Sir, Vivian Cook’s interesting letter (Aug 8) explains that one of the rules of the English spelling system is that “the silent ‘e’ in ‘tone’ shows that the preceding ‘o’ is long; the lack of ‘e’ in ‘ton’ shows the ‘o’ is short”. I must assume that Mr Cook is tone-deaf, as if he is referring to the weight measurement of ton, the pronunciation is as though it were written “tun”, which is how it was spelt and spoken in the days of Shakespeare.

Mr Cook’s rules are generally not rules. The famous i before e, except after c, is broken more times than you think. Consider such common words as eight, freight, neighbour, reign, vein, weigh and ten others; 15 exceptions in total. All these have to be learnt as special cases.

To suggest that there is a system of rules governing the spelling of English is sheer poppycock. The learner of English, both native and overseas, has to contend with two alphabets (the Japanese have three, but they call them syllabaries) and about 3,750 special cases that have to be memorised one by one (in order to be proficient in Japanese, you also need to memorise about 4,000 Chinese characters). Thus learning English spelling — not the spoken language, a separate skill — is almost as fraught with difficulty as Japanese is. Little wonder that about 25 per cent of the English population is technically illiterate, unable to complete forms or CVs with confidence, and thus excluded from jobs that require a reasonable degree of literacy.

Lucky are the Finns who take six months to master the written form of their language with 99 per cent literacy.

Jack Bovill
Chair, the Spelling Society

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