LET'S SPEAK ENGLISH:
Broadcast: Wednesday, January 12, 1938 at 9:00 PM

Fifth Talk - Spelling

Fifth Talk - Spelling

II. Alternative spelling:

INQUIRY and ENQUIRY
DISPATCH and DESPATCH
CONNEXION and CONNECTION
GREY and GRAY
SHOW and SHOW

III. A general rule: "I before E except after C.

IV. Words with the same sound but with different spellings and meanings:

STORY and STOREY
REIN, REIGN and RAIN
PEAR, PAIR and PARE
CHEQUE and CHECK
CANNON and CANON
BRIDAL and BRIDLE
PEACE and PIECE
FLOWER and FLOUR

V. LEAGUE

TRANSCRIPT: FIFTH TALK - SPELLING

In English the same sound can often be represented by several different combinations of letters.

For example, the F in FATHER is pronounced F: but so is the PH in PHOTO and even the GH in TROUGH (T-R-O-U-G-H). That's very upsetting to begin with.

A young Indian student was asked how to spell FISH. He said, after some thought, "G-H-O-T-I". "How do you make that out? they asked. "Well", he said "G-H as in TROUGH - pronounced like an F: O as in WOMEN, pronounced like an I: T-I as in MOTION, pronounced as SH. So there you are, FISH spelled "GHOTI".

To make matters worse, there are several words in English that have aIternatrve spellings. Both are in use with the same meaning and both are equally correct.

For example, INQUIRY can be spelled with either an I or an E, as can also the word DISPATCH. CONNEXION can be spelled with an X in the middle or C-T. GREY can be spelled with an E or an A and SHOW with an O or an E.

So you needn't think you're always wrong if you spell words differently from the way other people spell them.

But in ordinary life, if you're not sure which way to spell a word, it's better to use a dictionary. The best small dictionary I know is the 'Concise Oxford Dictionary', costing seven shillings and six pence, about four hundred mils in Palestine.

Or you can do as I do, just leave it to your typist. She knows. In my case, she has to, as I'm notoriously the world's worst speller. If there are two ways of spelling a word I'm sure to get the wrong one. So there's hope for you, too.

By the way, it's no good using a German typewriter if you want to write English. It hasn't got a capital I, only a capital J. In this way 'IODINE' becomes 'JODINE' and 'I AM' become 'JAM', especially if you don't type very well. The best typewriter for bad spellers to use is a patent of my own. It's got one special key which has a queer letter that looks rather like an 'A', or sometimes like an 'E'. Or it might even be an 'O'. You use this key whenever you're not quite sure how to spell a word. It saves such a lot of trouble.

There's one general rule in English spelling that's very useful. It's a little rhyme that every English school-boy learns : - 'I before E except after C'. Following this rule BELIEVE and RELIEF are spelled with an L-I-E: while DECEIVE and RECEIPT are spelled with a C-E-I. Even here there are exceptions, such as SEIZE which has an E·I not after a c. But that's understandable; for people who SEIZE things usually break the law.

There are several pairs of words in English which are pronounced in exactly the same way but are spelled differently and have different meanings.

Take the word STORY. When it's spelled without an E- S·T·O·R·Y- it means a report or narrative: 'the STORY of my life'. Or 'the STORY of Ali Baba nd the Forty Thieves'.

The other spelling o{ STOREY is S-T·O-R·E·Y. With an E it means a floor of a house - the first STOREY· the second STOREY: that is - the first floor; the second floor.

But don't forget that what's called the first floor of a house in Palestine is called the ground floor in England. So the second floor in Palestine becomes the first floor in England. That's very important when you go on a visit to London. If you don't know it, you might walk straight into somebody else's bedroom.

While we're on the subject of houses, I must ask you not to write your address in English as 'House so-and-so'; that comes straight from Germany, and not through 'Ha-avara' either. The correct order is 'so-and-so House'. 'Blumenfeld House' - not 'House Blumenfeld'.

Another thing to remember is that, if you live with a family, don't write 'by so-and-so' but 'care of so-and-so'. 'Care of Shneider' not 'by Shneider'.

'Care of' is usually written small c, oblique stroke, small o.

The same applies to the house number. In English one writes the house number before and not after the name of the street. Not 'Allenby Street 10', but '10 Allenby Street'.

Lastly, one puts the name of the town at the end of the address and not at the beginning. So it's wrong to write 'Tel Aviv, Allenby Street 10, House Blumenfeld, by Shneider'. What you should write is 'care of Shneider Blumenfeld House, 10 Allenby Street, Tel-Aviv'.

And the correct English abbreviation of Street is ST full stop and not STR full stop.

Now another word in English which can be spelled in different ways with different meanmgs is RAIN. This has three different spellings. First, there's REIN, R-E-I-N, the leather strap you steer a horse with - or try to. You can say "I caught hold of the REIN".

Then there's REIGN, R-E-I-G-N, the rule of a King. In the English national anthem, (of which, by the way, few Englishmen know the words) there are the lines :

Send him victorious
Happy and glorious
Long to REIGN over us
God save the king.

Lastly there's the RAIN R-A-I-N - which falls from the sky. That's a very familiar word in England. 'It's RAINING". 'It's going to RAIN'. 'Has it stopped RAINING?' That's why all Englishmen, when they meet, first discuss the weather. It's the most vital thing in their lives.

if you want to enter into a conversation with a stranger in England, it's no good getting up, making a jerky little bow and saying "Schmidt'. All you have to do is turn your head slightly and say ' Rotten weather'. After a few minutes reflection the Englishman says "Yes, isn't it"? And that's as intimate with him as you'll ever get.

Now another word which has three different spellings and three different meanings is PAIR. When it's spelled P-E-A-R it's a fruit; 'Agas' in Hebrew, Injas in Arabic, 'Poire' in French, 'Birne' in German. As you are better educated than I am you probably know what it is in half a dozen other languages as well.

You often hear someone say that something is pear-shaped. Be careful to note if they are referring to you. If so, it means it's time you started to diet.

Now if PEAR means a fruit when its spelled P-E-A-R, when it's spelled P-A-I-R it means two. You go into a shop and ask for a PAIR of shoes --unless, of course, you've got only one leg. If, on the other hand, you've got four Iegs, you naturally need two pairs.

The other spelling is P-A-R-E which means to cut away something. You PARE the skin from an orange - unless you're one of those disgusting people who make a little hole in the top and suck. Or you PARE your nail: if, like most of us, you can't afford to go to a manicurist to get it done for you.

Then there's the word CHEQUE. Now in England, if you've a bank account, you usually have a CHEQUE book too. But it doesn't follow that if you've a CHEQUE book, you still have money in your bank account. I wish it did as I've still got plenty of CHEQUES left.

Now, in English, CHEQUE is spelled C-H-E-Q-U-E. It's the same word as you get in the title 'The Chancellor of the Exchequer', who's the Minister of Finance in England. By the way, the word EXCHEQUER comes from a checkered board, painted with alternate black and white squares, like a chess board, on which the early finance ministers used to do their additions.

In America, however, CHEQUE is always spelled C-H-E-C-K. - But whichever way you spell it, an American always knows what you mean.

In England if you spell the word C-H-E-C-K it means to stop something suddenly. You can CHECK an attack. But it's curious that the word CHECK- or CHECK-MATE - used in the game of chess, when the king is exposed to attack, comes from another root altogether. CHECK-MATE actually comes from the Arabic 'Il Shaikh" mat' - 'The Sheikh' (or chief piece)' 'is dead'.

Another couple of words are CANNON with two N's and CANON with one. A CANNON with two N's is used by the artillery to fire shells against the enemy. It's long and thin and makes a lot of noise. But a CANON with one N is a priest in a cathedral. He's often long and thin, too, but isn't allowed to make quite so much noise.

When jerusalem was still under the Turks, their military intelligence department heard that the Anglican Bishop was making CANONS in the cathedral. So they sent a lot of soldiers and dug up the floor to try to find them. You mayn't believe it, but that's a true story.

By the way the plural of CANNON (the gun) is CANNON, not CANNONS. 'I fired one CANNON: three CANNON ; five CANNON'.

Now there are two different words pronounced BRIDLE. One's a piece of harness for an animal's head and is spelled B-R-I-D-L-E. The other BRIDAL, - A-L - belongs to a woman who's getting married - a BRIDAL veil. When a woman gets married, she puts a BRIDAL veil over her own head and a leather BRIDLE over her husband's head - or so it seems to him.

PEACE is a word with a nice sound. isn't it? To make PEACE : to keep the PEACE. It's something we all want and appreciate and it's spelled P-E-A-C-E. But all the PEACE vou get in the world nowadays is a PIECE of shell in the face or a PIECE of bomb in the back of the neck - and then it's spelled P-I-E-C-E. If you want P-E-A-C-E you can find it only in the dictionary - or the grave.

There are many kinds of flowers in Palestine - sun-flowers, that provide us with seeds to spit out at the cinema: wall-flowers which, in English idiom are girls who have no partners at dances and sit like flowers with their backs to the wall: even cauliflowers*, my favourite button-hole. In all these, the word FLOWER is spelled F-L-0-W-E-R. But if you want to make bread you need another kind of flower, and that is F-L-0-U-R. I once tried to make bread. I hadn't any yeast so I put in a bottle of Eno's Fruit Salts. So I won't tell you what happened.

Let me finish by asking all the members of the Brighter English League to remember to spell it L-E-A-G-U-E. One or two members spelled it L-I-G-E which is, of course, the French spelling. Although French is still the language of diplomacy and love, we are the Brighter English League and use the English spelling L-E-A-G-U-E.

One member misunderstood what I said and wrote to me as the 'President of the Broader English League'. I suppose the more members we have the broader the League gets. But broad English usually means English with rather a broad - or countrified- accent: for example 'King Jarge' instead of 'King George'. Our League is the Brighter English Leaaue _ you know_ 'Bright' - like your eyes.

*The President has since been informed that the word should be 'shah', not 'shaikh'.