Without commercial spelling, I wouldn’t be able to spell BOLOGNA. It should be spelled BULLONEY. Pronunciation spelling: B--upside down E--L--long O--N--long E.
Being dyslexic, spelling is quite the challenge for me. I hated it when I’d ask a teacher how to spell a word and they’d tell me to look it up in a dictionary. IF I COULD LOOK IT UP, THEN I COULD ALREADY SPELL IT!!!!!
So I’d be looking in the “B-Us” for bologna. Then I might try “B-E-L-L”. “B-A”? Then I’d probably give up and use the term lunch meat or have a PB & J.
If you have no clue how to spell a word—especially one with one of those silent beginning letters—how do you look it up? How?!
Knot? Knee? Knife? And all those other words that start with a silent “K”.
Wrong, wrist, wrap.
Gnat? Seriously? Gnarl? Why aren’t they spelled knat and knarl like knot, knee, and knife. Or gnot, gnee, gnife?
Pneumonia? Why not kneumonia? Or gneumonia?
Mnemonic? A silent “M”! Why not pnemonic?
What is the point of keeping these silent letters at the beginning of words? Other words change their spellings all the time. Why not these?
But I have digressed.
Though commercials helped me spell “bologna,” they did nothing to help me with “relief.”
“How do you spell ‘relief’? R-O-L-A-I-D-S.”
This is mean to do to someone like me who has a learning disability and can’t spell my way out of a wet paper bag to save my life.
Picture this: elementary school classroom spelling bee. “Spell ‘relief.’”
“‘R.’” I before E except after C or sounded as A as in neighbor or weigh.
“Spell ‘relief.’”
Oh, dear. I’m going to be told to sit down. Hurry, hurry, start spelling. “R-O-L-A-I-D-S-B-O-L-O-G-N-A.”
The room erupts in laughter.
Laugh? Rough? Tough? How do you possibly get an “F” sound out of “U-G-H”?
But as a dyslexic, I have learned one trick to help me spell difficult words—and it’s NOT a dictionary or spell checker. In my opinion, spell checker isn’t very smart. There are a LOT of words I try to spell that it has no clue what I’m trying to spell. Even after I tried spelling it ten different ways. Yes, I can come up with ten different spellings for a single word and not one of them will be close enough to the actual spelling for spell checker to help me. I’m just that talented. They seriously need to get a room full of dyslexics and poor spellers and see how they spell some of these words. We are the people who most need spell checker.
My helpful companion is the dictionary’s cousin the thesaurus. I think of a synonym (that I can spell) of the word I want and look it up. Generally, in the list of options is the word I need—spelled in a way I never would have guessed. Not any of the ten ways I tried.
It would be nice if there weren’t so many spelling traps to confuse people like me who struggle with spelling. And more commercials and songs to spell the difficult ones. We had Schoolhouse Rock for math, grammar, and civics, why not spelling. That would have been SO helpful.
“BAD SPELLERS OF THE WORLD UNTIE!”
NEW RELEASES
“Holly & Ivy,”my #HistoricalRomance novella in A BOUQUET OF BRIDES COLLECTION, takes place in 1890, in Washington State. It’s about a young woman who accompanies her impetuous younger sister on her trip across the country to be a Christmas mail-order bride and is helped by a gallant stranger. #BouquetOfBrides
A doctor or an Amish wife? She can choose to be only one…Kathleen Yoder comes home after fourteen years in the Englisher world. Practicing medicine means sacrifice—no Amish man will want a doctor for a wife. Widowed Noah Lambright offers a cottage as her new clinic, seeing how much Kathleen’s skills can help their community. But as their friendship deepens, could love and family become more than a forbidden dream?
#ChristianRomance #HistoricalRomance #Romance
MARY DAVIS is a bestselling, award-winning novelist of over two dozen titles in both historical and contemporary themes. She has five titles releasing in 2018; "Holly & Ivy" in A Bouquet of Brides Collection in January, Courting Her Amish Heart in March, The Widow’s Plight in July, Courting Her Secret Heart September, & “Zola’s Cross-Country Adventure” in MISSAdventure Brides Collection in December. She is a member of ACFW and active in critique groups.
Mary lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband of over thirty-three years and two cats. She has three adult children and one incredibly adorable grandchild. Find her online at:
2 comments:
Thesarus? What a great idea.
Thesarus? What a great idea.
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