Spelling matters. If you don’t believe me, just ask the Poles. This week, they created a minor international incident over a spelling conflict.
In Lithuania, there is an ethnic minority of around 200,000 Poles who as citizens of that country possess Lithuanian passports, marriage certificates and other official documents. For years ethnic Poles in Lithuania have had to spell their names on these legal documents in Lithuanian, as opposed to their original Polish form, because the Lithuanian alphabet does not contain certain letters like “w” that are common in Polish names. The Polish minority complained to their brethren in neighboring Poland, who put pressure on Lithuania to fix the problem. Yet the Lithuanian parliament climatically failed to pass the proposed law allowing the spelling changes. What then transpired between the two governments was a volley of harsh words, accusations of blame and threats of recalling ambassadors from their respective capitol cities.
While at first this may seem a trivial row over spelling, there is much at stake for both sides. The Lithuanian alphabet is a symbol of national unity and pride for the small country; imagine if the Greeks asked the United States to officially add the letters pi and omega to the English alphabet. And yet, the Poles rightly possess great pride in the true form of their names. Both sides have their irreconcilable differences, and in the end there may be no solution both can except. Nevertheless, this conflict in Eastern Europe raises a good point that our society often forgets: In short, spelling matters.
Our generation is the generation of texting, Tweeting and the blessed “F7” spellchecking key. We, of course, did countless spelling drills in elementary school – heck, we may have even participated in a spelling bee – but once we started typing our long papers and began having 160 character limits on our phones, accurate spelling took a backseat. “Be right back” takes too long to type and too much space in our message – “brb” solves those problems. Sure, we may look foolish if we can’t spell “neighbor” correctly, but who wouldn’t forgive us if we aren’t quite sure how the word “medieval” is spelled, or forget the second “n” in “questionnaire” or mix up “its” and “it’s”? Besides, the all-powerful spellchecker will fix all of our mistakes, perhaps even automatically while the words are being typed. Of all the skills the average person is expected to know in this day and age, why on earth would anyone consider spelling to be a high priority?
Some answers might immediately spring to mind. For one thing, spelling is a sign of culture. For example, if you find colourful comics humourous, you likely have spent some time in the United Kingdom. Spelling is also a sign of being cultured and well educated. Certainly the ability to spell words like “bivouacking” and “onomatopoeia” might serve as a useful party trick. Yet, opposed to all these unremarkable rationales, there is perhaps one reason for spelling that supercedes all others: How words are spelled effect how we think.
It is spelling that brings order to a language. In Middle English, which some of us may have been introduced to through Chaucer in our literature classes, spelling is decided by the author, who fashions letters haphazardly together to sound out the intended word. Clearly, this leads to problems: Occasionally, sentences emerge where the same word with the same meaning appears more than once, but is spelled differently each time. Or consider homonyms, words that sound alike but have diverse meanings. Context, of course, helps distinguish among them, but how much easier is it, for example, to distinguish the preposition “to” from the number “two” from the adverb “too” by a simple glance at the spelling.
Yet, the principal of the matter goes deeper. Spelling establishes a foundation for a language; though the meanings and uses of words may change over long spans of time, spelling is apt to remain the same. It is the underappreciated heart of reading, writing, listening and speaking, and no one denies the importance of these skills for the modern age.
Nevertheless, perhaps our modern minds have moved past the phenomenon of spelling, after all, I have discreetly misspelled six words above in this column, and I bet few of you noticed. Yet, we must not forget that as goes the spelling so goes the language.
Michael Fischer is a sophomore in the School of Foreign Service. He can be contacted at fischerthehoya.com. Postscripts appears every other Friday.
