When One Is Struggling With a Transition From a Nice, Sensible, Phonetically-Spelled Language Back to English




...it occurs to one that English is extraordinarily capricious in its spelling. Fantastical, even. I came home the other night and hit "play" on my answering machine and failed to write down the number for my dentist because her first name is Polly. I spent the entirety of the message trying to spell the word "Polly." I finally crossed my misspellings out and wrote "Dr. Rivas" -- but by then the machine had deleted her message. The next day I called 411 to get her number. By then I had figured out how to spell her name.



These are some of the ways I would have prefered to spell my dentist's first name:




Paulie

Palli

Poli

Poly



Another time when I was flitting back and forth between the sensibly spelled Russian language and whack-a-mole krazy-quilted English I was completely unable to piece together the correct spelling of the word "carousel." My first attempt was karasol. I think I was three paragraphs down the page when the faintest annoyance of a suspicion of error drew me back to check the spelling of the word. I was so out of range of the correct spelling that my spellcheck turned up a complete blank, except for maybe suggesting "kerosene."



I have plenty of witty and insightful things to write about Slovenija and Croatia, really. I just haven't settled back into my loving, snuggly relationship with English yet. I took myself to Borders and got a pile of books--- that was a nice first date. I'll let you know how the romance rekindles.