Wondering about wild grapes

Sunday, August 15, 2010

Spelling

Spelling. I guess by now you have figured out that I don’t do too well in that subject, unless of course, there is a spelling checker and then sometimes I am so far off, it doesn’t help. So, this makes me wonder why I am such a bad speller.

The first thing that comes to mind is my mind (or brain). You see, my brain leans more toward mathematics and science. The science part falls apart when you get into “string theory” and quantum mechanics and the math part falls apart after I run out of fingers and toes.

Let me be a little plainer. I need rules to follow, good simple plain and to the point rules. In English, since that is the only language I know except for a couple of Latin words left over from a high school Latin class, there are rules but it seems there are more exceptions than not. As an example, one rule states that in a word a vowel followed by a consonant and then the consonant followed by a second vowel, the first vowel is pronounced long. (bite vs. bit) (mite vs. mitt) (mute vs. mutt) You get the picture. But how about “water”, shouldn’t that be pronounced the same as “waiter”? Shouldn’t it be spelled “watter”? And the same thing with “awe”? Maybe it is the w that gets in the way and messes things up. OK, then how about “caper” with the long a vs. “capital” with a short a? I get so confused.

There are other rules that fall short, but I will not bore you with any more. Maybe it is the way I learned. Did you learn spelling with phonetics or flash cards? I used to try to memorize all the words for spelling tests in grade school. Somewhere along the line I fell short of learning all the words in the dictionary. I now try to sound them out using the rules (grin). But plane and plain sound the same, as do hundreds of others. I took the plain plane and landed on the plane. (yep, more than one meaning for the same word is also confusing to me.)

Let’s face it, thank Microsoft for spell checkers, I am beyond any help. In fact, I am getting worse.

I type with the keyboard balanced on my upper crossed leg. It rocks back and forth and when I type, sometimes my fingers get on the wrong keys. When that happens, I usually spell the word right. . .
(or is that write?)

5 comments:

  1. Dizzy,, back away from the keyboard and have another cup of coffee,, WAAY to heavy of what part of the World will cease to function if you mispeel a word? :-)

    This ain't 8th grade English class,this is the real world, and the acceptably rule have changed.

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  2. Thanks Ben for checking in. I took your advice and had another cub of coffee.

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  3. I'm glad to know that I'm not the only one that has this problem! I just figured that it was the fact that my fingers were getting too fat, like the rest of me!

    Sometimes, when I finish a post, the red lines under all the spelling mistakes make it look like a flag rather than a post!

    The main thing is, we know what you mean and that's what counts, right?

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  4. LOL Dizzy, you crack me up. Every day you come up with something new to dazzle my mind with. Would you believe in the 7th grade I was the class wizz at spelling. It fascinated me to no end. Now that I have advanced a grade or two, I don't take spelling seriously. I fact, I look for better ways to spell words, but you already knows that....right?

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  5. Hermit-Jim, thank you for the comment. Yep, I guess you are patriotic if you use blue ink on white paper with the red lines.

    Billy-Bob, glad you enjoyed it. I feel the same about your blog. You make me laugh. It does seem funny that the blogs that I spend the most time making with pictures and all, are not as popular as the ones off the top of my head. Guess I will do more off the top, that is after I check the mirror to see if there is anything left up there.

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