The Interference of English

Some time ago I wrote about the importance of spelling.  I asked if it was more important to spell accurately or to get your message across with some errors.  I included a list of the words in French, Spanish and German that are commonly misspelled by students.

Over the last few weeks I have been looking more closely at the issue of spelling in the new language.  While it's true that a considerable number of spelling errors are a result of carelessness, many others can be ascribed to the interference of English.

By the time students start to learn a new language in Year 3, they have undergone four years of rigorous training in English spelling and phonics.  The new language has different letter clusters and sequences, but the students can, often unconsciously, replace these patterns with more familiar English spelling patterns.  The four formative years of learning English spelling is enough to build a muscle memory, so that it feels more natural, for example, for a student to write rough than rouge, as the -ough letter cluster occurs in some frequently-used English words and the -ouge cluster is unfamiliar to English native speakers.

Spelling errors of any kind are exasperating for the languages teacher, especially when they are of the je m'apple variety which turn up again and again.  A systematic learning of phonics is one of the keys to ensuring more accurate spelling in the new language, but do we also owe it to our students to anticipate the sorts of errors that they are likely to make due to the interference of English and practise these words in a more focussed way?  

It is worth noting that this interference may also come from other languages that the student has learned, for example if they are in Year 7 and starting a language that is not the one they studied in Key Stage 2.  Any new language will have combinations of letters that are entirely unfamiliar to the beginner student and which they will need to practise in order to build their confidence and to start to build the new muscle memory.

We already draw direct comparisons with English in order to teach grammatical structures such as adjectival word order and the genitive, so should we now extend this to spelling?

Many thanks to the members of the Secondary MFL Matters Facebook group who joined in the discussion about this recently and who also provided many of the examples below:

FRENCH:
French word	often misspelled as	reason?
amusant	amusement	written to make the word look more like the more familiar English ‘amusement’
anniversaire	anniversarie	written to make the word look more like the more familiar English ‘anniversary’
blanc	blank	students remember the meaning of blanc by associating it with the English ‘blank’ but this in turn means that the word is often written to make the word look more like the more familiar English
bleu	blue	written to make the word look more like the more familiar English.
copain	complain	-m- probably added because of the influence of the English ‘companion’
danse	dance	written to make the word look more like the more familiar English
déteste	detest	written to make the word look more like the more familiar English
équitation	equation	the word is obviously unusual looking (and hard to spell/say for an English-speaking learner) so it is corrected to the nearest known English word
heures	hueres	-ue- is much more common in English than -eu-
histoire	historie	written to make the word look more like the more familiar English
il	ill	the nearest known English word
intéressant	interestant	written to make the word look more like the more familiar English
je m’appelle	je m’apple	the nearest known English word
magique	magic	written to make the word look more like the more familiar English
maison	mansion	written to make the word look more like the more familiar English
manger	manager	the nearest known English word
montagne	montange	-gne words often cause problems for English-speaking learners, as -nge is a much more common letter sequence in English than -gne.
natation	nation	the nearest known English word
neuf	nerf	apart from the obvious phonic influence, some of the influence will come from the well known Nerf guns….
oui	qui	these three vowels are never seen together in English.  It’s much more common to have q+u and then another vowel.
rouge	rough	English words ending -ough are quite common, hence the change to the nearest known English word.
vacances	vacancies	written to make the word look more like the more familiar English
vingt	vinght	-gt is not an English word ending, but there are quite a few words (eight, knight etc) that end with -ght, hence the correction

SPANISH:
Spanish word	often misspelled as	reason?
centro comercial	centro commercial	written to make the word look more like the more familiar English
difícil	diffícil	written to make the word look more like the more familiar English
favorito	favourito	written to make the word look more like the more familiar English
fútbol	fútball	written to make the word look more like the more familiar English
geografía	geographía	written to make the word look more like the more familiar English
me encanta	me enchanta	the nearest known English word
seis	sies	rigorous application of the “i before e except after c” rule!
tecnología	technología	written to make the word look more like the more familiar English
vamos	vamous	few English words end with -os, so this is often written with an -ous ending, which is more familiar, from words such as famous
veinte	viente	rigorous application of the “i before e except after c” rule!

GERMAN:
German word	often misspelled as	reason?
es ist windig	es ist winding	-ig as a word ending is not seen in English, so it is corrected to resemble the much more common -ing ending
Katze	Catze	written to make the word look more like the more familiar English
langweilig	langweiling	-ig as a word ending is not seen in English, so it is corrected to resemble the much more common -ing ending
lernen	learnen	written to make the word look more like the more familiar English
nicht	night	the nearest known English word
Schwimmbad	Schwimmenbad	the extra -en- is added to make it resemble more closely the English ‘swimming pool’.
zwei	zwie	rigorous application of the “i before e except after c” rule!