English and phonetic spellings

So my nephew Samvit, who recently turned 4, has learnt to spell. And he has learnt to use a computer (and phone) keyboard. He seems to love the keyboard so much that he apparently refuses to write using pen and paper.

They say that he’s taken after me in many ways (despite us sharing just 1/16 of our genes – he’s my cousin’s son), and I must mention that my writing output exploded after I had learnt to type and got access to a computer keyboard.

The point of this post is not about his writing, however. Yesterday, they made him spell out a few words, and here is how he spelt them out. One thing I might want to disown him for is that he uses all caps. Leaving that aside, the way he spells is extremely interesting. Here is the list of words he spelt out, as emailed to me by his mother:

THIORI
ELEKTRIC
MAGNET
ANTENA
MYKRO
STRIP
HELIX
PERABOLA
DYPOLE
HORN
GYD
COSMIK
PLANET
ANIMUL
DANS
SING
CUK
DRAMA
MUZIC
HOUS
TEMPUL
SOUND
SOFA
WATUR
AEROPLEN
SHIPYARD
GARDUN
CHOKLET
BRED
JUS
BANANA
ORENJ
AVACADO
ORIYO

As you might notice, it’s all very phonetic. He has learnt the English alphabet, and sounds associated with each letter, and then tried to fit that to the words that he has had to type out. It appears weird at first, but then if you take a closer look, you realise that it’s rather intuitive.

He seems to have figured out the polymorphism behind certain letters, for he uses multiple sounds of U in “Jus” (which is how I think it’s spelt in certain European languages, btw) and in “Gardun”. He hasn’t figured out the polymorphism in i-y though, as he says “thiori” and “gyd”.

Then his use of Cs and Ks for the Ka sound is also interesting, as he uses both of them, and he seems to have a certain logic for using them. I’ve been trying to reverse engineer this logic but so far failed. He says “cuk” and “cosmik”, from which you might think he uses “c” when its the beginning of a syllable and “k” when it’s the end of a syllable.

But then you also notice that he says “elektric” which throws this hypothesis out of the window. And there is “avacado” and “choklet”.

Overall, though, it is fascinating to see how a four-year-old who has just learnt the language spells, Maybe if we get a bunch of four-year-olds who still haven’t been formally taught to spell to spell, we might understand what English spelling should intuitively be like! It might even be possible that going forward the language may evolve to this new spelling!

Are there any other interesting patterns you notice in the other list of words? Are there any other interesting ways in which you’ve seen other kids spell? What does this mean for the English language – should it be simplified?

Ghoti

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