The Global Cyber Journal of Wit & Wisdom @ Thaiskale.com

For all those folks who emphasize on the importance of exact and proper spelling, check out the following paragraph:

I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the first and last ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can still raed it wouthit a porbelm. This is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh?

These days, with most of writing being done online or via word processing software equipped with automatic spell checker, superior spelling ability is becoming rare. Personally, I think being able to spell correctly is certainly important to a degree–I could appreciate it even more over the past seven or eight years as i diligently learned to spell correctly in my second language.

As far as my first language, I still have problems remembering the spelling of a few words

‘Bureaucracy’ still has yet to be remembered once and for all, as writing beroucracy, bureocracy, bearuocracy, or bereaucracy simply confuses the spell checker to even find the right spelling.

Conscious Consciousness and Conscience tend to be confusing every now and then. And then there are countries like the Philippines which I never seem to get on first try.

So anyway, back to the point–I guess in general, the theme I wish to explore is the ‘properness’ of not only spelling, but language in general. In my oppinion, sometimes the emphasis of being too ‘proper’ is redundant and limiting of human potential. In my teen and adolescence years, I was keen on creating and adapting language to my own world. I used and created words that, though didn’t exist in a dictionary, were logic to me and made sense in their use. For example, ‘obituate’ was a song I composed at about 15 years old and the meaning it meant for me was regarding mourning (the death of my mother for instance) as far as letting the dead die–in the sense of growing strong and moving on with the circle of life.

Then there were less meaningful examples that stuck to my tongue. For instance, the word analyzation always seemed more logical and pleasant to use than analysis–for the sake of prose and flow, even though the former is not even a word in proper dictionaries.

All this talk of the word ‘proper’ reminds me of my stance in the high school rebellion days. I remember a classmate who was scolding a friend for his use of slang. He said something along the lines of ‘Buy a dictionary and learn how to speak proper English!’ The irony of it all is the guy who said such was an Asian American.

My unsolicited rebuttal was along the lines of ‘We are not English, and if we emphasizes on being ‘proper’ English everything, we’d still be bowing and paying taxes to a wigged freak thousands of miles across the sea.

In conclusion, while language and spelling do need structure and order–if not for the sake of art and beauty, then for the sake of clear communication. If one wishes to perfect him/herself in the language arts, the quest shouldn’t be to be ‘proper’ but to be ‘effective’ as possible, which as we can see in every day life, even the worst of spelling and grammar usage will certainly not guarantee a failure in the bout for lingua superiority!

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