Spelling bee contestants often memorize vast quantities of words to prepare for major competitions. If a spelling bee judge pronounces ursprache for you, how are you to know which letter or letters the ‘k’ sound is spelled with? They don’t have spelling bees for German, Russian or Spanish speakers because spelling is so predictable, everyone would win! But in English, the ‘s’ sound that starts the word cesarean is represented by the letter ‘c’ and the ‘ch’ in ursprache maps to a ‘k’ sound, not the ‘ch’ of choose and chew. The reason we have spelling bees to begin with is because English spelling is so hard! Many languages have consistent sound to letter mapping, meaning an ‘s’ sound is always represented by an ‘s’ in written language and a ‘k’ sound is always represented by the letter ‘k.’ When (if ever) did you last come across appoggiatura in an English newspaper article, let alone an email or a text message? Spelling in English Aside from their sound and letter make-up, these particular words are rendered even more difficult by their low-frequency status. That about sums up the experience for students participating in a spelling bee, where winning the competition means spelling some of the hardest words ever to make it into the English dictionary.Īre you a bad speller if you can’t spell the likes of appoggiatura, ursprache or xanthosis? Not at all.
The stage is lit with bright lights and you are in the spotlight because of your uncanny ability to spell the most difficult words in the English language. Now imagine you are under the age of 12 and standing in front of a large crowd of parents and teachers. For this reason, they are considered very hard to spell. That’s because all three of these words have roots in other languages and contain infrequent consonant clusters, not to mention sounds that are not typically represented by their corresponding English letters. But for the rest of us, the task would be a considerable challenge. If someone asked you to spell appoggiatura, ursprache or xanthosis out loud, how do you think you’d do? If you’ve ever studied Italian, German, Latin or Greek you might have an easier time of it.
0 kommentar(er)
