Why are native English speakers so bad at spelling their own language?

Question

Just check this site about British students and all the mistakes they make:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1042425/Why-ignore-bad-spelling-Lecturer-calls-amnesty-students-20-errors.html?ITO=1490

Americans are even worse. Why does that happen? What do you think about that phenomenon?

Here are some comments from non-native English speakers, and I agree with them:

Paula, Italy: I am a foreigner, I studied your beautiful, elegant, expressive language as a foreign language, and I don't make spelling mistakes. Most of my friends and colleagues who also studied it as a foreign language don't make any spelling mistakes either. We're not an educated elite, we studied English in very average, ordinary schools, no more than three or four hours a week. How come British "students" cannot manage?

Eve, Poland: This idea is ridiculous. Besides, I don't understand how people can make such mistakes in their own language. English is my second language and I wouldn't be caught dead misspelling these words.

CC7, Switzerland: I'm not a native English speaker and yet I would write all the words in this list correctly. That's called "learning", and it should also -especially- go for native speakers!

Wilma, Netherlands: My Dutch students were extremely surprised when I told them that lots of English people could not distinguish between "there" and 'their" and "it's" and 'its".

By the way English is my third language.

Raymond, Germany: I am a language trainer in Luxembourg and to give in to the bad spellers is a capitulation which signals how little respect British people have for their own language. German, French and even Polish speakers don't suffer similar problems because they are taught to hold their language in high regard. (...) I tell my international language training participants to ask Scandinavians or Dutch people how to write if I am not there to help. Furthermore, I know one British person at the place I work whose letters are corrected by his French boss because they are full of mistakes.

Anthony, Malta: I learnt the English Language at a state school in Malta fifty years ago. Thankfully great emphasis was laid on this most important of languages then and now. Spelling mistakes were anathema. How can people, born and bred in England, be unable to spell words in their own language ? How low can standards in this once Great country get ?

Answer 1

People can't spell in English because the language makes no sense with letters vs. pronunciation.  In almost all other languages, writing a certain letter ALWAYS represents a certain sound.  But in English, what sounds go with which letters are so varied and mixed up and there are so many variations that it's hard to keep them all straight, not strait.

Consider, for instance:

Rough, cough, bough, through all end in "ough" but you say all of them differently.

Then all the "c" sounds:  Cat, City, Chomp, Eschew.

And even words that look the same can be pronounced differently or have different meanings.

Buffet to pummel, Buffet a food spread,

Bow and arrow, take a bow

Live long and prosper, Live at Hollywood

Lead on general, Lead poisoning

polish the furniture, Polish sausage

The soldier decided to desert in the desert before dessert.

There are just so many d**n (dam?) things that don't make any sense (cents?) in English.  It's so hard to stay on track (not the train track, the thought track).

See? (C?)

Answer 2

yes, we speak maltese in malta. we are not english. our national language is maltese, we are bilingual and we speak english with foreigners but not between us. however english education is very high and i am proud of saying that we have a high quality of language education. most of us are not only bilingual but also multilingual!  

Answer 3

I truly must agree with Vangom2's and Pinguino's answers here. Apart from the things that had already been said, I've always been wondering for what reason "ea", like in "steal" and "ee", like in "weep" sound the same. In my opinion, only the pair of two "e" letters should be regarder as the long "ee" sound and "ea" should be regarded the same way it is in the "wear" word.

Moreover, the varieties of reading "a" is also surprising. Compare, for instance:

1. Bar.

2. Cat.

3. Wander.

It's hard to show the difference here, in writing, but everyone who knows English knows what I'm talking about.

And as to the "writing" word - could someone explain to me how come the "t" letter isn't doubled, when (according to the rule) the "e" letter is crossed out when adding "-ing" and "i", as a vowel is positionized between two consonants, because personally I don't get it?

Lat but not least: Why "every day" is written separately, when "everyone" and "everybody" is written being compound? This is also the thing that makes me wonder

P.S. I'm native Polish

Answer 4

Whilst I often read and highly respect your answers, I have to say that this question is a bit of a sweeping generalisation to say that all native English speakers are bad in spelling

At least in my generation (30's) at University you most definitely had to be able to spell, and this was even having to submit reports on the PC

Naturally with the advent of computerised documents, it is almost second nature to rely on spell-checks and grammar checks (which of course are not 100 percent fool-proof).  However from my peer group at least 95 percent consistently write English correctly including "their" "there's"!!

P.S. - The Daily Mail is a tabloid paper and wonderful at sensationalising information and putting things into a different context.  It has been found guilty of liable more times than I can count and also have more editors than I have had hot dinners.  Therefore personally I do not consider it a very reliable source of accurate info

Answer 5

I don't know why this is, but it drives me crazy.

I attribute the problem to a few main things: People do not READ anymore, so they're not used to seeing things spelled properly. The other problem is there is not enough emphasis on spelling in school. With the advent of the Internet and spell-check, people have become really lazy about it. My kids have teachers who can't spell, and the schools don't even care!

I have worked in newspapers for many years. Most of the new college graduates who are taking reporting and copy-editing jobs also cannot spell (and don't know proper grammar or punctuation, either). These are people who were English/Journalism majors in college!

The problem is rampant. I see misspellings in national and local advertisements every single day.

If those who write and teach English for a living cannot spell, I give up. Sometimes I think I'm the only person left who cares about proper English. It's lonely.

Answer 6

Because our Brains cant SpellCheck!! ^_^

And parents are becoming really lazy when it comes to teaching their kids phonics... Teachers can only do so much!

Answer 7

I remember Wizard Magazine reported the same, years ago :)

Even more, they were surprised how foreign readers writing to them were used to use a far more correct English language than English native speakers from home (the US).

I think the reason basically is foreign people tend to learn a sort of "official English" (that's what any school or course is supposed to do); an American person lives inside an English speaking society where the daily language is "bastardized", so they get used to talk that way.

Foreign students who study English outside of an English speaking country are somehow "protected" by that.

As for your reply to Vangom: the difference between a phonetic and a non-phonetic language is in a phonetic language there always are very specific rules about how to spell letters or group or letters; so it's true in a phonetic language you may face the same letter spelled differently or different letters spelt the same way, but all this IS regulated by rules: for instance in Italian "c" sound is English "ch" when followed by "i" or "e" while have English "k" when followed by a, o, u or h; so there "c" sound have the same spell as "q" sound, but there's no way an Italian speaker can spell "c" the wrong way, since we can follow a rule.

Now in English, for instance, can you tell me according to which rule the "oo" sound in "room" and "door" are completely different...?      

Answer 8

Just to inform you about something.THE MALTESE PEOPLE'S MOTHER TONGUE LANGUAGE IS NOT ENGLISH.IT IS OUR BEAUTIFUL LANGUAGE-MALTESE.

SO WE DON'T CARE IF WE SPELL NOT CORRECT ENGLISH SINCE IT IS NOT OUR LANGUAGE.

THIS IS AN OFFENSE!!

IF THEY DON'T MAKE US LEARN IT,WE WOULDN'T EVEN BOTHER LEARN IT!!

ALSO WE ARE NOT ENGLISH NEITHER BRITISH OR WHATEVER.WE HAVE PURE BLOOD MALTESE.((THANKS GOD!!!))