In his engaging new book, Righting the Mother Tongue, journalist David Wolman sets out to discover how the English language ended up with such an infuriatingly unpredictable spelling system. His journey takes him from the birthplace of Old English all the way to the spelling reformers who picket the national spelling bee. In the first installment of our two-part interview with Wolman, he tells us how -- as a self-professed poor speller -- he might have felt more comfortable a millennium ago, and how orthographic correctness became so important to speakers of English.

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