Strengths and Weaknesses of English Orthography - Essay Example

Etymological relationships between words: Usually an abstract underlying representation or morphophonemic form is seen to be represented for English words. For example, dipped, loomed, and looted have different pronunciations of the usage of -ed, which is pronounced as (t), (d), and (Id) not represented to the reader. The abstract representation of words is also a relative strength as it indicates the etymological relationship between words. Thus while writing English becomes a little difficult, it makes learning English a relatively easy process (Chomsky 1970:294, Rollins 2004:17).

Creativity: The inconsistency in English spelling can also be considered advantageous as it gives way to creativity and allows people to pronounce words in their own personal way. Slogans in creative communications are witness to the fact, which is an activity that can not be taken up for other languages (Venezky, Children of the coding interview, undated). Weaknesses of English orthographyEnglish orthography represents various difficulties, not only for foreign language learners but also for native speakers.

These weaknesses are underlined here. Spelling and pronunciation inconsistency: As per Laubach, "English is the world's worst spelled language'. For example, the words 'know' and 'no' are both pronounced in the same manner. Words ending with an 'ough' are also often pronounced differently as in 'rough' and 'thorough'. This makes learning by rote a necessity for English language learners. This aspect also came through strongly from a study by Ken Spencer of Hull University, who demonstrated in a study of 150 schoolchildren, that schoolchildren who learn English as their native language have more difficulty than children who learn other languages.

High complication: English orthography rules are extremely complicated as compared to other languages like German and Italian. Thus single letters like 'x's can have different pronunciations depending upon the usage of the letter. Many agree that this has been caused due to inconsistencies in the traditional orthography model of the 1700s when English was written by Latin scribes. While most other countries have undergone spelling reforms for their languages, the same also needs to be done for English so that it suits today's times.

Graphemic options: English orthography gives too many graphemic options. Thus a word that is 41 letters long can be pronounced in 10,000 different ways of which the only one is orthographically correct. The letter combination of 'in' can be pronounced in over 400 different ways. As compared to English in most other languages a four-letter word has only one method of being written and thus being pronounced. 'Over 25% of words have irregular spellings while 10% of the words do not follow any logical pattern (Hanna, 1971).