.3 The young generation and spelling

8.4 English spelling rules on one page

8.5 Problems of research in spelling design

9. EXPERIMENTS INTRODUCTION

9.1 Experiments anyone can do in reading and spelling

9.2 Summary of findings of experiments

GLOSSARY

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND REFERENCES

INDEX

INDEX OF TABLES

3.5.1 How English vocabulary appears in 12 Indian languages, as set out in the Romanised versions recommended by the Roman Lipi Parashad reform movement.

4.1.1 English consonants and some of the ways to spell them

4.1.2 Common spellings for English vowel phonemes

4.1.3 Summary of vowel patterns in standard English spelling

4.1.4 Basic grapheme-phoneme relationships for English vowels

4.1.5 Vowel spelling patterns after deletions in words of letters surplus to representation of meaning or pronunciation

4.2.1 41 pairs of inconsistent words and enemies

4.2.2 The def and dum alphabet

4.3.1 Homophones in continuous text

4.4.1 Dictionary spellings of the sources given for words

4.4.2 Changes in the s/c/sc/ch group of spellings

4.4.3 Words in which earlier vowel spelling matches present short /e/ pronunciation better than present spelling

4.5.1 Some spelling pairs anomalous for Chomskyan theory

4.5.2 Spelling of vocabulary that agrees with Chomsky’s theory of generative spelling

4.5.3 Related words which change spelling, but not sound - the reverse of ‘Chomsky’

4.5.4 Related words which change both spelling and sound

5.2.1 Johnson’s deletion of surplus letters

5.2.2 Smollett’s spellings

5.2.3 Surplus letters retained

5.2.4 Smollett’s spelling vs. modern spelling

5.2.5 Smollett’s spelling vs pronunciaiton

5.2.6 Further from present prounciation

5.2.7 More logical and morphemic spelling

5.2.8 Less use of as a vowel modifier, especially less use of the ′leapfrog’

5.2.9 More use of less common letters, and letters not usually in those positions

5.3.1 Deletion of doubled letters

5.3.2 Deletion of other silent letters

5.3.3 Closer to pronunciation or shorter

5.3.4 Plural replacing classical and foreign plurals

5.3.5 Further phoneme replacements

5.3.6 Simpler spellings

5.4.1 Australian advertising spellings

5.4.2 Single and unambiguous graphemes preferred for consonants

5.4.3 Vowel spellings in a sample of commercial spellings

5.4.4 American advertising spellings

5.4.5 Simplified American advertisng spelling

5.5.1 American vs English spelling

5.7.1 Respelling of French words in Rondthaler’s Dictionary of American Spelling

5.7.2 Japlish vs English spelling

5.7.3 Creole vs English spelling

6.3.1 Pronunciation of

6.7.1 The frequencies in English vocabulary of ′English′ and continental pronunciations for the five primary vowel letters a e i o u.

6.7.2 European vowel pronunciations of English spelling patterns

6.7.3 Frequencies in a million words

6.8.1 Long and short vowels that toggle in word families

6.8.2 Counter -Chomsky: related words which change spelling, but not the sound

6.8.3 Counter-Chomsky: related words which change spelling and sound

7.5.1 Spelling categories of words in graded subtests of the Neale Reading Analysis

9.1.1 Word recognition and Macquarie Dictionary (1982) entry of alternative spellings

9.1.2 Mean response latencies to alternative spellings in dictionaries by subjects with experience of surplus-cut spellings from a previous experiment

9.2.1 Reading rates for 100-word texts, in words per minute

9.3.1 Sixteen-Word Spelling Test

9.3.2 The spelling difficulty of common words

9.3.3 Spelling accuracy on the 16-word spelling test by 9 subject groups

9.5.1 Twenty-six words chosen as ‘good words’ by a six-year-old boy, that include all the Australian-English phonemes, listed under the vowels

9.5.2 Spelling patterns method for recognition of morphemes and roots

9.6.1 Self-scored silent reading compared with teacher-scored oral reading

9.6.2 Mean number of word-types that children could not read in standard and surplus-cut spellings in texts

9.6.3 Mean reading rates in children’s oral reading (w.p.m.)

9.7.1 Mean number of words marked as recognised by children who read both stories silently

9.7.2 Mean number of experimental words recognised in standard spelling and surplus-cut spellings

9.8.1 Mean number of words read and reading rates in oral reading

9.9.1 Mean response latency for repeated analogical spelling patterns. (msecs)

9.10.1 Mean oral reading scores (w.p.m) and error rates (percentage) for learners of English as a second language. modification

9.14 Lexical decision with masked priming

INDEX OF EXPERIMENTS

Experiment 9.1 - Orthographic factors in the recognition of alternative spellings in dictionaries

Experiment 9.2 - Practice effects

Experiment 9.3 - Can adults spell in English? A test of 16 common words

Experiment 9.4 - An experimental comparison of whole-word and alphabetic strategies in learning to read.

Experiment 9.5 - English spelling and the pedagogy of Paulo Freire for learning to read

Experiment 9.6 - Children’s silent and oral reading in traditional and Surplus-Cut Spelling

Experiment 9.7 - Learners by ′Language Experience′ and ′Paired Reading′

Experiment 9.8 - Independent readers aged 7.1-9.4 years.

Experiment 9.9 - Three studies of orthographic structure and analogical strategies in word recognition

Experiment 9.10 - Spelling and oral reading by English language learners: An experiment and a replication

Experiment 9.11 - Studies of an orthographic modification for English spelling

Experiment 9.12 - Replication: English reading by Asian students of English as a foreign language

Experiment 9.13 - Readers’ adaptation to four types of spelling

Note: Ocasionaly words in ‘improved spelling’ wil be encounterd.

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

I have attended many conferences of teachers of reading and English at which the English language itself has been labelled an oppression. People nod their heads in agreement. Yes, it is causing hundreds of other languages to be lost. It should not be learned. It is a remnant of colonialism.

I then say that it is English spelling that is an oppression. I am surprised by the indignation and the apathy that statement receives. Yet it is a barrier to everything in print in English and consequently to so much of the world’s knowledge, for millions of poor readers, non-readers, overseas learners, people with disabilities or dyslexia, and children. In print and online, English spelling is still an oppression. English is at present the world’s lingua franca. Its spelling threatens that fortunate position.

*

Talking is universal. Every human being learns to talk, unless something is very wrong. Every society in the world has a spoken language. Babies from six months onward pick up words and grammar at an enormous rate. By the age of four most children invent their own sentences so they can say most of what they want to say. They do not just imitate what they hear - they are using language creatively for themselves. Schoolchildren invent their own secret languages among themselves. This is all amazing. Language requires ability to manipulate symbols that is so complex that even the most pampered and tutored chimpanzees can hardly manage any of it.

Learning the spoken language is as ‘natural’ as learning to walk. Watch babies as they struggle hard to crawl, stand up, walk, and run, despite the tumbles. Listen to them as they struggle as hard to practise sounds, babble, to get their tongues round words, to express their ideas, and to understand the blooming buzzing confusion of voices around them.

But speech is different from walking in an interesting way. When babies learn to speak, they are learning a human invention. Since language and speaking capacities seem to be built into the human brain, just like our instinct for moving around, it was once supposed that the language itself was built in too. A child left to itself would speak ‘naturally’, and its natural language would be the original pre-Babel tongue. King Frederick of Prussia even tested the common hypothesis that this language would be Hebrew, since this was supposed to be the language of the Garden of Eden. He had a baby brought up isolated from all human language contact. The experiment ended in disaster. The baby didn’t learn any speech at all, and pined away through lack of human company.

Thousands of different languages have been invented all over the world, branching off from many different root-languages, as dissimilar as could be. Most may be dead. There are about 3000 languages in the modern world. India alone has 14 major language families with almost 200 different languages, which break down further into dialects. Papua New Guinea has at least 700 languages in its mountain valleys, and possibly over 900 in all.

Until recently, linguistics, the study of the structure of language, was taken for granted to be the study of spoken language - the written language was just the spoken language written down. Logically, it should be as easy and ‘natural’ to learn as the spoken language - after all, it is only language visible, language that is seen with the eyes and marked with the hands, just as the spoken language is heard with the ears and spoken with the mouth.

Many people, seeing how naturally children learn the spoken language, have assumed that in the ideal school, children would learn to read as ‘naturally’ and as easily as they appear to have learnt the spoken language. Why don’t they learn as ‘naturally’? The few children who take to reading like ducks to water are usually already precocious in the spoken language, but most children find it hard to learn to read, many never learn, and many, if not most, adults never read easily or well at all, and we take for granted that huge numbers cannot spell. Why is this?

One clue is that although written language, like spoken language, is a human invention, it is not a universal one. Few societies have invented a writing system; most existing ones have been borrowed and adapted from the original inventors. Civilisations as advanced as the Incas appear to have had none. The civilisations of the written word were limited mainly to Asia, Europe and the Middle East. Writing systems in the New World, the Pacific, and much of Africa were usually primitive. Where no records remain, we do not know what vanished civilisations may have achieved, but into this century many hundreds of languages and societies have remained preliterate. Two thirds of the world’s languages are still unwritten, and there are only several hundred different writing systems. Learning to read is not as natural as learning to talk, despite the hopeful notions that it ought to be.

Writing systems today are taken for granted because the major ones are not new developments of this century. Although they are a vital component of communications technology, their very antiquity and familiarity makes them the one aspect of it that is virtually ignored in English-language communication, even though the tremendous thrust of research and development to improve written communication online and in print was begun by Americans and Britons. The modern advances in written English language are in its print, layout, textual cohesion, legibility and readability, but not in updating the writing system itself, to fit the task to the needs and abilities of users and learners following modern principles of human engineering. For hundreds of years there has been more argument than research on the improvement of English spelling, yet after all, it is only a tool, only part of the technology. For too many people it has become a totem, and the only thing that remains stable in our world.

Anglo-American societies have universal schooling, and spend more per capita on education than most countries of the world. Nevertheless, high-school and adult illiteracy rates are depressingly high. In 1989, the Ford Foundation estimated that 72 million adults were functionally illiterate in the United States alone. Similar statistics are constantly being reported today¹.

Many, if not most, children have difficulty learning to read in English, and many adults who pass as readers are not fluent or accurate. There are many reasons for their problems. It is hard to learn to read if there is poor teaching, few books, an anti-educational home and environment, peers who mock the studious and ambitious, the hypnotic counter-attractions of television, personal despair, or physical, mental or ‘specific’ handicaps. Often all these problems accumulate and children are multiply vulnerable. And, as we shall see, no matter what the writing system, in every country, learning to read is not a simple ‘natural’ process. However, when all these problems are taken into account, Anglo-American literacy problems still appear particularly high in proportion to educational efforts (Nickerson, 1985, Stedman & Kaestle, 1987).

I first discovered the extent to which many learners are disadvantaged by English spelling in the 1970s, when a 10-year-old boy was struggling through a reading test (Neale Diagnostic). I gave him a parallel form I had transliterated, and said, ’Try that. No spelling traps.’ He began cautiously, but soon speeded up and ended at a gallop. He looked at me in surprise and said: ’But I could read that!’ and I thought, ‘You poor boy’. Since then I have found that people with handicaps find the unnecessary difficulties in English spelling a severe barrier.

There are some unnecessary difficulties in the task itself that could be diagnosed and remedied. For example, reformers and other critics have claimed for more than four hundred years that English spelling is ‘user-unfriendly’. Anecdotal case studies, informal surveys, innumerable jokes and cartoons, and personal experience give the same message - that English spelling is difficult. However, until recently, scientific investigation and evidence on this point has been strangely limited. There are realms of research on reading and reading difficulties, at the rate of more than 3000 articles a year and hundreds of books. These see the problem as belonging to the learners who fail. These inadequate people must be located, assessed, diagnosed and remediated. New ways of reading instruction have constantly been tried, dropped and recycled. This recycling is still happening. Yet a questioning attitude is needed as to whether the stuff of the writing system itself could be improved, and if so, how.

Since Noam Chomsky (1968), the giant of modern linguistic theory, has stated that English spelling is already ‘optimum’ (i.e. the best possible) this claim is commonly repeated as a knockdown argument against considering any improvement. Later we will look at Chomsky’s reasons for his claim and the evidence that does or does not support it. He only says that it is optimum in one respect.

We will also look at the idea of ‘optimum’ spelling itself. The best possible spelling would have to suit the English language itself, because that has special features. It should suit many different needs - for readers and writers, people learning English as well as those born to speak it, machines as well as people. It should be easy to learn, yet fast and efficient for the experts to read and write, and be accessible for those who are dull as well as those who are brilliant, and for people with language handicaps as well as those who have none. And it must not be so different from what we have already that our heritage of print is no longer readable - unless of course, some future breakthrough is made that completely revolutionises all writing systems - perhaps something now undreamt of, that can be read in any language, on the principles perhaps of Chinese, but without its difficulties.

One argument against trying to improve English spelling is that this is an unrealisable goal. All those different needs are too incompatible. No trade-off is possible. A spelling to suit readers, it is claimed, would handicap writers. If it was easy to learn, it would be clumsy to use and handicap users. This pessimism will be looked at carefully. Could any ‘best fit’ be possible after all, to meet all these different needs and abilities?

Spelling is far more important to our social fabric than is generally realised. The following chapters describe the relation of society and spelling. Foreigners regard us in amazement. We remember learning spelling lists in school, and we replace our use-battered office dictionaries with computer Spelling-Checkers, and we apologise, that we are ‘terrible spellers’ - sometimes apologetically because that means something is wrong with us, sometimes smugly, because that means we are in the swim with most other people. But spelling means more than that in society.

Orthography² means literally, ‘correct writing’, ‘orthodox writing’, and spelling is the bearer of literacy. Orthographic change in any society is related to social change.

Writing systems have a function in maintaining or changing social structure. They are an element of control in education. International written English has a significance we ignore to our detriment today. Bound up with our spelling are the possibilities of democracy, philosophies of liberty and equality, our concepts of education, and the distribution of labour in our economic system.

Chapter 2 shows the present range of options for how language can be written down. It gives an overview of the major writing systems of the world, and compares their advantages and disadvantages. We see how orthographies tend to be adapted to the languages they represent - but curiously, most of them manage to fail to be ideal matches, if not in one way, then in another. Humans may muddle through, but never to perfection.

In English-speaking education, there are never-ending battles and recycling fashions between two contrasting methods of teaching reading - the ‘whole-word’ See-and-Say and the Whole Language methods which bypass spelling in teaching reading, and the ′phonics′ Sound-it-Out. Chapter 2 illuminates these issues by examining some of the similarities and differences between the two great contrasting writing systems of the world - ‘whole-word’ characters, and ‘alphabetic’ letters-for sounds. There are many different versions of applied alphabetics in modern languages. Syllabic writing (characters for syllables) comes in as a third possibility. Then Japanese and Korean scripts are also described, as two particularly fascinating solutions. They both, in very different ways, mix all three major types of writing systems within their orthographies.

Lessons may also be learnt from the experiences when ‘ideal’ writing systems have been designed from scratch in modern times from ancient languages that have never been written down before. New invented languages that seek to be international also include new writing systems deliberately planned to be ‘user-friendly’.

Writing systems change, and Chapter 3 describes how they change, and why they do. Some specific national reforms are described in greater detail, to show how writing systems are related to social change, and to illustrate themes and theories that should blow Anglo-Saxon orthographic parochialism out of the mud.

These accounts show that orthography can no more to be considered unchangeable by human interference than any other construction of the human mind. They show the importance of spelling reforms and radical modernisation of scripts for developing countries in the twentieth century. We can also see democratic countries like our own which update their spelling systems, along with other aspects of communication.

Readers can then look at English spelling with fresh eyes - or for the first time. Chapter 4 describes the English spelling system. A full description is hilarious in places. It also makes clear that improvements are possible, and clarifies what they might be. When students and teachers understand the sense and the nonsense of it all, then spelling for literacy can be taught and learned with understanding, rather than blindly rote-taught and rote- learnt, or simply ignored at learners’ peril.

There are many common assumptions about English spelling and arguments that are continually repeated, but never tested. What really are its advantages and disadvantages? The worst features of English spelling are not essential to the English language itself. English spelling improvement may require only clearing up the inconsistencies and what is in effect clutter, from that basic structure.

English spelling is actually changing - like hidden erosion in soils that still carry surface grass. Chapter 5 describes the trends to change in English spelling today, at home and abroad. English spelling has international significance in view of the role that the English language has played as the most international language of the world. Examples of dramatic change in English pidgin orthographies are also described, which suggest some future possibilities.

Does spelling really affect levels of literacy? There are influential but mistaken claims that skilled readers operate only on visual memory and use of context to get meaning directly from print. They do not make any use of the relationship of the written to the spoken language, and so it does not matter whether spelling represents speech in any way, whether ‘photographic’ phonetics or conventionalised..

Reformers and other critics have claimed for some four hundred years that English spelling is not ‘user-friendly’, with evidence from informal surveys and from the personal experiences of professional educators, clinicians, and parents. However, scientific investigation and evidence has been limited³. Most research on reading problems sees the difficulties as deficiencies within the failing learners, to be diagnosed and remediated, rather than faults in the nature of the task that they have been set to learn. The design of English spelling is a new and wide field for empirical research (Yule, 1986) and cross-disciplinary data can be reanalysed from this perspective.

Chapters 6 looks at the evidence about the needs and abilities of readers and learners, to show that nature of the spelling is relevant indeed.

Chapter 7 is about the brass tacks of spelling design for the English language - on research and development as part of our communications technology. Experiments in this book investigate particularly one issue that appears clear from the preceding chapters - the superfluous letters in English spelling that might perhaps be better omitted. This leads into a close look at the problems of research in English spelling design and what needs to be done.

Research is ‘a country of high grounds and swamps. On the high ground are the manageable problems that can be solved by theories and techniques based on research; these problems tend to be specialised and even small. In the swampy ground are all those messy confusing problems that defy technical solution. In this swamp lie the problems of greatest human concern’ (Paraphrased from Schön ,1987). Researchers must choose whether to solve relatively unimportant problems in unimpeachably rigorous and elegant ways, or to descend into the swamp where important problems can only be tackled with less rigorous methods[1]

and there is the likelihood of mud on your nose.

We describe research in the boggy swamps where the problem of universal literacy still flounders, but there is also enough research in safer areas on the high ground that can be used to throw down ropes. Selection to illustrate theories and evidence has had to be drastic in some places, with inevitable omissions, but those interested will find there is a vast literature on reading and its cognitive processes that they may consult.

In chapter 8, we look at the future for print literacy, and the possibilities for spelling. When no assumption goes unchallenged, science can progress, and so it is with spelling.

Finally, the experiments and outcomes described in earlier chapters are discussed and illustrated in Chapter 9.

A network of original studies complements reviews of existing research, to offer a broader foundation to investigate the new field of the design of English spelling, as part of the already well-established discipline of language planning that is usually applied by English-speaking scholars to other languages. In this network, a structured series of experiments were investigated; whether simply dropping surplus letters in the spelling of English words would aid or disrupt word recognition. Some pilot studies are reported in outline so that their designs can be replicated. Almost anyone can carry out their own paper-and-pencil research on spelling to test the ideas put forward, and we can have a good old Aunt-Sally at the old fallible assumptions that few questioned in the past.

The glossary defines terms. There is a bibliography and an index for reference.

NOTES

¹. Orthography - correct or conventional spelling / writing system. For definitions of all technical terms, see Glossary.

². The Ford Foundation (1989) estimated that 72 million adults were functionally illiterate in the United States alone, and this picture has not improved.

³. As Luelsdorff (1987: 81 ff) points out, it is only recently that modern linguists have turned their attention from spoken language to reading and writing. See also Tzeng (1983). The cognitive psychology of spelling became a serious topic of research only in the early 1980s.). Action-research on spelling, based on these developments, has yet to come.

‘A few words of apology and explanation are called for if this book is to escape even more severe censure than it doubtless deserves . . . Apology is due to the specialists on various schools. If however, books covering a wide field are to be written at all, it is inevitable since we are not immortal, that those who write such books should spend less time on any one part than can be spent by a man who concentrates on a single author or a brief period. Some . . . will conclude that books covering a wide field should not be written at all, or if written, should consist of monographs by a multitude of authors. There is however, something lost when many authors cooperate... there are .advantages of synthesis in a single mind.′ Bertrand Russell. Preface to History of Western Philosophy (1946).

The present book is no such grand scheme, but faces similar problems on a smaller scale.

CHAPTER 2

WRITING SYSTEMS

Writing systems reflect and influence the social organisations which use them. They may match or mismatch with the languages they represent and with the abilities of readers, writers and learners. Orthographies change in English and other languages as their societies change. The lack of change in English spelling, however, compared with change in other writing systems, says something about our society that we shall be discussing.

Human needs and abilities are what matter most in the design of any writing system, so what are they? The findings can be applied to improving English spelling.

Writing systems are a vital component of modern communications technology. Research is constant and continual to improve print, layouts, textual cohesion, legibility and readability following principles of human engineering, to fit the task to the needs and abilities of users and learners. Research in improvements to the writing system itself receives remarkably little attention.

In the past century, almost every major language in the world has had reforms in its writing system to bring it closer to modern needs. Some changes are revolutionary; some are in minor details that nevertheless have their effects. But English spelling has had only informal changes of a word here, a word there. We no longer spell develope or phrenzy. There has been much argument and minimal research on whether English orthography can be improved further, although it is an essential part of international communications technology, many millions more people use English than speak it as their native tongue, and the English-speaking countries spend proportionately more on endless research and unsuccessful teaching of literacy than any other nation in the world.

The nature and future of the English writing system is a world concern, but few people are aware of its problems and potential in a world context. Within English-speaking countries, few people understand the nature of the English spelling they use every day, and fewer still are aware that other countries have already solved many of the problems they take for granted as unalterable law.

Spelling and literacy

No matter what the writing system, in every country reading and learning to read, do not appear to be as easy as or as ′natural′ as listening and learning to understand a spoken language (Miller, 1988). To some extent, this may be inevitable, but there may also be unnecessary difficulties in the task that has been set, that could be diagnosed and remedied. Anglo-American literacy problems are particularly high in view of educational efforts and social conditions (Nickerson 1985, Stedman & Kaestle 1987). There are many reasons why adult illiteracy rates in English are remarkably high despite universal schooling¹, why many, if not most, children have unnecessary difficulty learning to read, and why many adults who pass as readers are not fluent or accurate. Problems can include discouraging environments and lack of opportunities, poor teaching or limited school facilities, individual handicaps and personal lack of motivation.

The optimum - or best possible - orthography is the written representation most suited to its particular language, and the best fit to meet the different and sometimes incompatible needs and abilities of users and learners, readers and writers, native-speakers and the foreign born, the bright and the dull, the normal and the handicapped, humans and machines, while access to the heritage of print is maintained. It should harmonise with linguists′ phonological classifications and with native speakers′ sometimes conflicting perceptions, it should be compatible with the linguistic, political and socio-cultural aspects of its cultural setting, and it should be psychologically and pedagogically appropriate for its users, following Venezky’s principles (1970) for the