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Transcript Episode 33: Why spelling is hard — but also hard to change

This is a transcript for Lingthusiasm Episode 33: Why spelling is hard — but also hard to change. It’s been lightly edited for readability. Listen to the episode here or wherever you get your podcasts. Links to studies mentioned and further reading can be found on the Episode 33 show notes page.

[Music]

Gretchen: Welcome to Lingthusiasm, a podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics. I’m Gretchen McCulloch.

Lauren: And I’m Lauren Gawne. Today, we’re getting enthusiastic about why spelling is so hard and also hard to change. But first, Gretchen, it’s almost time for your book to be out in the world, and I am very excited.

Gretchen: I am also very excited for people to finally get to read it. But you have already read my book about internet linguistics.

Lauren: I have. This is why I get to be excited, because I know people are in for a treat.

Gretchen: In fact, you are featured a little bit in my book about internet linguistics, which was very funny because as I was talking about everybody else in the book, I was referring to everybody by their last names, and when I got to you, I was like, “I’m guess I’m calling her ‘Gawne’ for this book.”

Lauren: Oh, my gosh. Really?

Gretchen: Despite the fact that, of course, I normally call you “Lauren.”

Lauren: That is gonna be so amazing. I may have to listen to the audiobook just to laugh at that.

Gretchen: Just so you can laugh at how I don’t have a cot/caught distinction and so I can’t actually do the vowel that you do in your name.

Lauren: That’s okay. I’m just really excited. The book is great. People can pre-order it now. And its out on the 23rd of July?

Gretchen: That’s correct.

Lauren: You were explaining to me why pre-orders were so important. I’m learning a lot about books from you. It’s an interesting world.

Gretchen: Pre-orders are really important because, first of all, they help the publisher decide literally how many copies to print because they have a sense of how much people are interested in the book. Also, because when they’re trying to count book sales for whether something ends up as a bestseller or is on some sort of list, all of the pre-order sales count towards that first week of sales. So, if you’re likely to end up on a bestseller list, it’s gonna be the first week, and the pre-orders all count towards that. It’s huge. If you’re excited for any book, really, you should pre-order it. And you should definitely pre-order mine!

Lauren: Excellent. There’ll be a link to that in the show notes.

Gretchen: It is called “Because Internet” and is available where good books are sold. But there’ll be a link to that.

Lauren: This month’s Patreon bonus episode is an interview with Alice Gaby, which is all about how we use directions in language and her work with an Australian language, Kuuk Thaayorre. It was from our November liveshow in Melbourne.

Gretchen: Alice’s research is so interesting. It was really fun to do in the liveshow because we got to have a whole room of people in an auditorium point where they thought north was and see how good people are at telling different directions, and whether linguistic or cultural factors affect how good you are at directions or what types of directions you pay attention to or you notice. I also got to quiz her on some Canadianisms.

Lauren: That was pretty great. We returned the favour by quizzing you on some Australianisms that Alice chose.

Gretchen: Yes. That was very fun. You can listen to that and many other bonus episodes by going to patreon.com/lingthusiasm, which we’ll also link to in the show notes.

[Music]

Gretchen: Why is spelling so hard, Lauren? Why do we spend years and years learning how to spell and then we still mess it up?

Lauren: When you say “we,” I think you mean me. I am definitely the more prone to misspelling out of the two of us. Let’s just get that out of the way.

Gretchen: I misspell things, but then I also notice them before the post goes up. Whereas, you put a post up and then I message you being like, “Hey. I wanna reblog your post. Can you just fix this typo?”

Lauren: I would like to just say that I have a medieval manuscript approach to spelling, which is gonna be really important, and we’ll explain why in this episode. But part of the reason that English spelling is hard is that it is a long and storied history. Every word is like this great little time-capsule nugget of linguistic information.

Gretchen: I like to think of English spelling not so much as a phonetic approach to spelling – we don’t spell based on how something sounds – we spell based on where a word comes from. So, if a word comes from Old English versus if a word comes from French, or from Latin, or from Greek, or from one of the many other languages that English has borrowed words from, English tends to keep each word’s original spelling conventions or older spelling conventions, and then those come into conflict with each other. That’s what makes it really difficult.

Lauren: But it makes it so great as well.

Gretchen: Yeah! It also makes it really interesting. I think of spelling systems across languages as kind of like living in a house. When you first move into a house, you unpack everything and you hopefully say, “Okay. I’m gonna be organised this time.” And you say, “This is where everything’s gonna go.” But the longer you’ve lived in a house, the more random boxes of stuff in the attic you have.

Lauren: English has lived in the house of the Latin alphabet for a very long time.

Gretchen: Yeah. And so having a spelling reform is like saying, “Okay. We’re gonna pull everything out of the boxes. And we’re gonna Marie Kondo this spelling system and make sure that all of the symbols are actually doing what we want them to do. And if they don’t spark joy, we’re gonna reform them.” But English has not really Marie Kondo-ed its spelling system in a very long time. That’s one of its problems.

Lauren: It’s one of its benefits too. I’m gonna be pro-the-wacky-spelling, even though it is a major hindrance to me in my daily life. It’s worth pointing out that the house of the Latin alphabet that English lives in wasn’t necessarily a given. English has been written at various times with runes and other writing systems.

Gretchen: That’s true. The Latin alphabet was much better at spelling Latin than it was at spelling English, for example, because Latin actually only has five vowel sounds, and so it has five vowel symbols. That makes it a pretty easy correspondence. Whereas, English has five vowel symbols but does not have five vowel sounds. It has 14-ish depending on the dialect.

Lauren: That’s a really important thing with early English manuscripts where everyone borrowed this Latin alphabet in, but they borrowed it in to fit their dialect. There wasn’t necessarily a standard of spelling. It means that there are four main dialects when you look at Old English manuscripts, where, if you read them, they give you a really good idea of what the sounds were in different regions of English. So, we normally think of the Mercian, Northumbrian, Kentish, and West Saxon, so there’re kind of four large areas of English. You can see some of those sound distinctions still in modern English varieties. The difference is that we had them in the writing system as well as in speech, but the writing system became standardised.

Gretchen: Yeah. The writing system became standardised, and even if you don’t have a pronunciation distinction – for example, the word “gone” as in the past of “go” and the word “Gawne” as in Lauren’s surname, I say them the same way but I still have to spell them differently because some people pronounce them differently.

Lauren: Yes. Some people would say something like “Lauren /gɔn/ has /gɑn/ out to buy ice cream.”

Gretchen: That’s what you’d say, right?

Lauren: That is what I say, often.

Gretchen: It’s an important part of your life.

Lauren: Whereas, if we were making this podcast in the 1100s, we might choose to represent those distinctions, or lack of distinctions, in the writing system. But what happened was that English became standardised – and people talk about this as being part of the success of internationalised English is that we agreed on a standard and it got “fixed.” It got “fixed” around 1490, which is a weirdly specific time. In the late 1400s, a guy name William Caxton brought the first printing press to England. And a printing press obviously deals with words in a very different way to manuscripts. If someone’s handwriting stuff, they’ll make different changes each time they write something out. Whereas a printing press is just making lots of copies of the same thing. Caxton had to decide what spelling he was gonna use in all of these copies.

Gretchen: He was a lot more standard about it. He has this great anecdote, right, about trying to figure out what word to use or what spelling to use because of all the different varieties of English that were spoken in different regions there. And you can’t please everybody. It’s about “eggs,” right?

Lauren: Ah, yes. Caxton’s egg story, as people often refer to it. We know that there are dialects now, but at various points people felt like the dialects weren’t even mutually intelligible. People couldn’t understand each other in different parts of England. And there’s a very famous story. Caxton was travelling in the north of England with a friend of his, and they were at a market, and his friend was like, “Can I get some eggs, please?” And she was like, “What is this ‘eggs’ you’re talking about? I don’t speak French. I don’t know that word.” Another person came in and said, “Ah, he actually wants some eyren,” which is a northern dialect word for “eggs.” And she was like “Ah, yes. Yes. Now that you’ve used that good English word for them, I know what you mean.” Caxton tells this story and it neatly encapsulates this idea that English was very disparate. It is still regionally distinct as well. But Caxton had to decide what words he was putting in books. Famously, in a way that has influenced English ever since, he chose the southern dialects from around the London area.

Gretchen: Yeah. So, he decided to write down “eggs,” which is why “eggs” is standard in English now. But eyren is still very similar to the German word for eggs. It could’ve ended up that way for us as well.

Lauren: Yeah. So, it’s just because the printing presses were brought to London and not York that southern English is more strongly codified.

Gretchen: One of my favourite examples of this is also that the printing presses started writing down English at the point at which we still pronounced the K before N that has become silent now in words like “knee” and “knight” and “know” that have the silent K. They were once pronounced /kne:/ and /knixt/ – and /knɔ/ or something like that? I don’t know about the vowel there. That silent G-H in “knight” was once pronounced /knixt/. And that double E was once pronounced as literally like a longer version of the vowel, which at the time was /kne:/.

Lauren: That’s because the printing press came in just before the big vowel shift happened and became standardised, which we talked about in our episode on vowels.

Gretchen: Yeah. So, we’re not gonna get into the details of the vowels, but there’re all these sound changes that happened in English. At one point, these spellings were a lot more logical than they are now, which is part of this – some of the discarded boxes up in the attic of the English language are like, “Oh, yeah. Actually, we changed how to pronounce all the vowels. Sorry.”

Lauren: This box just has a label called “Silent E Used to Sound Like Something,” and I don’t even know what’s in it.

Gretchen: Yeah. Like “Silent K Before N was Once Pronounced” – oh, no. We put that away in a box. Sorry.

Lauren: Yeah. Don’t need that. Up in the attic.

Gretchen: But some languages have actually done more rearranging and Marie Kondo-ising of their orthography houses than English has.

Lauren: Which takes a very top-down approach. You need the equivalent of a Marie Kondo for language in your language’s life for that to happen.

Gretchen: Yeah. Once you’ve started writing a language, and once people are getting literate and so on in the language, and you have books and stuff, it gets really hard to change a writing system because people, once they’ve learned it, they’re like “Yeah, well, it’s fine. It’s got some silent letters – whatever.” The people that would benefit from the change are the people who haven’t learned to read yet, and they tend to have less power.

Lauren: There’s that issue. There’s also the issue of you can do a full spring clean of the spelling house, but no matter how good you are at doing that, you’re gonna end up having more boxes. It just means that spelling freezes now. But the language is gonna keep moving on in terms of how it’s pronounced and what words are used.

Gretchen: Yeah. You need to clean out your spelling house every couple of centuries, at least. Maybe every century. Maybe every 50 years if you wanna be able to do it more gradually.

Lauren: Could you imagine having to relearn spelling twice every lifetime?

Gretchen: This is why it’s not always very popular. Then it creates problems with reading older books, too, because you go back and read a book that was published 200 years ago, and if you do that in English, that book is pretty easy to read. But if you do that in a language like German, which has a spelling reform every 10 or 50 years – they’ll release, like, “Here’s a few new spellings” – it gets harder and harder to read your older literature. One of my favourite examples of spelling reform is from French because they did this really great thing, which was, “Okay, let’s have a spelling reform to get rid of some of the silent letters,” but instead of just completely getting rid of the silent letters, they replaced them with an equally silent accent mark to indicate that there had once been a silent letter here.

Lauren: That is so great. I like that because it speaks to my interest in keeping that history of the word in the spelling.

Gretchen: Yeah. If you know the history of the word, you’re like “Ooo! There was a silent letter here. This is great.” And if you’re a school child, you’re like, “So, I just write this? Fine?” This is what the primary function of the French accent circonflexe, which is the one that looks like a little hat – I’m making the little hat sign with my hands as I say this because that was how we always talked about it in school is you have to make the hat sign with your hands.

Lauren: That’s very cute.

Gretchen: When you talk about that, you have to make a little pointy hat with your hands. There’s a bunch of words in French that a lot of them get borrowed into English before their S had dropped. And then their S dropped in French, and then eventually the silent S got replaced with the little hat. If you have a word like “forêt” in French, which is spelled F-O-R-E-little hat-T – oooh! You don’t speak French. I’m gonna make you guess what the English word was that was there.

Lauren: Do I just stick an S in there? Is that what you said?

Gretchen: You stick an S in after the E with the hat.

Lauren: So, it becomes “forest.”

Gretchen: Yes! Forest!

Lauren: I know this one because of my ongoing interest in listening to The History of English podcast because you’ve put “hôtel” there. And “hotel” and “hostel” are historically the same word. We borrowed into English the French “hostel” back when it had an S. And then we re-borrowed it as “hotel” when it didn’t have an S. And we’ve borrowed it to have slightly different meanings about the type of accommodation.

Gretchen: And “hôpital,” which in English was borrowed as “hospital,” was borrowed before the H became silent in French and also before the S became silent. So, it’s now pronounced /œpital/, but it’s spelled like /hapital/ but with the hat on the O.

Lauren: When dictionary makers are doing etymologies – which is the histories of words in a language – this is the kind of clue they can use to tell when something was borrowed into English from French, even if there’s no written record of it.

Gretchen: Yeah. Because if you know when something became silent, you have this additional clue. There’s a whole bunch of parallels between French and Spanish as well. A word like “fête” which has the hat on the E there –

Lauren: Oh, it used to be “fest”!

Gretchen: Right!

Lauren: “Fête” and “festival” are kinda from the same root.

Gretchen: And “fiesta.”

Lauren: Oh, my gosh.

Gretchen: They’re all the same. They’re a party.

Lauren: It’s a party of parties.

Gretchen: “Bête” with the accent, T, and then there’s a silent E, but we’re gonna ignore that...

Lauren: “Best”?

Gretchen: “Best.” The additional clue that I’ll give you is that there’s a fairy tale called “La belle et la bête.”

Lauren: Ah. “Beast.”

Gretchen: “Beast.”

Lauren: Excellent.

Gretchen: This was something that I figured out midway through high school French, and I was like, “Oh, my god! All these words actually have parallels in English as well and I just never realised! And that’s how I can remember whether to use this.” I remember telling my brother after a few years of French as well, and he was like, “Wow! This is so great.” It’s one of my favourite little –

Lauren: Spelling actually helps you remember the words are related.

Gretchen: Yeah. It’s weird because the circonflexe doesn’t really help French speakers that much, but it weirdly helps English speakers more than it helps French speakers.

Lauren: That’s very un-French in terms of spelling reform.

Gretchen: Yeah. It’s like, “Thanks Académie Française for helping out the English, which I’m sure you really wanted to do.” French has a reputation for being a language that’s fairly difficult to spell because it’s got a lot of silent letters. Spanish has a reputation for being a language that is fairly easy to spell because it doesn’t have a lot of silent letters and it has had fairly regular spelling reform. Spanish doesn’t use the P-H in a word like “telefono.” They’ve put an F there because why do you need a P-H? That’s just a sign it came from Greek. I said to a native Spanish speaker once, “Yeah. I’m so jealous. Your language has such a great, logical spelling system.” And they were like “Actually, you know what, I’m dyslexic. And there is this huge problem for me in the Spanish spelling system despite it being my native language,” because Spanish still writes its words as if there’s a distinction between B and V.

Lauren: Right.

Gretchen: But it doesn’t actually pronounce its words as if there’s a distinction between B and V anymore.

Lauren: So, you just have to know for the spelling.

Gretchen: So, you just have to know. If you’re an English speaker, this is actually pretty easy for you because you look at B and V and you think that they should be pronounced differently. And so you go into Spanish and you try to pronounce them differently, which gives you an English accent in Spanish, but does let you easily remember which one is which. Plus, a lot of them have cognates or related words in English that let you remember which one’s B or V because you have an English word to pin it on. So, they had to rename the letter of the alphabet because they used to be called /βe/ and /βe/, which is the exact same sound. For a while, some people said, “/βe/ grande” and “/βe/ pequeña” – the big B and the little B – or “/βe/ corta,” the short B. Or sometimes they use keywords like “/βe/ de burro” – “burro” is “donkey” – and “/βe/ de vaca” – “vaca” is cow. So, one has a B – burro – and “vaca” has a V, just to kind of remember. Eventually, the Spanish Academy changed the name of the letter V to /ɤβɛɪ/ instead of /βɛɪ/. So, now you have /βɛɪ/ and /ɤβɛɪ/, which helps you remember. But they’re still completely useless for speakers. You could just pick one and spell all the words with it. And yet, they have not. On the plus side, the fact that they’re pronounced the same way in Spanish means that the city of Baltimore is pronounced the same as the evil guy in Harry Potter, Voldemort, if you say them with a Spanish accent.

Lauren: Oh, my gosh. But, you see, this is why spelling becomes really important so that people don’t, in 500 years’ time, be like, “This is the city named after an evil character in Harry Potter.” It’s the spelling that’s gonna make it clear.

Gretchen: But wouldn’t that be great?

Lauren: That would be a great miscommunicated etymology.

Gretchen: I support this folk etymology. Let’s make it happen.

Lauren: A reason that sometimes keeping the history and the historical spelling has really good benefits for a language, as in the case of Tibetan, where different dialects actually pronounce the same word very differently, but both rely on that historical spelling because they’ve forked off. English has changed a lot since English spelling was started. Imagine if there was a whole other dialect of English, which was almost mutually unintelligible for us, but also relied on those same spellings. A variety where maybe it was the N in “knee” that got dropped. And so people say /ki/ in that language. But they know K-N = K. Whereas, we have K-N = N. If you read Tibetan – and I don’t actually. For someone who has spent years working with the Tibetan language, I work on the Nepal side and people choose to spell, often, with the Nepali alphabet, which is that Devanagari from India that has the line across the top. So, I can speak a Tibetan language, but I don’t read Tibetan. Thank you to Ruth Gamble and Gerald Roche for helping me with this example. It’s just full of silent letters. It’s like English. You have a lot of letters that you write but you don’t pronounce, but they’re important for the spelling and the history of words. If you were to say something like “It is good to speak Tibetan,” you would write that as, to do a very terrible literal pronunciation, something like /bɑd skiæd lɛɪ la yɔd/. But in the variety of Tibetan spoken in Lhasa, which is the capital of Tibet, the /bɑd/ would be /pə/. And that /skiæd/ would be /kɛ/, which you can see how all those letters have become silent or you’ve got a vowel shift as well like you’ve had in English.

Gretchen: Yeah. So many changes. And yet you can kind of trace them. The S drops. And the D drops.

Lauren: Yep. So, you know that if you see that B written like that, you pronounce it more like we pronounce a P. And if you just spoke Lhasa Tibetan, you might be like, “Why don’t we reform this?” because it has the same kind of history as English. It started being written in the 7th century and codified by the 9th century, which is a very similar time-depth to English. But if you go to the Amdo region, which is a completely different area where they speak Tibetan, that /bɑd/ gets pronounced like /wɑd/.

Gretchen: Oh, whoa. Okay. They did something different with the B and then the D stays.

Lauren: And the D stays. And they don’t have the same vowel shift. That /skiæd/ becomes /kæl/. The D becomes more like an L.

Gretchen: The S still drops, but instead of the D dropping, it becomes like an L?

Lauren: Yes.

Gretchen: And you don’t have a vowel shift?

Lauren: And you don’t have the vowel shift.

Gretchen: This kind of historical alphabet lets them both read and write to each other or each other’s literature and stuff even though –

Lauren: Yeah. It means they can read the same newspapers and the same historical writings, but they pronounce it in their own way.

Gretchen: That’s really interesting. Another language with a similar time-depth, actually, around the 7th century to the 9th century, is Arabic.

Lauren: Looks like you need a good millennium to bake in some great language change and orthographic conservatism.

Gretchen: That’s how long it takes for your spelling house to get really messy. Classical Arabic is from around this period and that’s the Arabic that’s in the Koran, so it’s very prestigious among Arabic speakers. It’s got a lot of stuff that is not necessarily reflected in the pronunciation anymore. One of the things that I noticed when I was studying Arabic for a couple years in undergrad is that there are four kinds of Aleph in Arabic. Aleph’s the first letter of the alphabet. It’s got a common origin with the Greek Alpha and with our letter A. There are four of them in Arabic. There’s your regular Aleph, which is just written like a straight line, and that just makes the /a/ sound. So, that’s pretty easy.

Lauren: You’re starting at the start and you’re like “Well, this is easy and straightforward,” right?

Gretchen: Yeah. You’re learning the Arabic alphabet and you’re like, “Great. Okay. So, there’s all these letters and they make these sounds.” And I’m like, “This sounds fine.” This was pretty straightforward. There’s a one-to-one correspondence. And then they’re like, “Actually, here are some letters that there are exceptions for.” Aleph is one of them. Part of this is because, historically, Aleph wasn’t actually an A sound. Aleph was a consonant sound, which is the glottal stop. That’s the sound in between “uh-oh” – that catch in the middle of your throat. Historically, that’s what Aleph was.

Lauren: We talked about this really briefly in the nothings episode, but I didn’t realise Aleph had a complicated history outside of that use.

Gretchen: Yeah. Aleph was adapted to make the A sound or the /a/ sound by the Greeks because they didn’t have a glottal stop. But it also got adapted to make versions of the /a/ sound by Arabic speakers, even though they did still have a glottal stop, because a glottal stop at the beginning of the word sounds a lot like just starting to talk. If you say the word “Alpha” itself, you can say that with a glottal stop at the beginning – /ʔalfə/ – or you can say it without a glottal stop at the beginning – /alfə/ – and they really sound the same.

Lauren: Especially if you’re like us and you don’t have a glottal stop as part of your sound system.

Gretchen: Exactly. That’s why there’s been some kind of complicated confusion. Arabic reintroduced a new letter, which is called Hamza, to actually stand for the glottal stop. But because glottal stop had this weird and complicated history where it used to be this other letter, Hamza’s like a semi-letter in Arabic, which means that when it shows up, it always has to have, what they called in my class, as “host.” It has to have another vowel that it goes on top of, but that vowel’s actually sometimes silent.

Lauren: Right.

Gretchen: Because it’s not a real enough sound for it to be there by itself. It’s one of these interesting historical complications.

Lauren: It’s a bit like spelling “cough” O-U-G-H. That G-H is just kind of along for the ride.

Gretchen: Yeah. Or like the difference between “through” and “though” and “thorough.” The vowel sounds get affect by the consonants even though it’s actually the vowels that are changing. Spelling is weird.

Lauren: It’s always funny when I hear these examples in languages I don’t speak, and it’s just like, “The Aleph is there when it’s only got a host” and it’s very trying to think about it in my head. And then I spell English relatively proficiently every day, which has equally crazy and complicated rules.

Gretchen: Exactly. It’s all what you’re used to. But that’s Hamza, which is like its own thing. There’s still three more Alephs to get through. This kind of explains – one of the Alephs is “Aleph Maddah.” And that’s a double Aleph. It expresses both a glottal stop and the long vowel together as two Alephs – one of top of each other. Like one vertical and one horizontal.

Lauren: It’s doing all the work.

Gretchen: Yeah. But you don’t actually use a Hamza in that case, which you should use with a glottal stop. Instead, you write a double Aleph, but that’s because Aleph used to be a glottal stop and sometimes it still is.

Lauren: Right.

Gretchen: And then you also have “Aleph Maqsurah,” which is a totally different shape and not straight up and down like a normal Aleph is at all. It’s kind of like an S-shape – ish. But it looks a lot like the dot-less version of the letter Ya, which makes the /y/ or the /i/ sound, depending on context. That’s the Aleph that only appears at the end of the word for fun, basically. The Aleph Maqsurah is often a feminine marker, so it’s got grammatical functions. I don’t know. Historically, maybe it was a Ya. I don’t know why it’s there – why it’s a different shape. But it’s a different shape. And then the last Aleph, which is possibly my favourite Aleph because it’s very rare and it’s got a really good name, which is the “dagger” Aleph.

Lauren: I like that you have a favourite Aleph.

Gretchen: Look. If there are four different Alephs, I think one is duty-bound to pick a favourite of them.

Lauren: I wish we had letters that were called cool names like “dagger.”

Gretchen: Yeah. We have “Double-U.” That’s the most interesting name. A lot of the Romance languages call the letter Y, the Greek /i/ – the Greek I – like in French you say, “ee-grek.”

Lauren: Oh! That’s why in Polish it’s called “ee-grek.” I’ve never thought about that.

Gretchen: Yeah! It’s the “ee-grek.” It’s the Greek /i/ – Greek I – because it comes from upsilon.

Lauren: Gonna go around calling Y the “Greek I” now.

Gretchen: Yeah. That’s my favourite letter name in the Latin alphabet is the Greek I because it really encodes the origin of it in so many European languages.

Lauren: I mean, it took me a very long time to think about Double-U being two Us. So, sometimes you’re very complacent about what you’re used to, I think, is really just the discussion of these characters.

Gretchen: Yeah. Exactly. So, the “dagger” Aleph looks like the regular Aleph, so it’s a straight line up and down, but it’s shorter. And it’s written a little bit superscript. It’s written a little bit up. And it’s still pronounced the same way. It’s only found in a few modern words, but those are some very common ones. For example, the word “Allah,” meaning “God,” has the “dagger” Aleph in it. It’s generally specially encoded so that it’s produced automatically by font and coding programs.

Lauren: Right. Fairly visible.

Gretchen: Because it’s pretty important. There’s just so much going on with what happens with Aleph that, again, you’ve got this kind of, “Here’s a history tradition. All of these made sense at some point. They still make some kind of sense if you look at the history of them. But they’re no longer as active a distinction to modern speakers as they were when they were originally written down.”

Lauren: A lot of spelling is a bit complicated, and it has good reasons why it’s complicated, and sometimes it’s very helpful either for etymologists or for people learning to spell. But there are a lot of calls to reform spelling – particularly of English.

Gretchen: Because so many spellings are weird and have historical reason for them. I came across this great post on Tumblr, which we’ll link to, which was a proposal to reform English spelling even more etymologically and say, “Okay. If a word comes from a language that traditionally uses the Latin alphabet, yeah, sure, we can keep using the Latin alphabet for it. But if a word comes from Greek, we should keep using the Greek alphabet.”

Lauren: Right. So, we should be spelling “tsunami” using Japanese characters.

Gretchen: Exactly. You see where this is going, right? Or like “vodka” using Cyrillic because it’s from Russian – and "etymological" using Greek letters because it’s from Greek. The whole post is written in this proposed spelling reform. It is very difficult to read – and delightful.

Lauren: I like a good spelling reform. Lots of people have tried to reform spelling. You’ve made a proposal for a spelling reform for English.

Gretchen: Yeah. I have more fun with spelling reform when it’s kind of treated as a joke, because at this point, you’re never gonna get all the English speakers to agree on some sort of actually good, or logical, or consistent spelling reform. I decided to say, “What if we took advantage of this proliferation of competing standards and just made something that was completely out to lunch?” I did this as a talk for the Festival of Bad ad Hoc Hypotheses, which is a joke science competition – talk.

Lauren: Which is great because it means I get to link to the video for people if they wanna see your full proposal.

Gretchen: Yes. I have a full proposal. It’s a video. It’s been put online. It was at MIT a couple months ago and you can watch it. It’s a lotta fun. What I said was, “Given that there’s some evidence that reading something in a harder font makes you retain it better because you had to put more effort into doing that – or reading something in a language that’s not your first languages makes you reason more logically because, again, you had to put more effort into that – and so what if we made all English speakers expend more effort and made the spelling system completely ridiculous?” I propose let’s just replace letters with weird Unicode equivalents and let’s replace things with stuff from other languages and other orthographies so that we learn a whole bunch of other orthographies and so on and so forth and just keep going.

Lauren: And that we all have to spell with other people’s dialects, right? So, I would have to have a Gawne/Gone merger, and you would have to make that distinction every time.

Gretchen: Yeah. Exactly. Because that helps foster cross-dialectal and cross-linguistic understanding if you have to confront the unfamiliar every time you go to write. I’m very fond of this proposal. I was very delighted. Once we put it online, some people commented on the YouTube video and on my Tweet about it in Tweets that had this revised, illogical spelling – used it. It was very gratifying.

Lauren: Excellent. It’s already starting.

Gretchen: It’s catching on, right?

Lauren: I want a full return to dialect variation in English spelling.

Gretchen: Exactly. We need to go back to the days before the printing press and just spell everything completely as we want to. That sounds like fun to me.

[Music]

Lauren: For more Lingthusiasm, and links to all the things mentioned in this episode, go to lingthusiasm.com. You can listen to us on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, SoundCloud, or wherever else you get your podcasts. And you can follow @Lingthusiasm on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Tumblr. You can get IPA scarves, IPA ties, esoteric symbol scarves and ties, and other Lingthusiasm merch at lingthusiasm.com/merch. I tweet and blog as Superlinguo.

Gretchen: I can be found as @GretchenAMcC on Twitter, my blog is AllThingsLinguistic.com. To listen to bonus episodes, including our latest one about direction words with Alice Gaby, and help keep the show ad free, go to patreon.com/lingthusiasm or follow the links from our website. Other recent bonus topics include animals, a very cool linguistics job, which is figuring out how to pronounce the names on the radio, and the question of whether you talk differently when you’re speaking to someone who has a slightly different accent from you. Can’t afford to pledge? That’s okay too. We also really appreciate it if you can recommend Lingthusiasm to anyone who needs a little more linguistics in their life.

Lauren: Lingthusiasm is created and produced by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our audio producer is Claire Gawne, our editorial producer is Sarah Dopierala, and our editorial manager is Emily Gref, our music is “Ancient Cities” by The Triangles.

Gretchen: Stay lingthusiastic!

[Music]

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

#transcripts #episode 33 #linguistics #spelling #writing #history #English #Arabic #Spanish #French #Tibetan #words #lingthusiasm

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rinnnyxr · 4 years

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Worn a brightly colored accessory with a neutral outfit Stared out the car window while listening to sad music as if you were in a music video Danced around your room with the curtains open Driven through a neighborhood you don't live in blaring indie music from your car Cut your own bangs with kitchen scissors Tried on a bunch of wacky outfits in a thrift shop with no real intention of purchasing anything Gotten a septum piercing Transferred schools in the middle of the term Played the ukulele Thrown a themed costume party Worn Heelies unironically DIYed home decor Filmed one second of your life every day for a year Sat on a playground swing as an adult Learned to juggle Sat in the front row, whether it was class or a concert Used your Polaroid camera to chronicle a road trip Been told you're "Heather" Studied the arts or humanities Related to at least one Taylor Swift song hardcore Had the same best friend for several years Been part of a love triangle Had a niche hobby or interest not many people have heard of Watched the sunrise or sunset from an airplane window Been way too overdressed for the grocery store Dyed your hair a bright color Recorded yourself singing to see if you sounded as good as you thought you did Made a video in the rain Gone night swimming Curated a very specific playlist for a very mundane task Referred to going somewhere super normal (like the gas station) as "an adventure" Had a "life-changing experience" at summer camp Performed in a talent show Considered your pet your best friend

Sagittarius - Fire never saving phone numbers loopholes strong unfounded opinions buying a round of shots going viral on tiktok snapchat stories calling everyone ‘bro’ lapsing into a character health fads loving tacky aesthetics self-organization will watch any show that has hot people surfing airbnb for fun mangonadas have made someone cry romance languages tone-deaf but love karaoke fun facts making a day out of one errand tattoos silver lining losing internet once someone shows interest never paying people back calling in sick 9/24

Capricorn - Earth trusting two people *cracks knuckles* self-deprecating jokes owning multiple colors of the same pants love having an excuse to say no clothing with pockets sitting together in silence sore loser needing alone time to decompress no interest in petty drama compartmentalizing emotions unsure what to do while someone cries noticing everything solution-oriented called ‘precocious’ as a child favorite sound is the crossword jingle rising to meet high expectations speaking to pet and babies in an adult voice large iced coffee, black ‘sent from my iPhone’ long-form articles no sympathy for stupidity sophisticated neutrals remember your sat score 8/24

Aquarius - Air avoiding contact during earnest conversations history of bad bleach jobs people watching from afar have considered a burner phone only listening to b-sides have gone by five different nicknames hating on astrology tirades keeping your birthday a secret reusable water bottle hating hugs using shock humor to alienate people know exactly where you’d run away to if you decided to start a new life self-described “bad influence” jstor subscription encyclopedic knowledge of niche pop culture deliberately esoteric “what’s the science?” 71 unread messages over-ear headphones a piercing you did yourself most active between 3 and 6 am favorite celeb is David Byrne or David Lynch hiding inside a hoodie 2/24

Pisces - Water chipped nail polish believing your own lies not wanting to upset someone by telling them they’ve upset you crying when someone else cries swaddling yourself in a cardigan donating to wikipedia our of guilt batting eyelashes thinking everything is a sign mystery novels have plans to ‘find yourself’ battery always under 20% working on asserting yourself “I’m fine, but how are you?” rich inner world ethical veganism house slippers sitting on the floor of the shower talented artist small handwriting picking ‘truth’ in truth or dare reacting to messages with a heart emoji starting sentences with ‘sorry’ planning birthday presents months in advance happy crying 3/24

Leo - Fire reposting birthday wishes on Instagram stories lip gloss “I thought you’d be a bitch before I met you” crying on command showering strangers with compliments loud laugh giving up if not instantly good at something new outfit for every occasion waiting exactly as long as the other person to text back awful at apologies movies with makeover montages craving validation thinking everyone should have an ego other people’s parents love you sleeping with six pillows dumping people before they can dump you love being the therapist friend president of a club in high school the protagonist of reality planning a memoir arriving late with beverage in hand pipe dreams good at icebreaker games tipping 30% 4/24

Virgo - Earth saunas needing 2+ hours to fall asleep having the last word standards so high even you can’t reach stress-induced IBS modifying your restaurant order vices turned off by rudeness matching pajama sets knowing which fork is which self-doubt currently worried someone is mad at you observational humor complex self-soothing rituals Youtube tutorials subtly sensual creating problems to fuss over editing articles as you read them talking points checking weather before getting dressed chamomile tea making sure your friends know their worth “I’ll pencil you in” realizing your jam has been clenched 10/24

Libra - Air you’re ‘not on social media’ ...but you meticulously curate your finsta jack off all trades belonging to 15 distinct friend groups only ‘reading’ audio-books fantasy movies situationships returning favors natural deodorant cooking elaborate meals for one mediating friend drama can’t take a compliment “I could make that myself” passive aggression power couple aspirations fusion foods fear of being forgotten meet-cutes inspirational quotes watching music videos instead of just playing the songs overly familiar pet names underestimating the effects of your actions “no makeup” makeup look taking it easy 5/24

Scorpio collecting screenshots just in case hyperbolic speaker slouching alibis keeping everyone’s secret loving your hometown mirror above the bed hate when people waste your tame evasive responses to innocuous questions performative sigh human lie detector penetrating eye contact secretly wish someone would scale your emotional walls “what’s the catch?” decoding algorithms remembering every embarrassing thing you’ve ever done testing people’s allegiance a natural at networking refusing to acknowledge dropped hints falling in love quickly and intensely “fool me once” mentality weighing your options fiercely loyal friend 10/24

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mrsteveecook · 5 years

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List of 50 Great Word Games for Kids and Adults

If you want to improve your writing, maybe it’s time to ditch all the writing books and podcasts and play some word games instead.

Yes, seriously! Word games and writing games are great ways to develop your vocabulary, to help you think more deeply about words, to have fun with story and structure, and to get a lot of fun out of writing.

But games can be a great way to:

Develop your vocabulary

Help you think more deeply about words

Become more fluent in English (if it’s a foreign language for you)

Invent and develop characters

… and much more.

After the list of 50 writing games, I’ve given you a top ten that I think are particularly great for kids who want to practice their writing skills. Many of the other games are suitable for children, too, so by all means try out other games as a family if you want to.

Of course, there are loads of online games (and quizzes and tools) that you can use to improve your writing skills, and I will be talking about some of the best of those. But there are also lots of tried-and-tested classic games that you can play with pen and paper, or using cards and dice … and we’ll be taking a look at those first.

5 Pen and Paper Word Games

I’ll start with the simplest games: pen and paper ones that you can play pretty much anywhere, so long as you have a pen.

All of these are suitable for children, and some (like crosswords) are enjoyed by many adults too.

#1: Hangman (2+ players)

Hangman is a classic word game for two players. One player thinks of a word and writes down dashes to represent the number of letters. The other guesses letters of the alphabet. Correct letters are inserted into the word; incorrect letters result in another segment of the “hangman” being drawn.

This is a great game for developing spelling and vocabulary. If you’re playing it with small children, you can do it without the perhaps rather unpleasant “hangman” element, and just count how many guesses each player takes!

#2: Crosswords (1 player)

A crossword is a grid of white and black squares, where each white square is one letter of a word. The words intersect. You can find crosswords in many newspapers and magazines (on all sorts of subjects), and you can buy booklets and books full of them. Some crosswords are “cryptic”: great if you like brainteasers. Others have more straightforward clues.

Crosswords are great if you want to learn new words and definitions, or (at the cryptic end of the scale) if you enjoy playing with words and language. Simple ones are suitable for fairly young children, with a little help.

#3: Word searches (1 player)

A word search has a grid (often 10×10 or more) filled with letters, and a number of words written alongside or beneath the grid. The person completing the word search needs to find those words within the grid.

Most word searches are easy enough for children, though younger children will struggle with backward and diagonal words. They’re a good way to get used to letter patterns and to improve spelling – and because word searches rely on matching letters, even children who can’t read well will be able to complete simple ones.

#4: Consequences (2+ players, ideally 4+)

This is a fun game with a group of people, as you get a wild and wacky mix of ideas. Each player writes down one line of a story and folds the paper over before passing it around the table to the next player. The very simple version we play has five lines: (1) A male name, (2) The word “met” then a female name, (3) “He said …” (4) “She said …” (5) “And then …”

Once all five stages are complete, the players open out the papers and read out the results. This can be great for sparking ideas, or as a way to encourage reluctant writers to have a go.

#5: Bulls and Cows (2 players)

This game, which can also be called “Mastermind” or “Jotto” involves one player thinking up a secret word of a set number of letters. The second player guesses a word; the first player tells them how many letters match in the right position (bulls) and how many letters are correct but in the wrong position (cows).

Our five year old loves this game, and it’s been a great way to develop her spelling and handwriting as well as logical thinking about which letters can or can’t be the correct ones after a few guesses.

10 Board and Dice Games

These are all games you can buy from Amazon (or quite probably your local toyshop). They’re fun ways to foster a love of writing within your family, or to share your enjoyment of words with your friends.

#1: Scrabble (2+ players)

A classic of word games, Scrabble is a game played with letter tiles on a board that’s marked with different squares. (Some squares provide extra points.) Letters have different points values depending on how common they are. The end result of scrabble looks like a crossword: a number of words overlapping with one another.

If you want to develop your vocabulary (particularly of obscure two-letter words…) then Scrabble is a great game to play. It’s suitable for children too, particularly in “Junior” versions.

#2: Boggle (2+ players)

This is less well known than Scrabble, but it was one I enjoyed as a child. To play Boggle, you shake a box full of dice with a letter on each side, and the dice land in the 4×4 grid at the bottom of the box. You then make as many words as you can from the resulting face-up letters.

Again, this is a good one for developing vocabulary – and it can be played by children as well as by adults. You need to write down the words you come up with, which can also be good for developing handwriting.

#3: Pass the Bomb (2+ players)

It’s very simple to play: you deal a card for the round pass a “bomb” around the table and when it goes off, the person holding it loses. Before you can pass the bomb on during your turn, you need to come up with a word that contains the letters on the card.

It’s a fun family or party game, and can work well with a wide range of ages. It’s a great way to help children think about letter patterns, too, and to develop vocabulary and spelling.

#4: Story Cubes (1+ players)

There are lots of different versions of these available, and they all work in a similar way. The open-ended game has a set of cubes that you roll to create ideas for a story that you can tell along with the other players. If you prefer, you can use them to come up with stories that you’re going to write on your own.

There are lots of different ways you can use them: as writing prompts for a school class or group, to make up a bedtime story together with your children, for getting past your own writers’ block, or almost anything you can think of.

#5: Apples to Apples (2+ players)

Apples to Apples has red cards (with the name of a person, place, thing, etc) and green cards (with two different descriptions): the player with a green card selects one of the descriptions, and others have to choose a card from their hand of red cards. The judge for that game decides which red card best matches the description.

If you want to develop your vocabulary (or your kids’), this could be a fun game to play. There are lots of expansions available, plus a “junior” version with simpler words. (If you’re playing with adults, you might also want to consider Cards Against Humanity, a decidedly not-kid-friendly game that works in a very similar way.)

#6: Letter Tycoon (2+ players)

In this game, you have a hand of 7 cards which you can use in conjunction with the 3 “community cards” to create a valuable word. It’s a more strategic game than some others, with aspects of finance (like patents and royalties) involved too – if you’re a budding tycoon, you might really enjoy it.

Because not all the game strategy depends on simply being good with words, it doesn’t matter if some players have a larger vocabulary than others. It’s suitable for children, too, so you can play it as a family game.

#7: Dabble (2+ players)

Dabble is a family-friendly game where you compete with other players to be the first to create five words (of 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 letters) using your 20 tiles. It’s very simple to get the hang of … but coming up with the words might be more challenging than you expect!

If you enjoy Boggle or Scrabble, you’ll probably have fun with Dabble. It’s a great way to develop both spelling and vocabulary, and to have fun with words.

#8: Upwords (2+ players)

Upwords is like 3D Scrabble: you can stack tiles on top of other tiles to create new words. The board is smaller than a Scrabble board (and doesn’t have double and triple word score squares) so it’s not as complex as it might initially sound.

Like similar games, it’s a great one for building vocabulary and for developing your spelling. It’s suitable for kids, too, so it could be a great game for the whole family.

#9: Tapple (2+ players)

Tapple has a wheel, with most of the letters of the alphabet on it, and lots of different “topic cards” that cover 144 different categories. There are lots of different ways you can play it – the basic rules are that each player has to think of a word that fits the topic within 10 seconds, but that word can’t start with a starting letter that’s been used previously.

While small children might find it a bit too challenging or frustrating, due to the short time limit, this could be a great game for older children looking to extend their vocabulary. All the categories are suitable for kids.

#10: Last Word (2+ players)

In Last Word, players have to come up with answers to “Subject” and “Letter” combinations, racing to get the last word before the buzzer. It works a bit like a combination of “Tapple” and “Pass the Bomb”.

You can easily play it with a large group (there are tokens for up to 8 players, but you could add more without affecting the gameplay). It’s a great way to develop vocabulary and, to some extent, spelling.

5 Roleplaying Games

While my geeky tendencies have been reined in a bit since I had kids, I’ll admit I have a great fondness for roleplaying games: ones where you come up with a character (often, but by no means always in a magic-medieval setting) and play as them. These are some great ones that you might like to try.

#1: Dungeons and Dragons (3+ players)

Although you might never have played Dungeons and Dragons, I’m sure you’ve heard of this classic roleplaying game that’s been around since 1974 and is now onto is 5th edition. It takes rather longer to get to grips with than a board or card game: to play, you need a “Dungeon Master” (essentially the storyteller of the game) and at least two players (who each control a character), plus rulebooks and a lot of different dice.

It’s a great game for developing the “big picture” aspects of writing, like the ability to construct a plot and a story (if you’re the Dungeon Master) and the skills involved with creating a character, giving them a backstory, and acting “in character” as them (if you’re one of the players).

#2: Amazing Tales (1 parent, plus 1 or 2 children)

This is a kid-friendly RPG aimed at parents who want to create a story with their child(ren). It’s like a very simple version of Dungeons and Dragons, and has straightforward but flexible rules. You can play it with a single six-sided dice – though it’s better if you have four dice (with six, eight, ten and twelve sides).

If you want to encourage your child’s creativity and have fun creating stories together, this is a wonderful game to play. The rulebook contains lots of ideas and sample settings, with suggested characters and skills … but you can come up with pretty much any scenario you like.

#3: LARP (Live Action Roleplay) (lots of players)

Over the past decade or so, LARP has become a bit more mainstream than it once was. It’s short for “Live Action Roleplay” … which basically means dressing up as your character and pretending to be them. It’s a bit like Dungeons and Dragons crossed with improv drama.

The nature of LARP is that it needs quite a lot of people, so unless you have loads of friends to rope in, you’ll want to join an organised LARP – there are lots out there, covering all sorts of different themes, from traditional fantasy ones to futuristic sci-fi ones. Some are suitable for children, but do ask event organisers about this. They won’t necessarily involve any sort of writing, but can be a great way to explore characters and dialogue.

#4: MUDs (lots of players)

MUDs, or “multi-user dungeons” have been around since the early days of networked computing in the ‘70s, and are the forerunners of games like Fortnite and World of Warcraft. They’re now distinctly retro-looking text-based online games, where players create a character and interact with other characters and the world.

Like other types of roleplaying game, they’re a great way to practice storytelling and character-development skills. They also involve a lot of writing – so they can be useful for things like vocabulary and spelling. Some are suitable for children, but as with anything online, do ensure your children know how to be safe (e.g. by not giving out their full name, address, etc).

#5: Online Forum Games / Forum Roleplaying (2+ players)

Some fan communities write collaborative fanfiction through forums (here’s an example), with different people posting little pieces as different “characters” to continue a story. These can be quite involved and complex, and they can be a great way to learn the skills of telling a long, detailed story (e.g. if you’re thinking of writing a novel).

They’ll probably appeal most to writers who are already producing fanfiction on their own, and who have a fair amount of time for the back-and-forth required for forum roleplaying. Again, if your child wants to get involved with this type of roleplaying, do make sure you monitor what they’re doing and who they’re interacting with.

10 Word Games You Can Play on Your Phone

These days, many writers are more likely to have their phone to hand than a pen and paper … and to be fair, there’s nothing wrong with that. You can easily make notes on a phone, whether by tapping them in or by recording them. If you find yourself with a bit of time on your hands, why not try one of these writing-related games?

Note: all of these are free to download, but most allow in-app purchases, and you may find you need to make a purchase to get the most out of them.

#1: Bonza Word Puzzle

This game is a bit like a deconstructed crossword: you get bits of the puzzle and you drag them together to form words that will all match with the clue. If you’re a fan of crosswords and want something a bit different, you might just love it.

It’s a great way to think hard about letter patterns and how words are put together, so it might be a good game for older children who’re looking to develop their spelling and vocabulary, too.

#2: Dropwords 2

Dropwords 2 (a rewrite of the original Dropwords) is a word-finding puzzle where letters drop from the top of the screen: if you remember Tetris, you’ll get the idea. It’s a bit like Scrabble or Boggle, and you have to race the clock to make letters out of the words on the screen.

With six different modes (“normall”, “lightning”, “relax”, etc), it’s suitable for children and for people who are learning English, as well as for those wanting to really challenge their vocabulary skills.

#3: Spellspire

Spellspire is a fantasy-style game where you select letters from a grid to create words: the longer the word, the bigger the blast from your magic wand! You can kill monsters, buy better equipment, and make your way to the top of the Spellspire.

If your kids aren’t very motivated to practice their spelling, this could be a great game for them. (Or, let’s face it, for you!) You can also choose to play it against your Facebook friends, adding a competitive element.

#4: TypeShift

This is a relatively simple game that lets you create words from letters arranged on different dials. There are a couple of different ways you can play: by trying to use all the letters on the dials at least once to create words, or by tackling the “Clue Puzzles”, which are a bit like crossword clues.

Again, if you want to develop your spelling and vocabulary, this is a straightforward game that you can use to do so. You can buy extra puzzle packs at a fairly reasonable price, if you find that you want to play it a lot.

#5: Wordalot

This crossword app uses pictures rather than written clues, which is a fun twist. You can use coins to get hints (you can earn these through the game, or purchase them with real money).

If you enjoy doing crosswords but want something a bit different, give this one a try. You might find that as well as helping you develop your spelling and vocabulary, it’s a great way to develop your lateral thinking as you puzzle out the clues.

#6: WordBrain

This game is another one where you have to find hidden, scrambled words within a grid. There are loads of different levels (1180!) and so this could keep you busy for a long time. You can purchase hints – this could potentially see you clocking up quite a spend, though.

All the words are appropriate for children (though some are tricky to spell), so your kids might well enjoy this game too, as a way to develop their spelling and vocabulary.

#7: Ruzzle

Ruzzle works like Boggle, with a 4×4 grid of letters that you use to make words (the letters must be adjacent to one another). You can play it against friends, or simply against random players.

Like the other apps we’ve looked at, it’s a good one for developing your vocabulary and spelling. Some players said it included too many ads, so this is something to be aware of if you plan to use the free version rather than upgrading.

#8: WordWhizzle Search

This is a word search type game with loads of different levels to play. If you enjoy word searches, it’s a great way to carry lots around in your pocket! You can play it alone or with Facebook friends. It’s easy to get to grips with, but the levels get increasingly tricky, so you’re unlikely to get bored quickly.

As with other apps, this is a great one for developing your spelling and vocabulary. Each level has a particular description (words should match with this), so you have to avoid any “decoy” words that don’t match.

#9: 7 Little Words

This game works a bit like a crossword: each puzzle has seven clues, seven mystery words, and 20 tiles that include groups of letters. You need to solve the clues and rearrange the letter types so you can create the answers to the mystery words – so it’s also a bit like an anagram.

There are five different difficulty levels (“easy” to “impossible”) and each game is quick to play, so this could be a good one for kids too. Again, it’s a great way to develop vocabulary and spelling.

#10: Words With Friends

This classic word-building game is hugely popular, and you can play against your Facebook or Twitter friends, or against a random opponent. It works just like Scrabble, where you have seven letter tiles and add them to a board.

You can chat with the opponent in a chat window, so do be aware of this if you’re allowing your kids to play. The game is a great way to develop vocabulary and spelling, and you can play it fairly casually because there’s no time limit on your moves.

10 Word Games You Can Play in Your Browser

What if you want a writing-related game you can play while taking a break at your computer? All of these are games that you can play in your browser: some involve a lot of writing and are essentially story-telling apps, whereas others are essentially digital versions of traditional pen and paper games.

Unless otherwise noted, these games are free. With some free browser games, you’ll see a lot of ads. If this annoys you, or if you’re concerned that the ads may be unsuitable for your children, you may want to opt for premium games instead.

#1: Wild West Hangman

This is a digital version of Hangman, which we covered above. You choose a category for words (e.g. “Countries” or “Fruits And Vegetables”) and then you play it just like regular Hangman.

It’s simple enough for children – but it only takes six wrong guesses for your cowboy to be hanged, too, so it could get frustrating for younger children.

#2: Word Wipe

In Word Wipe, you swipe adjacent tiles (including diagonals) to create words, a bit like in Boggle. The tiles fall down a 10×10 grid (moving into the blank spaces you’ve created when your word disappears from the grid) – your aim is to clear whole rows of the grid.

Since the easiest words to create are short, simple ones, this is a great game for children or for adults who want to get better at spelling.

#3: Sheffer Crossword

As you might expect, this is a crossword game! There’s a different free puzzle each day, and you can choose from puzzles from the past couple of weeks. It looks very much like a traditional crossword, and you simply click on a clue then type in your answer.

The clues are straightforward rather than cryptic, though probably not easy enough to make this a good app for children or for English learners. If you’re a fan of crosswords, this will definitely be a great way to develop your vocabulary, though.

#4: Twine

Twine is a bit different from some of the other games we’ve looked at: it’s a tool for telling interactive stories (a bit like the old “Choose Your Own Adventure” books, or a text-based adventure game). You lay out your story as different cards and create connections between them.

If you want to experiment with interactive fiction, this is a simple, code-free to get started – as reviewer Kitty Horrorshow puts it, “if you can type words and occasionally put brackets around some of those words, you can make a Twine game”. It’s a great way to deepen your understanding of story, plot and narrative.

#5: Storium

Like Twine, Storium is designed to help you tell stories … but these stories are written in collaboration with others. (There’s a great review, with screenshots, here on GeekMom.) You can either join a story as a character within it, or you can narrate a story – so this is a great game for building lots of different big-picture fiction-writing skills.

It’s suitable for teens, but probably involves a bit too much writing for younger children. If you’d like to write fiction but the idea of creating a whole novel on your own seems a bit overwhelming, or if you enjoy roleplaying-type games (like Dungeons and Dragons), then you might just love Storium.

#6: Words for Evil

This game combines a fantasy RPG setting (where you fight monsters, get loot, gain levels and so on), with word games to play along the way. It could be a good way to encourage a reluctant young teen writer to have fun playing with words – or you might simply enjoy playing it yourself.

The word games work in a very similar way to Word Wipe, so if you found that game frustrating, then Words for Evil probably isn’t for you!

#7: First Draft of the Revolution

This game is an interactive story, told in the form of letters (epistolary). It comes at writing from a much more literary angle than many of the other games, and if you’ve studied English literature or creative writing, or if you teach writing, then you might find it particularly interesting.

The graphics are gorgeous – playing the game is like turning the pages of a book. To play First Draft of the Revolution, you make choices about how to rewrite the main character (Juliette’s) draft letters – helping you gain insight into the process of drafting and redrafting, as well as affecting the ongoing story.

#8: Writing Challenge

Writing Challenge can be used alone or with friends, creating a collaborative story by racing against the clock. You can use it as an app on your phone, as well as on your computer, so you can add to your stories at any time.

If you struggle to stay motivated when you’re writing, then Writing Challenge could be a great way to gamify your writing life – and potentially to create collaborative works of fiction.

#9: Plot Generator

Plot Generator works a bit like Mad Libs: you select a particular type of story (e.g. short story, movie script, fairytale) then enter a bunch of words as prompted. The website creates the finished piece for you. There are also options for story ideas (essentially writing prompts), character generators, and much more on the site.

If you’re stuck for an idea, or just want to play around a bit, Plot Generator could be a lot of fun. Some of the options, like Fairy Tale, are great to use with young children – others may not be so suitable, so do vet the different options first.

#10: The Novelist ($9.99)

The Novelist follows the life of Dan Kaplan, a struggling novelist who’s also trying to be a good husband and father. You can make choices about what Dan should do to reach his goals in different areas of his life – and the decisions you make affect what happens next in the game. You are a “ghost” in the house, learning about and influencing the characters.

While there’s not any actual writing involved in the game, it could be a thought-provoking way to explore how writing fits into your own life.

10 Games to Help You Learn to Type

Typing might seem like an odd thing to include on a list of writing games. But so much of writing involves being able to type – and if you’re a slow typist, you’ll find that your fingers can’t keep up with your brain! While most people find that their typing does naturally improve with practice, these games are all quick ways for you (or your kids) to get that practice in a fun way.

Obviously, all of these games should help to improve typing skills: those which involve whole words may also help with spelling and vocabulary. Unless otherwise mentioned, they’re free.

#1: Dance Mat Typing

This game is designed to teach children touch type (type without looking at the keyboard). It starts off with Level 1, teaching you the “home row” (middle row) keys on the keyboard. Other letters are gradually added in as the game progresses.

It’s very much aimed at kids, so teens and adults may find the animated talking goat a bit annoying or patronising! Unlike many other free games, though, it doesn’t include ads.

#2: Spider Typer

This typing game took a while to load for me: you too many find it’s a bit slow. In the game, you type the letters that appear on chameleons that are trying to catch a spider (the chameleons disappear when you hit their letter). The spider keeps rising up into a tree, and if it safely gets there, you move on to the next level.

It’s suitable for kids, and starts off very easy with just letters: if you set it to a harder difficulty, you need to type whole words.

#3: NitroType

This is a competitive typing game where you race a car against friends (or total strangers) by typing the text at the bottom of the screen. It’s a good one for practicing typing whole sentences, including punctuation – not just typing letters or words.

Older children might enjoy it, and any adults with a strong competitive streak! You can compete as a “guest racer”, or you can create an account and login so you can level up and gain rewards like a better car.

#4: TypeRacer

TypeRacer is similar to NitroType: you control a racing car and the faster you type, the faster your car moves. You can practice on your own, enter a typing race, or race against your friends if you prefer.

If you create an account and login, other users can see your username, score, average speed and so on – and they can also send you messages. This could potentially open you up to receiving spam or unwanted communications, so do be aware of this, particularly if you’re allowing your child to play.

#5: The Typing of the Ghosts

In this game, you destroy ghosts by typing the word on them. The graphics are pretty rudimentary, though it is a free game and a good way to practice quickly typing words. It’s suitable for children, and the sound effects (there’s a noise for every letterstroke) may appeal to kids.

You don’t need to create an account or login: you can simply start playing straight away.

#6: Typing Chef

In this game, you type cooking-related words (usually types of equipment). It involves single words and a few double words with a space between at the early levels.

There’s nothing particularly unusual about this game compared with others, though it wasn’t so ad-heavy as some and doesn’t require any registration. It’s good for teaching words and phrases, but not for helping you to learn to type whole sentences.

#7: TypeTastic

This is a fun typing game aimed at young kids, so it starts with the fundamentals. You start by building a keyboard from letter blocks, then learn how to spot letters on the keyboard quickly before learning where those letters are located.

Teachers or parents might be interested in reading about why the game starts with mapping the keyboard. The interface and graphics are pretty good, given that it’s a free game, and it’s designed specifically with young children in mind.

#8: Typer Shark! Delux

This is a free typing game, where you’re a diver exploring the seas. You can choose from different difficulty levels, and – in a mechanic that’s probably by now quite familiar if you’ve played any of the other typing games – you get rid of creatures like sharks by typing the word written on them.

Again, this can help you with your typing speed and accuracy. I found it was a bit slow to load, but it’s not full of ads like some other games.

#9: Typing Attack

In this game, you’re a spaceship, facing enemy spaceships – each with a word written on them. I expect you can guess what you need to do: type the word correctly to destroy the spaceship. Some words are shorter, some longer, and as with other games, there are multiple difficulty settings.

You’ll need to watch an ad before the game loads, which can be annoying, and means that it isn’t necessarily suitable for children.

#10: The Typing of the Dead: Overkill ($14.99)

This game is definitely aimed at adults rather than kids, because it’s a bit gory. It also costs $14.99, so it’s probably one that’ll suit you best if you’re really keen to improve your typing speed – perhaps you do transcription, for instance, or you’re a freelance writer.

To play the game, you type the words that appear in front of the enemies and monsters: each type you type a letter correctly, you send a bullet at them. If you like horror games and films, it could be a fun way to learn to type faster – but it won’t necessarily improve your accuracy with whole sentences.

10 Word Games that Are Particularly Suited to Kids

While I’ve tried to indicate above whether or not the games are suitable for kids, I wanted to list the ten that I’d particularly recommend if you want to help your children get a great start as budding writers.

Several of these are games I play with my five-year-old already; others are games I’m really looking forward to using with her and my son as they get older. I won’t repeat the full descriptions: just scroll back up if you want those.

#1: Word searches (pen and paper) – you can buy whole books of these, or print off free ones. Older kids might have fun creating their own for their friends or siblings.

#2: Bulls and Cows (pen and paper) – you can play this with just a pen and paper (or if you’ve got a really good memory, with nothing at all).

#3: Boggle (board game) – this is simple enough for quite young children to get the hang of it: my five-year-old enjoys playing it with her Granny.

#4: Story Cubes (dice game) – your child can use these on their own to come up with ideas for a story, or you could use them with a group of children – e.g. in a classroom or as part of a club.

#5: Amazing Tales (roleplaying) – this child-friendly RPG is a great way to introduce big-picture storytelling skills, particularly developing a character.

#6: Spellspire (phone app) – a fun spelling/word-creation game your child can play on your phone (and probably a bit more educational than yet another game of Angry Birds).

#7: Wild West Hangman (browser game) – if your child likes hangman but you don’t always have the time to play it with them, this is a good alternative.

#8: First Draft of the Revolution (browser game) – if your teen is interested in writing and/or the French revolution, they might really enjoy this intriguing game based around redrafting letters.

#9: Dance Mat Typing (typing game) – this game from the BBC is high-quality, and designed to appeal to young children. It teaches good typing practice from the start, by explaining correct finger placement on the keys.

#10: TypeTastic – this is another typing game aimed at young children, and this one starts with putting together a keyboard – a great place to begin.

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Do you have any favourite writing games – of any type? Share them with us in the comments.

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Original post: List of 50 Great Word Games for Kids and Adults from Daily Writing Tips http://bit.ly/2VFn21p

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bern33chaser · 5 years