Why are native English speakers so bad at spelling their own language?
Just check this site about British students and all the mistakes they make:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1042425/Why-ignore-bad-spelling-Lecturer-calls-amnesty-students-20-errors.html?ITO=1490
Americans are even worse. Why does that happen? What do you think about that phenomenon?
Here are some comments from non-native English speakers, and I agree with them:
Paula, Italy: I am a foreigner, I studied your beautiful, elegant, expressive language as a foreign language, and I don't make spelling mistakes. Most of my friends and colleagues who also studied it as a foreign language don't make any spelling mistakes either. We're not an educated elite, we studied English in very average, ordinary schools, no more than three or four hours a week. How come British "students" cannot manage?
Eve, Poland: This idea is ridiculous. Besides, I don't understand how people can make such mistakes in their own language. English is my second language and I wouldn't be caught dead misspelling these words.
CC7, Switzerland: I'm not a native English speaker and yet I would write all the words in this list correctly. That's called "learning", and it should also -especially- go for native speakers!
Wilma, Netherlands: My Dutch students were extremely surprised when I told them that lots of English people could not distinguish between "there" and 'their" and "it's" and 'its".
By the way English is my third language.
Raymond, Germany: I am a language trainer in Luxembourg and to give in to the bad spellers is a capitulation which signals how little respect British people have for their own language. German, French and even Polish speakers don't suffer similar problems because they are taught to hold their language in high regard. (...) I tell my international language training participants to ask Scandinavians or Dutch people how to write if I am not there to help. Furthermore, I know one British person at the place I work whose letters are corrected by his French boss because they are full of mistakes.
Anthony, Malta: I learnt the English Language at a state school in Malta fifty years ago. Thankfully great emphasis was laid on this most important of languages then and now. Spelling mistakes were anathema. How can people, born and bred in England, be unable to spell words in their own language ? How low can standards in this once Great country get ?
I mean really, how did those people get accepted in the university in the first place, if they don't know how to spell? I'm shocked, just like other non-native English speakers, and don't understand how someone can be unable to spell their own language - especially university students.
To Vangorn: You're wrong, it's not true that in all other languages one letter always represents one sound. French spelling seems even more irregular than English to me, in Greek you have 5 ways to write the "i" sound, etc. But those people care about their language. And if foreigners can take effort to learn English properly, so should native speakers.
To Pinguino: I agree that English spelling is more difficult than Italian, but they also don't seem to care enough. There are some rules in English too, but many people don't follow them. Some of them don't know some really easy things, like apostrophes for example.
To Martina: Read it again. I didn't say that Maltese people are native English speakers; quite the opposite.
To Bla Bla: I didn't say that all of them are bad spellers, but I have noticed myself that many native English speakers tend to be sloppy when it comes to their language. It seems like they don't consider the language important enough and it may also be because they don't learn foreign languages. Most Europeans I have talked to could speak at least 1 foreign language or even more, and their English was pretty good. On the other hand, many Americans, Canadians, Australians and even British had problems spelling their own language correctly.
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