Spelling the Inglish langwij.

Have you ever noticed how difficult the English language is when it comes to spelling?

I minored in Spanish and although verb conjugations aren't terribly easy, spelling in Spanish is fabulous.  Every letter makes one sound, all the time.  To spell a word, you just write it the way it sounds.  Simple.

Not so with English.

One of my favorite things about teaching was watching the kids spell words themselves.  They are so excited when they've written a word or a sentence, or even a story.  And it just kills me to tell them that things are spelled incorrectly.  In kindergarten, I usually didn't tell them because they were learning so much simply by trying.  But when I taught 2nd grade, I drew a prison cell on the chalkboard and we were constantly putting words in there that just didn't follow the rules.  Now you know why America has a problem with overcrowding in the prison system.

As fun as it was to watch my students, it is 10 times more fun to watch Ally write.  She loves writing stories and notes.

So here is your test.  How many of these actual English words do you know based on Ally's phonetic spelling?

"B you Dfl"
"Budrfli"
"Tha"
"Grat"
"Grase"
"Modrsikl"
"Mune"
"Stroberee"
"Iscrem"

How did you do?