Traditional English spelling is illogical and inconsistent. The spellings tend to be based on outdated ways of pronouncing the words, or to be related to how they were spelt in the language they were derived from.
So we have:
| 'bum' | - but 'dumb' and 'come' |
| 'bite' | - but 'night' and 'height' |
| 'mate' | - but 'fete' and 'weight' |
How much better would be:
| 'bum', | 'dum', | 'cum' |
| 'bite', | 'nite', | 'hite' |
| 'mate', | 'fate', | ‘wate' |
A logical spelling system would allow children to learn to read and write at least twice as quickly as at present. This would mean tremendous savings in teachers' and students' time.
Also, learning to spell would become a joy instead of a frustration. Teachers and students would be able to enjoy their teaching and learning.
Reading would become easier and more accurate. Students would make less errors in reading, and even mature readers would expend less mental energy in reading. Literacy in our society would achieve a quantum leap.
This would happen because the written words stored in the brain would be stored - and could be retrieved - much more efficiently. Just as the sounds of the spoken words 'mate', 'fete', and 'weight' are stored efficiently "together" in the sound section of the brain, so the written versions of the words could be stored efficiently "together", if the spellings were 'mate', 'fate', and 'wate'.
Then there would be a valuable relationship between the storage of the word-sounds in the brain, and the storage of the written words. One word-sound (for example, the sound 'mate') would correspond to one written word (the written word 'mate'). Then we could work out the meaning of a written word either by joining together the sounds of the letters, or by recognising the whole word (or by an integrated combination of these two “pathways” in our brain). This would greatly improve the ease and accuracy of reading.
Then the problems of dyslexia (reading difficulty), which affect so many people, would be largely eliminated, since the two “pathways” involved in reading would be complementary.
And these improvements in brain efficiency will give children the time and energy to learn a lot
more important new things which they need to know in a modern society. And adult minds will be
freed to work more efficiently, more productively and less stressfully.
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