Is Spelling Important?

"Beatle starts with 'B!'"  Elliot said emphatically.  He is learning some of his letters and beginning sounds.

"What does Vince start with?"  I asked him.

"Bince starts with 'B!'"  Elliot said.

Elliot reminds me of Spanish speakers in Central America.  For them, the letters B and V are the same sound.  Why a word like "bienvenidos" is spelled with a B and V rather than two Bs is a mystery to them.

Spelling in English is really tough.  You have weird rules like "i before e," that have a multitude of exceptions.  There are strange silent letters like p in "pneumonia" and k in "knight."  There are words that are spelled differently, but pronounced the same, like faux and foe.  There are even words that are spelled the same and pronounced differently like Polish and polish. 

I have found that it is easier to spell words correctly, if you can say them correctly. At least sometimes.

I know that many people believe that spelling is unimportant and that with the advent of computers and spell checkers and weird abbreviations like ROFL, you can get by quite in this world without learning how to spell.

Maybe they are right.  Maybe I am a throwback to the twentieth century, but I must confess that I believe a certain knowledge of spelling is important.  There are many things that separate most of us from the animals, beyond the ability to grunt "yes" in reply to the question "Do you want pancakes for breakfast?"  One of the most important of these is that we can pick up a pen, place it to paper and communicate -- without a spell checker and without electricity -- and that is a very cool thing, indeed.