At a young age, I learned that the exclamation “Excelsior!” was intended for Stan Lee alone, and that the rest of us weren’t suited for it.
I learned this after trying it out on my middle-school peers. Unfortunately.
Also in middle school, we were assigned to write a book report of a biography. Mine was on L. Sprague deCamp’s biography of H.P. Lovecraft; a friend chose a book on Robert Goddard. I wound up reading that book, too. I learned two things from the Goddard book: that Robert Goddard was the “father of the American rocketry program,” and that one could be both a genius and a terrible speller. Throughout his life, Robert Goddard spelled “failure” as “failor.” This is how I learned there is no correlation between good spelling and raw intelligence.
This conclusion was supported in the 1990s when I was a literacy tutor, and I learned how to teach people to read. Reading is not primarily based on sounding out letters — if it were, we’d all get stopped in our tracks by words like “numb” ( which would be pronounced “noombuh”) and “phone” (“puh-hoooon-eee”). Reading is all about pattern recognition. If you’re a good speller, it’s because you’ve read enough to recognize the patterns, or you’re just naturally good at pattern recognition.
Further proof: My wife is an intelligent woman, someone smart and capable who has saved people’s lives for 35 years as a healthcare provider. She’s also a prolific reader. But she still can’t keep two, too, and to straight. (Maybe she’s a genius, like Robert Goddard.)
When I see a word misspelled, it’s like someone has jammed glass in my eye. It also hurts my inner ear. I probably outwardly cringe. If the misspelling is accompanied by certain flags and signs we’ve seen at, say, insurrections against the government, I admit to drawing an immediate conclusion. Barring that, I think the culprit is just not a good speller. A friend misspelled a word on Facebook earlier, in an exchange with me, and it took a force of will not to correct him on it — but why would I do that? He’s smart and accomplished, and maybe it was a typo.
My children, on the other hand? I always correct them. That’s my job. They’re all adults now and I don’t care, it’s still my job.
Although I steer away from correcting the spelling of non-offspring, except in professional settings where it’s important to get it right, I will correct a non-native English speaker on pronunciation. When I was studying French in college, my professor called that lovable rodent who torments your dogs a “SQUEE-rell.” Never known for shyness, I said, “It’s pronounced ‘squirrel.’” She said, “Thank you, Monsieur Wochner. No one ever corrects me, so I never get better.”
She also told me, after much mutual effort to accomplish the opposite, “You will speak French with an accent.”
Spanish being close enough to French that one should be able to make something of the same ingredients, I kept trying out Spanish last year when I was in Spain. While there, I came to learn that Spain is all about ham. So much so that their national flag should just be a flying pig, and so much so that, yes, there is a museum of ham. If you order coffee — and the coffee in Spain is incomparable, I have to tell you — you’re pretty much offered some form of pig with that coffee. Madrid is dotted with little sandwich shops that provide coffee and variations of little toasted sandwiches, all of them with varieties of bacon and ham, with or without cheese. On the first morning there, I left my daughter napping in our room while I hustled down to the streetscape and over to such a shop. I looked over the offerings, and read the signs, and very chestily ventured to the young man behind the counter, “Una pequeno bocadillo de jamon, y una mediano, y una café con leche, por favor.” I was bursting with accomplishment — until he said, “Oh, American, yes?” And then conducted the rest of the transaction in flawless English.
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3 Responses to “Formative experiences in English!”
A blog after my own heart. The lack of correlation between spelling and intelligence has been something that I’ve spoken/written of a number of times. The prejudice against those who make spelling errors by those who believe they do not is silly and counterproductive. As you know, I do some writing, and I’m aware that when writing, particularly at the beginning of the process, it is getting material down, on paper or computer screen, that is paramount. Write, continue writing, keep writing. Yet every time I mistype a word (and notice it), I cannot keep myself from interrupting whatever flow I may have in order to go back and correct the spelling. It takes real effort to keep myself from correcting spelling in the Facebook posts of others. This is especially true when the misspelling is in the name of someone who is being complimented or even honored by the original post. As to language, I have studied, and failed to learn, Hebrew, French and Spanish. I have no talent for it, and this bugs me a lot, because it seems to me that fluency in more than one language is a pretty basic minimum accomplishment for someone to be considered intelligent, and I like to think of myself that way.
February 14th, 2021 at 5:27 pm
A blog after my own heart. The lack of correlation between spelling and intelligence has been something that I’ve spoken/written of a number of times. The prejudice against those who make spelling errors by those who believe they do not is silly and counterproductive. As you know, I do some writing, and I’m aware that when writing, particularly at the beginning of the process, it is getting material down, on paper or computer screen, that is paramount. Write, continue writing, keep writing. Yet every time I mistype a word (and notice it), I cannot keep myself from interrupting whatever flow I may have in order to go back and correct the spelling. It takes real effort to keep myself from correcting spelling in the Facebook posts of others. This is especially true when the misspelling is in the name of someone who is being complimented or even honored by the original post. As to language, I have studied, and failed to learn, Hebrew, French and Spanish. I have no talent for it, and this bugs me a lot, because it seems to me that fluency in more than one language is a pretty basic minimum accomplishment for someone to be considered intelligent, and I like to think of myself that way.
February 15th, 2021 at 4:39 am
Wonderful Lee. And, I remember your posts of the time when you were so taken by Madrid’s devotion to ham.
*checks all my recent Facebook exchanges with Lee*
February 16th, 2021 at 5:47 am
If English were a woman, she’d be termed “High Maintenance.”