What's in the Way?

Wendell H. Hall

One day during World War II, our master sergeant lashed out at us troops in training demanding that we learn to stand on our own two shoulders. "We'll try," some of us muttered under our breath, "but our heads may get in the way."

What is in the way of solving the problem of illiteracy and semi-literacy which in the U.S. has achieved the proportions of a national tragedy and disgrace? Certainly not the heads of our precious little children, who catch on to so many things so quickly that it can startle and amaze us. Absolutely no blame can be placed on their little heads. Who could entertain such a thought for a fraction of a second? Of course, some little ones need special help and we must do everything possible to provide it.

The heads of teachers, parents and volunteer tutors definitely are not in the way as they, so caring, concerned and dedicated, go all out to help children and older learners acquire the reading, writing and spelling skills so crucial to their continued education, vocational success, intellectual and cultural attainments and self-fulfillment.

Most assuredly not in the way, are the heads and hearts of educators in general, public and private school administrators, and professors—particularly those in colleges of education and departments of linguistics, who have such vital roles in researching solutions and establishing policies and procedures. But in every society traditional attitudes and approaches exist that are very difficult to escape from or change, as though cemented with superglue or set in concrete.

The spelling of German is far easier to master than ours, yet the governments of Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Liechtenstein are attempting to reform it. Their concern for their little ones is so great that they want to make sure—right down to the last "jot and tittle"—that they have done their utmost to ease the task of learning it, thus freeing up time for other vital subjects and thereby significantly broadening and speeding up primary and secondary education in general.

Strangely, in English-speaking countries, justly proud of being at the forefront of science, technology, and many other areas of human endeavor and achievement, the idea of spelling reform scarcely ever crosses people's minds and we seemingly are quite content to ignore the mortifying fact that the deeply-rooted root cause of our literacy crisis is our Kafkaesque, archaic, unscientific spelling.

No way can the blame be ascribed to heads that would never, never, knowingly get in the way of a child's progress. No, it lies in our inherited spelling, totally mixed up and messed up for centuries and then set in concrete. No way can we continue to just let it lie like a sleeping dog. A dog that bites, yes, with a history of wreaking irreparable damage! It not only lies but is deceptive, treacherous and can never be trusted, as very briefly illustrated below.

No one escapes getting nipped or chewed up—at times in the most embarrassing ways, like the man before a vast audience who said "epitome" and rimed (rhymed) it with "home" (not "some"), "bow" (like "low" not "cow"), "sew" (not "few"), "dough" (not "bough," "rough," or "cough"), "go" (not "to"), "roll" (not "doll"), "shoulder" (not "should"), "beau" (not "beauty"), "road" (not "broad"), "dove" (like "cove" not "move" or "love"), "toe" (not "shoe), "bone" (not "done" or "gone"), "comb" (not "bomb" or "tomb"), etc., etc.

A day or so ago a well-known news analyst on a major network rimed "renowned" with "owned" instead of "crowned". Today a C-Span host (one of the very best, most respected and admired) stumbled over the pronunciation of "acquiline" when reading from a news report and failed to get effective help from his two guests. Dan Quail spelled "potato" p-o-t-a-t-o-e, so cued by a teacher's flashcard, and the poor feller's still ridiculed as a poor speller.

Aboard an aircraft carrier, Commander-in-Chief Bill Clinton referred to the "bow" (like "show") of the ship. Some poor souls would have never lived a jumbo dumbo howler like this down, but it didn't stick to Rhodes scholar "Slick."

Much more important is the fact that this mongreloid spelling of ours, darling of the elite, crossbred one way or another with some 80 languages [a great plus in terms of lexicography (giving us new words) but as orthography shamefully misbegotten] chews up some kids so terribly that they drop out or drop behind along with millions of other functional illiterates in our country, and that is tragic! The moment has come to quash all groundless, senseless misgivings and bugbears, come to our senses, wake up, and deflea, degrime, scrub and groom this disgracefully mangy mutt till it's spotlessly splendid in appearance and in fact!

Crucial as the issue of spelling reform is, it nonetheless very rarely is discussed or debated before the general public in our country. If it does surface briefly, well- intentioned but tradition-bound opponents seem to have a standard, time-worn response instantly ready.

It customarily is trotted out on three legs. Let's examine these appendages to determine whether they in fact leave their exponents without a single leg to stand on. Behold the incomparable quadruped (adding as a fourth leg "the paralleling of language in its broadest sense" to provide a laudable symmetry liberating the animal from a lamentable limp):

"Unfortunately, spelling isn't based on sound alone. It is also related to syntax and semantics. Your system doesn't acknowledge the fact that all language exists and functions on three levels simultaneously: graphophonic, syntactic and semantic. Existing spellings in English do function on all three levels because they parallel language in its broadest sense."

(If the comments that follow are in any way incorrect, please show me in what way and set me straight.)

ALL LANGUAGE, it is stated, exists and functions on three levels—with "graphophonic" ranked first in order. Challenging this is not an unimportant quibble. [POTENTIALLY] graphophonic has to be interposed here. Until recent times, most of the world's thousands of languages had no writing system of any kind and even today, despite the efforts of great men like Kenneth L. Pike, Charles Laubach, and many others of lesser renown, there are still many extant languages for which no alphabet, letters to Mom and Dad, notes from teachers to parents, engravings on grave markers, newspapers, books, or other texts have ever existed. So the assertion is false, and yet well-meaning enemies of spelling reform prefer to universalize the use of "graphophonic" in this manner because they tend to conceive of language primarily as its visual representation.

In its essence, however, language is speech, and writing is but a secondary, derived form. This in no way minimizes the tremendous value of writing or denies that it has elements and aspects peculiar to it alone. But in addressing the question of spelling, the facts should be placed in proper perspective and the point of departure should be a valid one.

When these well-intentioned critics say "syntactic," the examples they put forward typically deal with morphology. Incredibly, to them the visual appearance of a morpheme in printing or handwriting is more important and valuable than an accurate indication of its pronunciation. They object to the fact that with a perfected, phonemic system of spelling, the written form of "nation," for example, would be altered as part of a word like "nationality" (pronounced "nashen-ality," not "nayshen-ality"), and that this would constitute a severe loss, obscuring to readers an otherwise precious and precise relationship, as they SEE it, between the two words.

In speech, curiously enough, no one ever has this problem on SPEAKING and HEARING such morphemes, nor the slightest inkling that any "problem" might exist. Besides, commonly enough in our inherited orthography, phonetic variations are reflected, as with "ordain" and "ordenation". Come on, critics! Do you want us to rewrite that as "ordaination"? Morphemic irregularity is a fact of life in English which no amount of "tri-level" delusion, illusion or pigheadedness can cause to go away. Take "go, went, gone," for instance. What would these "broadest-sense" zealots have us do? Revert to infantilistic "I go, I goed, I have goed"?

Ordinarily, contexts make meanings clear. ("Nationality" often is accompanied by words like "Greek".) If not, what do we have dictionaries for? Well, in English, one might suppose, mainly to look up spellings and pronunciations. Who could possibly guess correctly the spelling and pronunciation of "colonel," "hyperbole," "psoriasis" and countless other words? A "mispronounciation" can constitute a serious faux pas (fox paz), eliciting guffaws.

Every speaker of English should look at a dictionary for poor spellers sometime, of which there is no lack. Every possible and impossible spelling is included for the clueless who don't know rhigt frum rhong. And isn't it astonishing (and appalling) that pronunciation guides and keys have to be given in our dictionaries for every single word? In Britain, in RP (Received Pronunciation); in the U.S., in GA (General American English) with significant dialectical variations—social or regional—also sometimes indicated.

Shouldn't this be reversed, with the guide coming first? Unfortunately, with their diacritical marks and other strange symbols, the guides aren't that easy to use. The keys to pronunciation are given in very small print and are difficult to read and remember. Is the double-o of "book," for example, the one with a straight line over it or the curved one?

Talk about guffaws! A poor foreigner or child couldn't know, on first encountering "flood," whether it rimes with "food" or "foot" and would have to learn a new symbol for "oo" as in "blood"—should learners, old or young, ever happen to have a dictionary at hand or ever take the trouble to look things up. Dictionaries for Spanish and other decently written languages never have to include such miserable guides and keys.

When they say "semantic," elite opponents of reform tie it in with this same strange notion of visual supremacy and superiority over what, in its essence, is auditory, though in fact what they apparently have in mind is etymology. After all, if we wrote "foto" for "photo," what reader could immediately be conscious of the fact that the word comes from Greek? Word origins are fascinating and intriguing and at times provide valuable insights. But who goes through life with them constantly in mind when communicating? Hispanics, Italians, and others get along very well with "foto," thank you very much, never exhibiting a realization or sense of deprivation or loss. (For a more extensive discussion of this see A Provocative Analogy below.)

Can you imagine someone entering a shop to have some film developed and eruditely spouting out, "I guess you know "photo" comes from Greek for "light" and that along with Greek "graphein" (image) it gives us the word "photograph". Blah, blah, blah, and blah. This reminds one of a character of Miguel de Cervantes, author of "Don Quixote". His "gracioso hablador" couldn't say two words without running over at the mouth with all kinds of extraneous, irrelevant utterances that left everyone at a loss as to what he was attempting, if anything, to convey.

Well, I must confess that I am somewhat of a gracioso hablador and love etymology. Although the exhuming of word origins could rightly form part of every course of study in every field and subject, shouldn't it be perfectly obvious by now (in this enlightened age, at the beginning of a new millenium) that the zealous, selective preservation in our spelling of random body parts from decayed old mummies is as obstructive as it is silly?

I firmly believe, nonetheless, that no one should be considered properly educated who is devoid of curiosity and knowledge in this area. It matters not for this what the contemporary spellings might be—ridiculously archaic or scientifically modern—be it "salve," for example, or "sav".

It's impossible to know how many mutations words go through before evolving (if ever) to a "graphophonic level". English first reached it as Teutonic runes (See Knock on Wood) and a few centuries later as transcriptions to letters from Latin. "Salve" goes all the way back to Indo-European "selp" (fat, butter), which decayed to ancient Germanic "salbo" (oily, greasy), decayed further (c. 400-1100 A.D.) to Old English "sealf" (as it finally found graphophonic form in Latin letters), and then (c. 1100-1500 A.D.) to Middle English "salve". Take note that in England, the runic characters were known as the FUTHARK, after the first six letters.


In its most meticulously proper "parallel-broadest" transmogriphication, the word should be written today as S-E-A-L-F, not S-A-L-V-E! How can anyone remain callously indifferent to the extinction of one single endangered mummified graphophonic part? [Note: There is no absolute agreement among authorities with respect to purported word histories.]

Let's dissect Old English sealf. <s>, as in psalms, scepter, and psychoses, has valiantly maintained itself against encroachment by <z> (is, bugs), <sh> (sugar) and <zh> (measure), etc., but in only one single word, yeah (in an alternate articulation), is <ea> still pronounced like the <a> of gnat. <l> is silent in only a few dozen words like should and half, and <f> is approaching extinction as /v/ (found now, if graphophonic ecologists are to be trusted, only in of). Yet these mummified body parts have survived right up to the 21st century in spite of the fact that their natural 5th to 12th century environment has relentlessly, irretrievably, disappeared forever.

Protect the rain forests! Save the trees! (Poster #14) Fight for the survival of the slimiest endangered salamander, the scummiest scum-sucking sucker! Fervent proposals like this make sense. But entrenched, "valiant" struggles to save the <S> of sure, the <EA> of yeah, the <L> of would," the <F> of of, etc.? Mind boggling even to troll dolls! But yeah, sure, mmm, uh, ya know, you bet! Know what I'm saying? Priceless pristine primeval <SEALF> must be reclaimed as from a bit of precious DNA preserved in amber and thereafter safeguarded and protected as fiercely and fanatically as already extinct dodo birds! Only by means of heroic measures like this can our heads continue to be held upright, our conciences be kept scrupulously limpid and clear, and our guilt be properly sealfed!




Let's discuss briefly the critics' dogmatic assertion that "existing spellings in English do function on all three levels [graphophonic, syntactic and semantic] because they "parallel language in its broadest sense". If this "three level," "broadest" notion is supposed to represent some kind of universal or natural law, then wouldn't it apply just as fully to Finnish or Spanish? Like English, they have a "graphophonic level" too, of course, but in contrast to the thoroughly irregular orthography of English, theirs is well-nigh perfect, with very few irregularities, comparatively few spellings that have to be memorized, and scarcely any rules to keep in mind. Does their relative perfection in this make Finnish and Spanish defective or deficient as "language," unsatisfactorily "paralleling it in its broadest sense"?

Has anyone ever asserted with a straight face that our current English spelling is superior to that of Finnish and Spanish, or to the spelling of any other language? If archaic, irregular, unpredictable spellings best exemplify a "paralleling of language in its broadest sense," then English at this moment, absolutely, hands down, no contest, has far and away the world's best alphabetical writing system. The concensus around the globe, however, is that we have the world's worst.

Incidentally, in addressing the issue of spelling reform it is vital to keep in mind the saying about "the proof of the pudding". This great nation, with its estimated 40,000,000 or more functional illiterates, is falling far behind such "third-world" countries as Bolivia and Cuba, largely because their alphabet and spelling are so far superior to ours.

Spanish has an almost ideal spelling system. It could be improved by employing <h> exclusively for foreign names and words like Hall, hall (hall, vestibule), hangar (hangar), etc., which are pronounced roughly as in English. Otherwise, <h> is always silent. Two words below could well be written <asta> and <abilidad>. Speakers of Spanish make fun of themselves by speaking of "amor con hache" (love with an h; ie, hamor) inasmuch as they sometimes are uncertain whether certain words are written with a silent <h> or not.

By eliminating this problem and a few other relatively minor ones (when compared with those totally messing up English), Spanish would have a 100% ideal spelling system (accommodating major dialects—Castilian, Andalusian, etc.—with provisions for significant variations). This tentative layout for a potential website offering innovative Spanish lessons is presented as an example of nearly perfect spelling that ought to give us an inferiority complex and impact relentlessly on us until we can equal it. Why not aim higher, however, for a spelling system superior even to this?



Perhaps equally telling and crucial is the fact that every entity from the European Union to individual non-native speakers of English around the world are very displeased and unhappy, to say the least, with our atrocious system (NOT!) of spelling. As one who has taught and supervised the teaching of English as a Second Language in both the U.S. and abroad, I am all too familiar with the reaction of foreigners to our spelling: "@!&%#^*, cussword, cussword," plus unrestrained ridicule and scorn. English is the de facto international language but with NuSpel it would at last be palatably and more acceptably so to speakers of other languages and Earth could truly become a global village (in many positive ways) in large measure because learning our language would be so much more simplified and easy.


How does the "tri-level," "broadest" philosophy propounded in any way confer superior advantages or values on what I call OldSpel? In what way is "laugh" superior to "laf"? It definitely does resonate in a special, bewildering way, but shouldn't such aberrations—if for any devious, specious reasons allowed—be viewed as departures from a proper, respectable, more efficient norm that is easier to learn, use, and retain?

If curious relics like "laugh" are to be so cherished and revered, why not convert the limited number of English spellings currently in use that by any stretch can be called "regular" to more truly representative, quintessential "parallel-broadest" ones like "through," "though," "bough," "cough," "tough," draught," "calf," "chaff," and "graph," etc., etc. I could really go, for instance, for "gutt" over "gut," paralleling the spelling of "mutt". I like the look and feel of "That guy has got gutts!" And how about "tougham," paralleling "brougham," for both "tome" and "tomb," also paralleling the way we write homographs like "bass" for both a fish and the tone of an instrument or voice, and "invalid" for both "sick" and "null"?

Well, doesn't the visual outweigh the auditory in importance? And a seven-letter word looks much more impressive and far less vulgar than a four-letter one. Since, inferentially, enemies of English spelling reform are talking about OldSpel's title to superior, why not go all out for it—all the way? Make OldSpel all of a cloth, 100% "broadest," with zero discernible confusing regularities. Establish its superiority permanently. Forever!

Apropos of the establishment of norms or standards (and in this we should accept nothing but the very best), spelling is far too vital and important to reflect to the slightest extent the capriciousness of homo ludens (man the player [playful] and jocose; cf. "lud-icrous," "pre-lude"). Tragically, as though in deliberate contravention of this, the English spelling which we have inherited lends itself to being characterized as nothing but one humongous bad joke—an inexhaustible resource for convulsing the homo ludens side of us with laughter, but appalling to our every serious, concerned, sensible side. As for the role of homo sapiens (man the thinker, knowledgeable and wise), in forestalling or rectifying this situation over the course of past centuries, he must have irresponsibly taken a powder or else gone utterly, ridiculously sappy on us.

"The medium is the message," wrote Marshall McLuhan, and some of us are still trying to fully figure this out and apply it. How about this as an application? The message conveyed by OldSpel as the 21st century, a new millenium, gets under way is "ludicrous, antiquated, complicated, difficult, outmoded, unpredictable, irregular, cumbersome, polluted, dark ages, obscurantist" and a whole string of other pejorative assessments. NuSpel, by contrast, conveys "serious, scientific, up-to-date, efficient, sensible, simplified, reasonable, decontaminated, streamlined, space-age, intelligent, enlightened," and so on.

Lovers of the spelling status quo may resent all of the above and contend that my shoulders are sitting-side down and my head (all topsy-turvy) is wrongfully and perniciously getting in the way of perpetuating the grand old Old forever. It's hard for someone with his shoulders upside-down to carry more than his share of the load, so come on, all you bold, pioneering, cutting-edge parents, educators, philanthropists, politicians, media moguls, and concerned citizens everywhere, lend a hand here (along with your sturdy, upright shoulders and sensible, brainy heads)!

Help out by discussing spelling reform with your relatives and friends, colleagues at work, teachers, administrators, boards of education, journalists, radio and TV personalities, city, county and state officials, national senators, representatives, executive branch office-holders... everyone you possibly can. Tell them about this website at www.nuspel.org and do your part to get the countries we love interested and involved in this extremely vital issue. Go down in history in your own words, deeds and records, and in the memories, hearts and records of those dearest to you (and of many others, too) as one who went all out to help out.