Over here in the U.S., misspelling among all people from all walks of life–whites and all people of color–from preschool to post graduate school, is probably just as bad as anywhere including the Philippines. Texts on TV broadcasts get misspelled, student compositions and emails, in spite of the spelling checkers, get murdered. Even street conversation is not grammatical. Jay Leno, that stalwart of comedy and formerly of NBC’s “The Tonight Show” used to have a segment of his show in which he showcased misspellings and the ungrammatical or weird use of words; some nights, he featured interviews with the intellectually challenged. In that aspect, I think we, Filipinos, shouldn’t take it so hard when we misspell in English (of course, we misspell in any language like it was an equal opportunity thing) given that English is not even our native language. The problem exists and it has just been exacerbated by the cellphone and the liberties in spelling we take when texting. The point is, average Americans are generally not inhibited to speak their minds in spite of their misspellings, horrendous grammar, poor choice of words, or a combination of any of these. I think that’s the general problem with us, Asians: we tend to shy from offering a piece of our mind because of our traditional sensitivity over misspelling what we write, or our reticence to speaking ungrammatically or with an accent.
As far as I’m concerned, we shouldn’t make a big issue about our misspellings, ungrammatical sentence constructions, poor choice of words, or our accents–these don’t necessarily equate to ignorance, or mean that we are bobo . The important thing is we should not be too circumspect in our dialog as to stifle what we wish to say in the first place. If God meant for us to always spell correctly, be grammatical, or speak without an accent, he would have inserted a chip in our genes that would take care of those issues. In the final analysis, what is important is a healthy curiosity and quest for knowledge and skills, certainly the ones we can use to survive. NOT the correct spelling of that knowledge, nor its grammatical construction, period. If we can spell correctly and be grammatical as well, those are just icing on the cake.
All these, however, do not constitute an excuse to tolerate the imperfections mentioned above when YOU–not I–engage in formal discourse, in which I expect you to be squeaky clean, your words correctly spelled, your sentences grammatical, and foremost, you are communicating some sensible idea, in a manner of speaking. Just don’t ask me why it is not declared illegal for your medical doctor to write his prescriptions with such elan and in a manner that would stump your National Spelling Bee Champ! Pharmacists probably spell well as an occupational requirement, but then we can’t all be pharmacists…
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