I love this!! I help produce The Sea Chest -- Journal of the Puget Sound Maritime Historical Society, and will pass this on to my fellow editors. Sure to make a hit. (I love English, but I am with you, Pauline, I love Italian, too, after living in Rome for a few years!!!) Elizabeth Engle -----Original Message----- From: roots-bounces@rootsweb.com [mailto:roots-bounces@rootsweb.com] On Behalf Of Pauline Costianes Sent: Monday, May 21, 2012 10:52 AM To: ROOTS@rootsweb.com Subject: [ROOTS-L] spelling checker We have 43 sounds, or phonemes, in English and thousands of ways to spell them. We are NOT a phonetic language - I feel sorry for anyone who has to learn to write this language.  There are 4x the dyslexics for English speakers than for phonetic languages, like Spanish, Italian etc.   George Bernard Shaw once said you could spell "Fish"  G-H-O-T-I   GH - from "enough" O - from "women" TI - from "elation"   How did English get to be such a major world language with our horrible non-phonetic spelling?  Beats the poo outta me!! Pauline Costianes, who loves Italian best, even though  I'm Greek     ===== If you would prefer digest mode to mail mode, drop a note to roots-admin@rootsweb.com and ask for the digest... ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to ROOTS-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message

The GH sound could make a preacher lay his bible down. Pronounce a few of these: GHOST TOUGH BOUGH SLOUGH SLOUGH Yes there are two, SLUFF and SLOO. -----------snip---------- Gale Gorman Houston

Don't forget SLEW-meaning a lot -----Original Message----- From: roots-bounces@rootsweb.com [mailto:roots-bounces@rootsweb.com] On Behalf Of Gale Gorman Sent: Monday, May 21, 2012 3:16 PM To: Liz Engle Cc: ROOTS@rootsweb.com; 'Pauline Costianes' Subject: Re: [ROOTS-L] spelling checker The GH sound could make a preacher lay his bible down. Pronounce a few of these: GHOST TOUGH BOUGH SLOUGH SLOUGH Yes there are two, SLUFF and SLOO. -----------snip---------- Gale Gorman Houston ===== If you would prefer digest mode to mail mode, drop a note to roots-admin@rootsweb.com and ask for the digest... ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to ROOTS-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message