Tag: spelling

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

Punjabi Muslims

So earlier today I was reading this profile of a Harvard professor that Chan had shared on Google Reader, and I came across this name called Iqbal Dhaliwal. The name immediately rang a bell, and I realized I’d come across this name long long ago in the Competition Success Review (yes, I admit I used to read that ) when he topped the civil services exam.

So one of my hobbies is to try find out about a person’s origins and ethnicity given his/her name. Like I once figured that this colleague is of Danish descent because his surname ends with -sen while the more common spelling of that name is -son. And so I was trying to figure out where  Iqbal Dhaliwal came from. It was clear from the first name that he’s Muslim. And the last name, I thought, sounded Punjabi.

And then my thought process went something like this:

First name Muslim, last name Punjabi-sounding… So is he a Punjabi Muslim? But then, I don’t know any Punjabi Muslims. Do there exist any Punjabi Muslims at all? Hey, wait a minute, I remember reading somewhere that the majority of people in Pakistan speak Punjabi. So there must exist Punjabi Muslims. But I don’t know any.. I don’t know any Punjabi Muslims but there are lots of them in Pakistan. Yeah, I don’t know any because all of them are in Pakistan. Yes, all of them are in Pakistan, most of them at least!

I know Kannadiga Muslims, Bengali Muslims, Gujarati Muslims, Kashmiri Muslims and Muslims from UP. But I don’t know any Punjabi Muslims. Because there are no Punjabi Muslims in India. Because ALL of them went to Pakistan. Tells you how much of an impact partition had in the Punjab,  compared to anywhere else in India.