Why it might be time to revamp our native tongue
As anyone who’s lost a spelling bee or failed a spelling test will
affirm, the English language is more ornery than most. About 25% of its
words employ irregular spellings, and many of these terms are among the
most frequently used in the language. Cross-cultural research
demonstrates that the trickiness of English affects how quickly American
children learn to read and write. After just a few months of
instruction, for example, children living in Italy are able to read and
write any word they encounter, because their language is almost
perfectly regular: each letter or combination of letters maps reliably
onto a particular sound. Children in the U.S., on the other hand, must
endure years of drills before they have mastered the intricacies of
bough and bow, weigh and way. (American pupils can console themselves
with the knowledge that kids in China have it even harder: there,
lessons on reading and writing the thousands of symbols in the Chinese
language extend into students’ teenage years.)
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