English Spelling

Radio Record, Volume III, Issue 51, 4 July 1930, Page 31

English Spelling

ANENT our Spelling Bee, it is interesting to read that a professor at a United States University, among others, is in revolt. He contends that, at present, spelling depends not on tules, but on memory. For the letter "a" alone, he states that forty-seven phonetie equivalents must be learned. The word "circumference" may be spelled in no fewer than 396,000,000 ways-all correct from the standpoint of sound. The defect regarding memoryspelling appears to be that things wrongly learned persist as strongly as those learned in the right way. True, but we still fain would feel that spelling hag something to do with etymology and the origin of words. America, we admit, has taught us a great deal in the way of spelling, if only, in many instances, of how not to do it. Study is necessary, but after all, as with sé many other things, it is largely a sense, which one possesses ' oF dées not.