Let's start with Harry Potter

  Even this short extract from ‘Harry Potter’ contains spellings which cause challenges to reading and writing (reading and writing problems often overlap), as well as some pointless complications.  If this extract were dictated to you, not only you, but many adults would be hard pressed to spell every word correctly.
 		  
 


"He scanned the starry sky for a sign of Hedwig, perhaps soaring back to him with a dead mouse dangling from her beak, expecting praise. Gazing absently over the rooftops, it was a few seconds before Harry realised what he was seeing.

Silhouetted against the golden moon, and growing larger every moment, was a large, strangely lop-sided creature, and was flapping in Harry's direction. He stood quite still, watching it sink lower and lower. For a split second, he hesitated, his hand on the window-latch, wondering whether to slam it shut, but then the bizarre creature soared over one of the streetlamps of Privet Drive, and realising what it was, leapt aside.  Through the window soared three owls, two of them holding up the third, which appeared to be unconscious."
 

  
 
The problems are due to the fact that nearly all 96 English spelling patterns (or 'rules') have some exceptions.  So the question is, which irregularities should be tackled first since it would be near impossible to fix all irregularities in one go.  Do you want to have a crack at deciding which problems should be tackled first?  (So that you don't have to re-invent the wheel, we have pinpointed some of the most problematic reading and spelling problems below.) 		 

 

    3 of the most problematic areas of spelling are:
1) The overlap between spellings for the ee and e sounds (e.g. f eet, heat, these, field, wierd, police, wet) and the many graphemes used for these sounds which have different pronunciations in other words.  For example:
feet    -    wet  (these are easy to read and write and could be called 'regular')
 
BUT ea, e-e, ie, i-e, eo, e, i, ay have different pronunciations:
heat - great, heather, heart
these - seven, there
field - friend, tried, alien
weird - veil, height, heifer
we - the
police - device, service
people - leopard, leotard
key - they
ski - hi!
quay - play
2) The overlap between ou, u, o, o-e and oo sounds.  For example:

count   country   soup    
    blood   spoon wood  
how low          
  go     do would  
    won     woman women
  both other bother      
    cut     put  
  home come   move    

3) Missing and unnecessary doubled consonants, and unnecessary -e endings. For example:

The main doubling pattern which changes the vowel sound before it. (As in  he sat in the diner eating his dinner while his tiny coffeepot made a tinny sound boiling on the hotplate'.) Many words such as tune and tunnel follow this pattern, BUT the following don't
 
mineral arrive arrange
(miner) (arise) (derange)

And here are some unnecessary  -e endings:

have, deliberate, ore, gone
 

 

 

Our questions to you are:
- Which of these main reading and spelling difficulties should we solve first?
- Which words do you think use the patterns sensibly and which dont?
- Should we just bring the rogues into line by 'regularising' the words that don't conform to the patterns?
- (If so, what's most urgently needed)?

Send your opinions to Mashabell@aol.com - For further reading see Masha Bell's book.