English spelling origin (OT?)

[Dennis R. Preston]

At 6 she is probably ready for the horrible revelation that
grapheme-phoneme correspondence in English is not perfect (just tell
her that for now). When she is 8, you can begin the historical
lectures (about where the "c" came from, where all those "wh"s came
from, etc...).

dInIs

>A relayed question from a friend's six year old daughter, who had missed one
>word on a spelling test and thus sentenced herself to have to write out the
>spelling words for the rest of the week and retake the test:  "quick"
>spelled as "quik."  "But Mommy, why is that wrong?  They would both be
>pronounced with the same sound."  I haven't the vaguest idea where to
>research this.
>TIA
>Dave Hause, dwhause at jobe.net
>Ft. Leonard Wood, MO

--
Dennis R. Preston
Professor of Linguistics
Department of Linguistics & Germanic, Slavic,
      Asian & African Languages
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48824-1027
e-mail: preston at msu.edu
phone: (517) 353-9290