Creative spelling

If you work in a language-intensive field and you're supposed to know better and correct spelling mistakes that crop up all the time in any written text, you soon begin to doubt your own capacity and get confused over something as minor as 'theirs' and 'there's', 'whose' and 'who's' or 'they are' and 'there are'. And you're supposedly the 'expert'!

At the end of an exhausting day of changing the 'stationery' to 'stationary' and deciding when you need to be 'discreet' as opposed to 'discrete', you may not be in the mood to sympathise with bad spellers who seem to be conspiring to get your eyes permanently crossed.

Your affect has been affected by the effect of the many 'a's and 'e's that are bandied about and misplaced; and in addition there are 'ae's and 'oe's to be decided upon for your American and British archaeologist and orthopaedist friends who may or may not have oedema or diarrhoea... You're right, the working day is not the time to be light-hearted about spelling. But later, when auto-correct has been laid to rest for the day and the computer is off, you may give it a thought and even allow a smile to lighten up a tiring shift at your workstation as you think of the gaffes you've avoided and hope there aren't any that are overlooked that will jump at you from the page the moment you open the papers the next day.

Think about it. The average youngster in our part of the world is bombarded from all sides by British English spelling in textbooks, American English spelling in Word documents and our very own brand of creative Indian spelling that is seen on billboards and signposts all over the place, maybe blithely even offering courses in language 'speeking' and 'fluentzy'.

A child who is just learning to speak and read starts out with conflicting spellings and pronunciation. He's just spent his morning playing with Major Bludd from his GI Joe/Cobra collection and then he goes out into the wide, educated world that he's supposed to join and there's a notice asking for blood donations. After cutely mispronouncing the word and being corrected, he enters an ice cream parlour and demands a 'Kwality' frozen dessert, quite unaware that quality is also a word that, in time, he'll come across often and speculate about.

He's still clutching his favourite Mekanek figure in his hands from the Masters of the Universe characters and you stop the car outside your mechanic's workshop where 'all types of enjins' are repaired to ask him to check the odd sound that your engine is making. You're completely unaware of the audio-visual bombardment that the child beside you is facing. His nascent vocabulary has been assaulted by clever adult innovations and plays on words and it will be a wonder if he doesn't go into a permanent state of confusion. Then you take him for a snack and he'll enter the 'Piramyd' mall that takes its spelling from the group and wonder why the ancient Egyptian pyramids that he loves to see pictures of and read haltingly about have the 'y' in a different place.

Travel by road around India and you'll find yourself all at sea, unsure if you should risk the fruit 'slad' from the roadside vendor, reminding you as it does of that childhood question, 'c-a-l-l-e-d spells salad or kalad?' and you almost choke as you wipe tears of laughter from your eyes and try to decide whether to remove your 'goggals' as you enter a tunnel or whether you should put on your goggles to protect your eyes from the sun, or whether you should resort to what everyone else is doing and just Google for an answer!

Cheryl Rao is a journalist based in India.