Crazy English Spellings

English is a crazy language. Unlike some other European languages that have standardized their spelling, English remains confused, jumbled, and garbled.

I used to be one of those people who would correct people's spelling on the internet. I would look down on a Facebook comment that had a spelling error, and disregard a blog post that lacked completely accurate orthography.

Some people have a natural ability to spell. That's great for them. I'm one of those people and it took me a long time to realize that spelling really doesn't matter. After all, the purpose of language is to communicate, so as long as I know what you're saying, it's all good.

But we do have standards in English: "then" vs. "than," "you're" vs. "your," and so on. Sometimes the meaning can even get lost, if you don't use the right spelling. In reality, though, the standards are just as random as the stuff that's not standardized (see "flavour" vs. "flavor," for example). And why not? Pronunciations vary, so why not spelling?

The truth is that spelling matters in a practical sense, since a lot of people will be like I used to be. They will take you less seriously if you can't spell right. It's a bit ridiculous, but it's true.

"Correct" or standardized spelling also makes reading easier. The reason that people who read a lot get faster at reading is that we learn to recognize the appearance of a word. That means we don't have to sound it out anymore, since we already know what it's going to be. Seeing it spelled the same way makes that process easier.

Research on the history of standardized spelling has shown that pronunciation changes faster than spelling. It also suggests that standardization happened slowly and almost unconsciously. That's why we now have "standard" words that make no sense, like "skill" with two Ls and "skilful" with one. Likewise, we ended up with multiple spellings for the same sound (e.g. "bed" and "instead"), and silent letters (e.g. "whether" and "slough")

At the end of the day, learning the standard spellings can be a major headache. That's why editors exist. Spelling is not based in logic. We only have standard forms because somebody decided those would be the standards.

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