The Language Issue

M y husband is English, and he can take most of the rewards for improving my English speaking skill tremendously!
But there is one thing he hasn’t taught me, something I have to help him with all the time. Something I learn easily and quickly.
My husband can not spell most of the words that have more than eight letters in them. I think it happens because he can not be bothered; it’s easier just to ask me to do it for him.
My husband has issues with most of the words ending with ‘–tion’ he is never sure it is whether there should be t; c or other letter. Another spelling problem is le and el on the end of the word like HANDLE and LABEL he always gets mixed up with those!
Tonight though he was reading my yesterdays article about Jean-Paul, and he noticed and incredibly funny spelling mistake! I meant to write poodle and instead I wrote puddle, of course my lucky husband who can’t spell himself found the mistake immediately! I know he will keep reminding me of that at least for a week. He is English and that makes him an English – born comedian with a witty sense of humour!
I do like English humour and I have got used to it by now. At first it was hard to understand and I thought he was being rude to me. So many times I burst into tears because I did not understand English humour! Now it is different and sometimes I even manage to answer back but no all the time!
That puddle thing is very annoying. A man who can not spell words like positive, handle or imagination is laughing because I made a mistake with word poodle! I am aware that I do miss an occasional ‘a’ or ‘the’ but most of the time my spelling is good. I remember before we left the UK there was a new show on TV. Famous people would be told a word and they were supposed to spell it out, most of the time I didn’t have problems even if the words were ones I never heard of. I have intuition for spelling in English, I always did. If I am not sure how to spell the word I use the Microsoft Word or my favourite Chambers Dictionary. When I talk on messenger I usually make mistakes because my current keyboard is not QWERTY and because I rush. Nothing unusual, but when I type for my blog I always read the text at least three times to make sure it sounds English enough. I know my mother tongue is not English and I do understand that it will take me years and years of education before I will be able to write in the ‘English - English’, but the only way to try and learn is actually do it!
That took a very big part in the creation of the blog, because I wanted to learn write short articles in good English. It was not important what I would write about, the most important thing was how I will write it and why. So slowly I started learning. I now have a list of articles in my office that I should write, which I will write when I will be confident enough to touch those certain subjects.
Most of my life I was shy; in fact I was shy until I met my husband. Before that all my emotions and thoughts would be stored inside of me or in my writing. I never showed my short stories to anyone, as the purpose of them was not trying to say something but to get it out of my system, now the writing purpose has changed I write because I want to learn and because I want to improve.
The biggest break in my writing was, when I was about 14 and for the first time I decided to show my work to someone. I took some of my poems to my English teacher at school. I asked her to correct my grammar mistakes, but she refused. This wonderful woman told me this that day:
Poetry doesn’t have to be correct in grammar. Even the words that you use could be spelled incorrectly it does not matter. What matters is the emotion and the feeling, not the way you say it but the expression in total.
One day I will thank that wonderful woman for saying so. She made me continue writing. At the time I only wrote poems and as I look them now they weren’t good and death was mentioned in most of them. But I did manage to transfer the feeling, how I felt inside and it helped. I got rid of the ghosts and my sentence construction got better with time. Now I don’t write poetry anymore, and I am aware that the rules that apply to poetry don’t apply to prose. I am learning everyday. I hear new expressions from my husband or read them in the books, either way I listen or read carefully, to make sure it gets fixed in my memory.
When my husband starts teasing me about silly mistakes like ‘the puddle’ I get upset. I worked really hard, for a long period of time, to make sure I can express myself either in written or spoken English, and I find it hard to accept the joke. It is not because I do not have sense of humour or because I do not see the humoristic part of it. I dislike it because it shows my failure. That shows that I haven’t learned it quite yet and the man that can’t spell the word POSITIVE can spot a silly mistake like that. It is really frustrating.
I hope as the time goes by I will learn to accept my linguistic failures (especially in English) easier with a lighter heart and a good laugh.