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"The world's most awesome mess"-according to linguist Mario Pei, in his accessible introductory volume The Story of English (1952), this award goes to the English spelling system (p. 310). That is probably the impression of most Americans today, an impression that may have originated in their school days when every week brought a new list of spelling words to memorize and a new lesson on spelling that made it seem as if every rule had as many exceptions as examples. Spelling every word correctly was often presented as a rare talent; in fact, spelling bee winners at every level are still celebrated for their exceptional accomplishment.
Certainly no one would maintain that the English spelling system is perfect, but the balance seems to have shifted in the past 50 years. Far more common now are the linguists and teachers who see English spelling in a different light. Mina Shaughnessy, for example, in Errors and Expectations (1977), writes, "Although the spelling of English words is doubtless more difficult than the spelling of, let us say, Spanish words ..., the fact remains that millions of students have learned and do still learn to spell English words with a high degree of correctness" (p. 164). Freeman and Freeman (2004) state their case in these words:
Contrary to popular belief, American English spelling does make sense... [T]he current [spelling] systern is a good compromise. Writing systems are designed to serve two different groups of people: writers and readers. Changes that would make writing easier would make reading more difficult, and changes that would make reading easier would make writing harder, (pp. 106, 108)
David Crystal, in The English Language (1988), sets the English spelling system within a study of the history of English. The history of English is complex, and English spelling is therefore "a curious mixture of different influences" (p. 77). Yet there is much regularity in spelling, and the system that we have today-the result of years of development-is not an awesome mess:
[M] any of the spellings were tried out for long periods (often accompanied by considerable debate, especially in the sixteenth century) before they were finally adopted. The result is a system which, despite its weaknesses, has proved to be sufficiently functional that it has...