Learning to Read

During my MFA coursework, we were often told that we need to learn how to read. Of course, they meant we need to learn how to take apart a plot, a scene, a sentence, a metaphor. But, for my son, learning to read literally means learning to read.

And, man, you don’t realize how messed-up the English language is until you start helping your kid learn to read.

They teach the concept of a “bossy e” which is a silent e at the end of the word that turns a vowel long. You know. Five. Drive. And, um, give. Explain that to a literal-minded six year-old.

But wait, there’s more. GH is an f in words like tough and rough but silent in though and bough (with the ou pronounced differently in each of those, of course). And, really, what the hell is that gh doing in light and fought and drought (and again, the ou isn’t pronounced the same for any reason other than it’s not pronounced the same).

There’s a bizarre b at the end of bomb and tomb and comb but it modifies that o in three different ways. And if tomb is “toom” why isn’t loom “lomb?” (And, for that matter, shouldn’t comb be come ... except, of course, come is already its own irregular).

And let’s not even get started on when c sounds like an s and a ph is an f and an x is a z. Anything more complicated than “See Spot Run” requires the explanation of rules that sometimes true and sometimes not. (oo makes the long u sound ... except when you look for a book in a nook).

My son will get it ... I suppose we all do. And what we don’t get is corrected by spell check. But I wonder what the sometimes lawless construction of our words does to our minds. Semiotics and all that. Does it promote neuroses? Creativity? Does it make our written word more inaccessible? Does it make our written word more beautiful in the way nature is beautiful in all its organic jumble?

In this world of binary code (and binary politics for that matter), there’s something wonderful about the fact that words like bough and cough exist. They’re messy; they speak to the archaic and the anarchic. They make learning to read a challenge. But I love the way those odd words taste.