The News Miner – Greg Hill
“The Atlantic Monthly is such a good magazine I subscribe to it, even though I can read it, and even check it out, at our public library. The reason is Atlantic has such well-written, informative and in-depth articles that really grab my attention. A case in point is “How Spelling Keeps Kids From Learning” by Luba Vangelova. Published last February, this article points out “written English is great for puns but terrible for learning to read and write” because of its innumerable inconsistencies. “Adults who have already mastered written English tend to forget about its many quirks,” Vangelova wrote. “But consider this: English has 205 ways to spell 44 sounds. And not only can the same sounds be represented in different ways, but the same letter or letter combinations can also correspond to different sounds.” A study by the English Spelling Society found of the 7,000 most common English words, 60 percent had one or more unpredictable letters. Finnish, by comparison, has few exceptions to its straightforward spelling rules.”(more)