Cover of Good Spelling (Fun with English)

In writing you look at the entire word, not each separate letter. In rapid reading the vowels are not easily seen and the main spelling mistakes are in the vowels. If your visual memory is weak you may have to make a special effort to look at words as you read, especially in words like quiet,, quite, pamphlet, separate, physicist and similar. trouble also comes in words like, arctic, since few people pronounce the k in it, and in sophomore where the second o isn’t spoken, dentally and occasionally, in which the al is either not spoken or very much cut down.

Some words are spelled in a way that the word’s sound gives no clue. These are called neutral vowels. Some words are misspelled because in speech, we don’t distinguish certain consonants like c and g or b and f: as a result we may write signifigance for significance, athalete for athlete. Use a dictionary for clearness. It will have all the words you need with the correct definitions. If you’re unsure you may have to look more than one place. Don’t rely on another person advising you. they may be as much in the dark as you are. Get in the dictionary habit.

With new words learn the spoken and written forms at the same time. Pronounce the word correctly and visualize it in syllables. Continue saying and writing it until you are sure of the spelling.

http://socyberty.com/people/georgias-own-byron-herbert-reece/

http://bookstove.com/booktalk/tom-franklins-crooked-letter/

‘Cardinal Vowels’ is not a subject that will have millions of people riveted to their chairs in excitement. However it is perhaps one of the greatest but least appreciated contributions to the science of linguistics ever made.

The system of Cardinal Vowels was developed in 1917 by Professor Daniel Jones. It enables the pronunciation of vowels in any language to be written down. Jones devised symbols for eight Cardinal Vowels and recorded their sounds on what was then the new technology of the gramophone.

Vowel sounds in any language are produced when the tongue is in an extreme position, either front or back, high or low.

Each vowel in a language can be compared to the Cardinal Vowels and the symbol of the nearest CV used to transcribe it, with the addition of diacritical marks (accents) from the International Phonetic Alphabet to get an exact representation of the sound.

The International Phonetic Alphabet is a standardized representation of the sounds of spoken language. There are 107 letters and 52 diacritics.

The three most significant positions of the tongue and lips for making vowels are ‘articulatory definitions’ and are represented as a triangle. The other CVs are spaced between them.

As an example of how this works, take French, a common European language with strong vowel sounds.

Record the French vowel sounds on tape and then record the sounds of the three ‘articulatory’ Cardinal Vowels. These are written as [i], [ɑ] and [u]. 

To make the first of the three ‘articulatory’ Cardinal Vowels place your tongue as high and as close to the front of your mouth as possible without touching your palate, and lips spread.

To make the second, place your tongue as low and as far back as possible, with lips pursed.

To make the third, place your tongue as low and as far back in the mouth as possible.

The next step is to identify the French vowel sounds that are closest to these three Cardinal Vowels.

By using the symbols that Jones assigned to represent the Cardinal Vowels plus diacritic marks to write down the sound of the French vowels, anyone familiar with Cardinal Vowels and the IPA accents can pronounce the French vowels from the written symbols.

This was a huge breakthrough in ‘writing’ sound. Jones later developed the concept and added eight ‘secondary’ Cardinal Vowels.

Daniel Jones was a Londoner who studied at both the Sorbonne in Paris and at Cambridge, becoming Professor of Phonetics and Linguistics at University College London.

He revolutionised phonetics and became one of the most eminent phoneticians of the twentieth century.

In 1909, he published Pronunciation of English, which soon established itself as a standard textbook in universities where English is a foreign language. It included American and Scottish English as well as English English.

His famous English Pronouncing Dictionary was published in 1917 and is still in print. This is where Cardinal Vowels made their first appearance. 

References

University College London http://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/0609/06090601

Cardinal Vowels  http://www.phon.ox.ac.uk/jcoleman/CardinalVowels.htm

1. Kinds of spelling errors

We analyzed and classified the misspellings found in the compositions of freshmen1. Most of errors involve reduction, addition, shift, movement of consonants and vowels, some are shift of double sounds, and lack or addition of weak or redundant sounds, verb misshape, or word coinage.

1.1 Omission or reduction of sound

(1) Omission or reduction of final or vowel, e.g. separate→separat

(2) Omission or reduction of consonant or vowel digraph, e.g. written→writen

(3) Omission or reduction of consonant clusters, e.g. environment→enviroment

(4) Omission or reduction of silent consonant or vowel, e.g. climb→clime

(5) Omission or reduction of weak forms of sound, e.g. factory→factry

1.2 Addition of sound

(6) Addition of final consonant or vowel, e.g. develop→develope

(7) Addition of consonant digraph, e.g. opinion→oppinion

(8) Addition of consonant clusters, e.g. condition→condiction

(9) Addition of weak forms of sound, e.g. athlete→athelete

1.3 Substitution of sound

(10) Substitution of special consonant or vowel, e.g. machine→mashine

(11) Substitution of similar sounds, e.g. doctor→docter

Analysis of phonological factors in English misspelling

 (12) Substitution of different sounds, e.g. fresh→flesh

1.4 Shift of sound

(13) Shift of consonant clusters, e.g. chimney→chinmey

(14) Shift of consonant digraph, e.g. success→succees

Most of the above-mentioned spelling errors cannot easily or may never be recognized in spoken language, but very obvious in the written form.

2. Phonological causes of the spelling errors

Spelling errors in college students’ writings are the result of the ignorance or incomplete awareness of the differences between English and Kenyan indigenous languages in spelling and pronunciation, or improper pronunciation habits in spoken English, overgeneralization of the rules or irregular correspondence between English graphemes and phonemes.

2.1 Negative transfer of mother tongue

English and Kenyan languages have different phonological systems. In Kenya, there are few words ending with consonants ( except for /n/, /η/), so students tend to apply this kind of Kenyan spelling patterns to English spelling and often omit final consonants or add a vowel after final consonants, e.g. “caugh”  for “caught” or “develope” for “develop”. There are no consonant clusters in Kenyan dialects, so consonant clusters in English spelling are often simplified or vowels are added between consonant clusters. CCV is simplified as CV or

expanded as CVCV, e.g. “concious” for “conscious” or “chiminey” for “chimney”.

Due to various kinds of dialects in Kenya, some sounds are substituted by each other, e.g. “/r/” and “/l/”, “/n/” and “/l/” or “/f/” and “/p/”, e.g. “slow” and “snow”.

2.2 Effect of familiar word forms

Overgeneralization also accounts for spelling errors. Some similar word forms of different words or different forms of the same words affect the spelling. For example, misspelling of “success” as “succees” is influenced by the verb form of “success” (“succeed”), or “control” is misspelt as “controll” since the students are affected by its present participle “controlling”. Another

example is the misspelling of “contradiction” as “contradition” is the result of such familiar words as “condition” or “tradition”. Sometimes frequent exposure to familiar spelling patterns can cause addition of consonant clusters or digraph. Many words of VCV have “-ll” ( hill, wall )or “-pp” ( happy), so some students tend to double “l” or “p” or other letters in spelling, for example, “pollice”, “permmited” or “occassion”.

2.3 Degree of phonemic representation

In English strong forms of sounds are easily recognized, and pronounced while weak forms of sounds are too weak to be noticed and often “easily omitted in pronunciation” and thus in spelling.

In polysyllabic words, weak forms, especially vowels in unstressed syllables are tending to be omitted, especially [ə] and [i]. For example, “disappointed” is often misspelled as “disppointed”,  “dormitory” as “dormitry”. Spelling errors related to weak forms show that it is hard for students to pronounce polysyllabic words. “English is stress-timed language while Kenyan indigenous dialects  are syllable-timed language” (HE An-ping, 2001, p. 204). Therefore students

often find difficulty in recognizing stressed sounds and stress or omit the unstressed sounds.

2.4 No difference in pronunciation

Silent consonants are often omitted or added since their omission does not affect the pronunciation. For

Analysis of phonological factors in English misspelling

Example, misspelling of “climb” as “clime”, “develop” as “develope”. Spelling of “climb” as “clime” shows not only the omission of silent consonant “b” but also the addition of silent end “e”. It maybe affected by the similar spell pattern of “crime”. Consonant digraph or clusters are reduced or added since there is no difference in pronunciation. For example, “backery” for “bakery” and “knowlege” for “knowledge”.

2.5 Irregular correlation between graphemes and phonemes

Different letter-sound correlations also affect the spelling. In English letter-sound correlation is different in different words. Mapping between phonemes and graphemes are not regular. So when one word is to be spelt, several “similar words are activated at the same time” (XIAO Xu-yue, 2001, p. 425). Therefore, it is difficult for students to use correct graphemes. Some vowel letters or consonant letters are substituted by those which are pronounced in the same way. For example, misspelling of “editor” as “editer”, “cap” as “kap” and “physician” as “phisician”.

3. Some suggestions

Since many misspellings are related to phonological factors, teachers should teach spelling strategies not only in spelling class but also in phonetics class.

3.1 Comparative strategy

Ask the students to read or write some words by thinking about the similarities and differences between English and Kenyan languages.

(1) Teach students to be aware of the similarities and differences between English and Kenyan languages.

(2) To avoid some negative transfer of Kenyan phonemic or orthographic rules in English spelling, English and Kenyan dialects should be compared in phonemic systems, rules of word formation, rules of spelling and pronunciation.

3.2 Phonetic strategies—Develop sound symbol strategies

Ask the students to read or write some words by thinking about the sounds.

(1) Teach students on the difference of letter-sound correlation in different words. One letter can represent a number of sounds, such as “a” in “cat”, “able”, “car”, “apparent”, “father”, “any” and the same sound can be represented by different letters, such as “/ei/” in “ate”, “ray”, “rain”, “obey”, “steak”, “veil”, “gauge”, “reign”, “ballet”.

(2) Teach students an awareness of special rules to avoid overgeneralization.

(3) Sort words according to their patterns of spelling, clusters or strings of letters which occur in many words sharing common sound units.

(4) Teach students the correct mapping of sounds and letters and sounds. Ask them to listen to the order of sounds in a word and represent these with a letter of letters in the correct sequence.

(5) Teach the students about phonemic awareness. This will be through book sessions, syllables, alliteration and rhyme.

3.3 Visual strategies

Ask the students to read or write some words by thinking about the way they look.

Writers often remember how words  looks like, or even try using a particular word in several ways and then decide which format looks the best. At other times, they easily recognize particular visual patterns of letters and decide which ones are acceptable in the English language and those that are not acceptable. They will essentially know particular words that are likely to have same spelling patterns as other words.

(1) Students should be taught to look for patterns or letter sequence of English words that are predictable. Students should also be encouraged to:

Analyze phonological factors in English misspelling

Make associations with words of similar patterns. Focus on sequential letter patterns. Group words that contain common patterns, such as “other”, “brother”, “mother”, “bother” and then find out the similarities and differences

of pronunciation by sorting and categorizing.

(2) Teach students that words must sound right and look right.

(3) Identify the critical features of words whenever students are shown how to spell a word and then lastly the students should be encouraged to write the word from memory and not by copying.

3.4 Morphemic (meaning) strategies

Ask the students to read or write some words by thinking about what they mean.

Teach students rules of word formation. In English language, most words in the English language have the same meaning and same spelling. Therefore, words with the same meaning ought to have a difference in the way they are spelt. Orthography which refers to the way a word is written should also reflect the meaning of the words. Hence we are able to go directly to the deep word structure and meaning of written texts without sounding-out the words. For example, “signature” and “sign “have related meanings and spellings. While “seen” and “scenery” and “seen “have different meanings as well as different spellings.

(1) Teach students base word and its derived forms, such as “graphics”, “graphology”, “telegraph” or “sign”, “signal”, “resign”. To spell words like “pasteurization” the writer should apply knowledge about how the word was derived. In this case it is form a person’s name (Louis Pasteur). There are many words where the origin of the word provides valuable information about the spelling. This is often referred as etymological knowledge.

(2) Students should be taught on how to use morphemic knowledge, since this will assist them to remember the spelling because morphemes are essentially units of meaning. For example, the word “Dissolve” contains two morphemes “dis-” and “solve”, and therefore it has a double “s”. On the other hand, the word “Disappear” has only one “s” because it contains the two morphemes- “dis-” and “appear”.

(3) Introduce word association by teaching knowledge of word structure. Start with a word morpheme. This will build a continuous growth of a set of branches in which the new word is related to the previous word.

4. Conclusion

Many misspellings are related to phonological factors. These spelling errors are in writing caused by the incorrect pronunciation due to the students’ misuse of pronunciation rules of Indigenous Kenyan languages and English, overuse of the rules, or coinage can be corrected by comparative strategy, phonetic strategy, visual strategy and morphemic strategy.

References:

Aitchison, J. 1994. Words in the mind. Blackwell Publishers Ltd.

Altmann, Gabriel & FAN Feng-xiang. 2008. Analyses of script: Properties of characters and writing systems. Mouton de Gruyter.

Badecker, W. 1996. Representational properties common to phonological and orthographic output system. Lingua, 99, 55-83.

Caramazza, A. & G. Miceli. 1990. The structure of graphemic representations. Cognition, 37, 243-297.

Carroll., D. W. 2000. Psychology of language. Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press & Brooks/Cole/Thomson Learning Asia.

HE An-ping. 2001. A corpus-based analysis of English spelling errors. Foreign Language Teaching and Research, 3, 199-205. (in Chinese)

Tainturier, M. J. & A. Caramazza. 1996. The status of double letters in graphemic representations. Academic Press, Inc.

XIAO Xu-yue. 2001. The role of phonological representations in orthographical lexical access. Foreign Language Teaching andResearch, 6, 422-429. (in Chinese)(Edited by Tina, Max and Sunny)

Here are a list of words with no vowels and their full words (if they are abbreviations):

• Gym (Short for Gymnasium)

• Fry

• Spy

• Shy

• Psych

• Lynx (an animal)

• Rhythm

• Sly

• Hymn

• Fly

• Crypt (Similar To a Tomb)

• Sync (Short for Synchronization)

• Ply (A type of Wood)

• Pry

• Nymph

• Myth (A type of Story)

The Spanish vowels are different from English ones. The Spanish A is pronounced Ah, like when the doctor tells you to open wide and say Ahhhhh. The Spanished E is pronounced Eh, the E in the word “bed” is how you should pronounce it. The Spanish I is pronounced E, as in a regular E. The Spanish O is pronounced Oh as in the word oh as in the o sound in the word “cold”. The spanish U is pronounced like ooh or the o sound in “booze”.

Those are the vowel pronounciations also, the letter H is almost silent in Spanish if it’s the first letter of a word, and the letter J makes a H sound if it’s the first letter of a word. Huevos would sound like Juevos and Jalapenos, the J sounds like an H too, doesn’t it?

That’s all for now, good luck learning Spanish!

Pronunciation:

Vowels:

In written English there are only five vowels, but in spoken English they reach the amount of fifteen (if I remember well). Instead, in Spanish vowels are always the same five, no matter if we are talking about spoken or written Spanish.

So, the sounds are always the same, independently of the word construction, and those sounds are:

A: It sounds as the a in astonish

E: It sounds as e in eclectic.

I: It sounds as i in intelligent.

O: It sounds as o in obsessive

U: It sounds as u in Uganda.

There are no other vowel sounds in Spanish except for the ones above explained.

Consonants:

The Spanish alphabet has almost the same letters as the English one, with some exceptions, but the sound of the letters is not always the same.

B: It sounds as b in borrow

C: With a, o, and u, it sounds as K in kilo. With e and i it sounds as c in ceiling or s in sailor. To obtain the K sound with e and i, we use the letter q followed by u, which is mute in this case, and we will see it under q key again.

CH: This letter has the same sound as the same English construction ch, but as it sounds in chair and chalk, never as it sounds in chore (never as a k)

D: It sounds as d in door.

F: It sounds as f in front or ph in philosophy.

G: With a, o and u it sounds as g in gall or w in war, with e and i it sounds as h in hotel, so the sound is an aspirated one “gesta” is read as “hesta” “gimnasia” is read as “himnasia” with the h sound of heart and hotel. To obtain the gall sound with e and i, we put a mute u after the g and before the vowel, as in “guerra” and “guirnalda” that have to be read with the same g sound as in gall and gomit. When the u precedes e and i and sounds (it is no mute) it has two points above itself, in this way: güira. Remember that if there is no dieresis (dieresis is the Spanish name of the two points over the vowel u) the u is mute.

H: In Spanish the H is mute; it has no sound at all, never. So habitación has to be read as abitación.

J: The J in Spanish is called jota (hotta) and has the same sound as the H in hotel and heart, with all the vowels, so it is not difficult to understand why so many people make mistakes when they write words with j instead of g or vice versa. Remember that ge and gi have the same sound as h in English, that is the same sound as je and ji.

It is an error to write 2girafa” instead of “jirafa” (the last one is correct)

So you will write jefe, but never gefe and general, but never jeneral.

K: The K has the same sound as in English in kilo and Kentucky.

L: Same sound as in Leonard and lake.

LL: This is a tricky letter; it sound is something between the y in you and the L itself. We call it elye, so Llanero has a sound similar to yanero, but with your tongue touching both sides of your superior maxillae.

M: Same sound as in English.

N: Same as English.

Ñ: This one is also tricky, it has an unique sound that it can be related at the sound of niy- followed by a vowel, the middle of your tongue has to touch your palatal ceiling, name is read as niyame, but the niy part must sound as one unique sound.

P: Same sound as English in potato, par, etc.

Q: The q in Spanish is only used to give us the k sound with the vowels e and i, as we already said in letter C, it is always followed by a mute u, so that the sounds are que- (ke) and qui- (ki).

Queso (keso) means cheese, quimioterapia (kimioterapia)

R: It sounds as r in English but with more strength, especially when is doubled as in carril, carro, cerro, etc.

S: It has the same s English sound as in space, souvenir, said, etc

T: Same as English in “time”. There is no explosive sound in Spanish for the t, as happens in “construction”, and there is no smooth sound as the one in “the”; either. T sounds always like the t in time and taste.

V: In Spanish there is no sound difference between B and V , both sound as B in brother, bar, and beach. This is not the case in Italian, French and English were V has its own sound as in vacation, with the inferior frontal teeth touching the superior leap.

But in Spanish they both are labial, so they sound the same.

W: This letter is not very much used in Spanish, except for words that are foreigners and had entered Spanish language, as Whisky for instance.

X: Sounds like English, (ecs- or egs- or eks-)

Y: This letter has two sounds, the i sound when it is a conjunction as in: “La madre y sus hijos” in this case it sounds the same way as i in Spanish 8as the I in intelligent).

The other sound is like y in the English word you, for instance: yate, yodo, yugo.

Z: This letter has a sound that it’s made by putting your tongue between your frontal teeth and blowing air among the complex. It reminds a little the f letter and a little the s one, because it has a sound in between them.

But in Latin-American countries the Z has acquired the same sound of the S, only in Spain it conserve its original sound.

Stress:

Anglican languages and Neo Latin ones stress words in different ways.

In English the syllable stressed tell you what kind of word you are confronting, so if the stress is given in the first syllable you maybe have a verb, the same word with the stress in the second syllable maybe an adjective or a noun as we can see in present (gift) and to present (verb).

It is also common than the stress is situated in the first syllable in English, no matter how long is the word. And the non stressed syllables have a smooth sound or even no sound at all.

So, if an English speaker tries to say murciélago, he maybe will say something like murséilgo, and that is wrong.

Let see; first of all in Spanish all letters have their own sound and all of them sound always, so you have to say mursiélago likewise.

Second of all, in Spanish you only can find stress in the first syllable with words that have three or less syllables, because in Spanish stress is always put in the last syllables.

Third of all, in Spanish the stress is given by the accent that can be written (orthographic accent) or not (acento prosódico)

There are four kinds of words depending on the syllable that receive the accent (so the stress):

Acute words: The accent falls on the last syllable as in león, paral, divan.

The accent is written when the word ends in vowel, n or s. If it is not ended in this letters must not be written.

Grave words: The accent falls on the next to last syllable, as in joya, barco, alma, etc. Here the accent is written if the word does not end in vowel, n or s. If it ends in these letters must not be written.

Proparoxytone words (palabras esdrújulas): The Accent falls on the last but two syllable, and the accent is always written, as in murciélago, penúltimo, etc.

The fourth group of words is called sobreesdrújulas, and the accent falls on the last but three syllable, but these words are very uncommon.

The way Spanish speakers distinguish among verbs, adjectives, nouns, etc, has nothing to do with the stress but rather than that it has to do with the endings of the words, and this is a matter that I will be treating in the next article.

A consonant is defined by “The place of articulation is where in the vocal tract the obstruction of the consonant occurs, and which speech organs are involved. Places include bilabial (both lips), alveolar (tongue against the gum ridge), and velar (tongue against soft palate). Additionally, there may be a simultaneous narrowing at another place of articulation, such as palatalisation or pharyngealisation.” Basically I think this means that your lips have to touch, or your tongue or some type of differentiation in how you expel air as you speak. 

If you go through the alphabet right now aloud or silently, it holds true for all consonants except for R. Basically, from what I read about how you sound a vowel, R holds up as a vowel. Obviously It’s too late to change that alphabet around and making R a vowel doesn’t make any sense. But still, someone like Webster or Oxford or whomever owes me an apology and a thank you 8 million dollars. As always, go big and what not..

oh ps – I suppose the vocal cords might contract barely while saying R but that doesn’t justify it being a consonant. if one were to make a Venn Diagram of vowels and consonants, I’m pretty sure R would be chillin in the weird oval in the middle.

The Ancient Greeks played a very important role in the creation of the alphabet. One way they played a part was their creation of vowels. The ancient Greek alphabet was the very first to contain vowels. Another part the ancient Greeks played was in the creation of the word alphabet. The word alphabet was made when the first two letters of the ancient Greek alphabet (Alpha and Beta) were joined together, hence alphabet.

Modern day English still use some of the words the ancient Greeks had created. Some of these examples are: ‘Democracy’ meaning “government by the people”. We have a form of democracy in Australia and this is a legacy of the Athenians and their assemblies and councils. ‘Autopsy’; means a postmortem or examination or a personal inspection and this was based on the Greek word autoptes meaning “eye witness”. ‘Theatre’ the same word is used today and also most modern theatres follow the original Greek idea of a theater. “Eureka”; meaning “I have found it” or an exultant cry of joy at the discovery of something and this comes from the Greek “heureka” meaning “I have found it” which was first used by Archimedes the great mathematician who died in 212bc.

The Greek alphabet goes something like this: