Friday, January 28, 2005
The Dangling Prepositions And The Superficial Spellers
This discussion of Jen’s roommate’s daughter’s laziness about learning or figuring out spellings, and the resulting comment thread, reminds me of when I took German in college.
My approach was to learn that certain combinations made certain sounds, making it easier to pronounce an unknown word, or guess the spelling of a heard but unseen word. For instance, ei rhymes with eye and ie rhymes with knee. Which gets me in trouble when I see a surname like Wein and find out the name’s owner pronounces it “wrong.”
A couple of the other students thought I was nuts, and that the way to go was to memorize the spelling and pronounciation of each individual word, one by one. Ugh. Lucky for them the professor never made us learn much vocabulary, which I consider perhaps his greatest failing.
To me English is similar; certain rules and commonalities, plus exceptions to be learned as you go along. Yet even some of the exceptions have reasons, rules or patterns to help remember them. All of which is why exposure to a foreign language or two (well, some of them anyway) is wonderful for getting a better grip on English, even if you never learn the other language usably.
As for dangling prepositions, which we all learned were evil, yet find difficult to avoid in many cases, I seem to recall having read that the rule was never a real one, but rather contrived and pushed by some individual centuries back. If so, it’s quite a success story at spreading unearned guilt among users of the language.