After we placed our order, the girl at the register asked for a name. I try to avoid giving my name in situations like these because it always leads to an additional ten minutes of explanation including etymology, genealogy, history, and language theory. Instead, I simply told them my wife's name, "Rachel."
When your food is ready, they call your name over a loudspeaker. We sat and talked, waiting for them to announce Rachel's name. Ten or fifteen minutes later, they were announcing the name, "Rochelle." After they announced "Rochelle" a second time and nobody went up to claim to the food, we assumed it must be us.
As we got up from our table to walk over to the counter, the announcer girl got on the loudspeaker a third time. She was visibly irritated at this point. I thought I'd mention to her that the name was pronounced "Rachel," but realized it was not the announcer's fault when she handed me the accompanying ticket, pictured here:
So when I said "Rachel" to the cashier, they heard, "Reachelle." This, I think, illustrates some of the problems we are currently running into as a society in terms of the English language.
People no longer know how to spell properly. If you heard the word, "Rachel," for the first time, even if you'd never seen it before, wouldn't it make sense to just spell it like it sounds? "Rachel," or "Raychel," or "Raechel," I would accept.
But "Reachelle?" This looks like it should be pronounced "Ree-a-shell." That doesn't sound anything like what I said to her.
One of the reasons kids today are having problems with spelling is because they did not learn how to read phonetically. I think most people born in the nineteen-eighties were still taught to read phonetically, but there was a trend started several years ago called "whole word" reading. I believe "whole word" reading is actually a revival of a trend from the sixties that got dumped when everyone realized how stupid it was. It's a terribly stupid way to teach reading, but it's popular again.
Whole word reading supposes that it's better to just memorize what words look like instead of learning their phonetic pards. I believe the cashier was taught to read this way. There are a two relatively common ways to spell "Rachel." There's "Rachel" and "Rachael." Now the second way is tricky because it doesn't make sense phonetically, but I suspect the cashier was familiar with seeing the name spelled that way and was trying to somehow recreate it. Since she did not know how to sound words out, she may have also gotten the name "Rachelle," confused with "Rachel," believing they sounded the same.
The second problem with spelling is that nobody reads anymore. The students that I have that are good spellers are always avid readers. This is not a coincidence. Reading exposes you to hundreds of thousands of words that you otherwise would not hear in day-to-day life. It also allows you to see what words look like and how they are spelled. Readers develop a sense of what looks right or wrong. Even if a reader doesn't know how to spell a certain word, they will most likely be able to tell when it looks wrong.
Non-readers and non-spellers, like our friendly cashier, do not have this skill. And with that, we barrel on towards Idiocracy. Good night, and good luck!
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