Monday, November 05, 2007

That's not how you spell When.

bHave you ever looked at a word too much, and then for a second have this deja vu-like but not reminding you of anything previously occured, except there's this slight transitional moment where you're looking at something as if you're seeing it for the first time, and you notice that a common 4-5 letter word that in a way doesn't follow conventional English spelling rules (whatever THAT may be) that you've taken for granted how to spell, looks for some really odd reason awkward. And in fact, you almost think it's spelled wrong.

All the times in my life that this has actually occurred to me, and believe me it's happened at least once a year, maybe multiple times, it always occurs with words that are part of the "who, what, where, when, why, how" category. The Current Events words, as I like to call them. In 5th,6th Grade when we had to read a newspaper article for Social Studies/Current Events, and then write out the answers to the questions listed above, the 5W's (and the H).

Anyway, it happened again when Hasnain and I began talking about the spelling of the word "course." I won't bore you all with the details of that conversation (not because I'm nice, I probably would have gotten into it, but I'm actually supposed to be studying for an Exam (Mini) that's in about 1 day and 6 hrs away, and so, I'm essentially cutting the story short, and you guys are all missing out on that lovely little tid bit.

And about 3 minutes into the conversation (on IM, mind you) the word begins to get hazy, the letters turn italic almost in my perception, and the letters look weird. They begin to look not like letters but more like squiggly lines. And then I begin to focus back, I can see them as letters, and recognize them as letters, but the organized way they're lined up, just doesn't read like what the word "Course" sounds like. Just now, I almost wrote the word, like "wourd". That's how it sounds it should be spelled. But anyway, I wonder if there's a study out there that's researched this phenomenon, and what the reasoning may be.

hmm.

So, next time you see a word that looks a little awkward, look away, think of something else, and then come back & see if you can spell it without looking. and see what you come up. Then report back to me, and let me know what your experience was like, and what the precipitating factors may have been, and how you were able to phase back into normality.