American English Spelling vs. Pronunciation

Spelling versus (vs.) pronunciation or writing and reading.

Every language has rules, which, from the perspective of a foreign language student, make it easier to learn.  The principle followed here is association.  You know one thing, you see something else like it, you think it works in exactly the same or a similar way.  There is even an old English proverb for that. 
 “Like father like son”.  This truth is so universal that you can probably find an equivalent saying in most if not all languages.

Like any rules, they are great in what is called stable environments.  You live at home, in a house you know very well, with a fixed set of rules, where everybody knows what to do and what to expect of each other.

Now imagine yourself in the middle of a huge city.  Do you know everybody’s rules?  Do you know who uses what rules?  They, both the people and the rules, came from the proverbial “all over”.

The big city is your English language.  It has been, and still is, influenced by so many other languages that when it comes to writing and reading it is just more simple to learn it than to memorize the rules and the exceptions to the rules.  There are simply too many of them.

How do I know?  I went this way myself.  I learnt other foreign languages, too.  English is different.  British or American – does not make a difference.  Have you heard about “Spelling Bee” contests?

Well, there is a reason why they are so popular in English speaking countries, especially in the US and the UK.

“Spelling Bee”, the UK contest for adults, has become the first television game show ever in 1938.

In the US, school age children - the finalists of the National Spelling Bee, in Washington, D.C. – meet the country’s President since 1925.  This is how prestigious “a” word spelling competition has become.

Let me extrapolate Nike’s slogan: “Just do it!” to English language writing and reading rules: “Just learn it!”  The words, that is.

See ya …