RE: My english is better than that of conservative Americans
March 29, 2013 at 9:14 pm
(This post was last modified: March 29, 2013 at 9:20 pm by Justtristo.)
(March 28, 2013 at 10:04 pm)The Germans are coming Wrote: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1p3vE6aOmA
English spelling is noticeably different to English pronunciation in it's various dialects. English spelling was standardized when it was undergoing the Great Vowel Shift around 1500. Other languages reform their spelling every so often to keep the spelling as close to the pronunciation as much as possible. However English does not do this, and given the pace which English is changing, the disparity between Written and Spoken English in a century or two is going to be the difference between say two closely related, however different languages.
To give you an example the word cast is actually pronounced as either kast (in Northern British dialects) or kæst (as in North American English) or kahst (in Southern British and Southern Hemisphere dialects).
So long as rote learning dominated the schools, people generally had good spelling despite of this disparity between pronunciation. However as rote learning has been replaced by whole language, spelling "mistakes" have increased. However I believe a lot of these spelling "mistakes" are actually words being spelt the way people actually pronounce them.
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