“This’ll” on a Spelling Test?

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Jason. I’m calling from De Pere, Wisconsin.

Hi, Jason. Welcome to the show.

Well, thank you. Thank you for having me.

Well, we had an experience the other night, and my wife and I knew immediately that we needed to call you because we needed some expert advice.

We have second-grade twins, and they were practicing their spelling list for the week.

The topic was contraction.

And as they were reading the list back and forth from one to the other, they spelled the word thistle as in the contraction for this will.

And I immediately took the list away from them and said, you guys, stop making up words.

We need to actually practice here.

And they showed me the list, and sure enough, thistle appeared on their list.

My wife and I talked about it, and I couldn’t come up with anything that seemed like appropriate usage to me.

And so I thought, we better throw this one to you and get the expert advice.

Is this whole sloppy language, or can they use it in writing?

So T-H-I-S apostrophe L-L, thistle.

That is it.

Contraction for this will.

And what’s your major objection to it?

Well, we tried to think of, you know, writing a paper, and a kid’s going to write something, and they’re going to say, this will be the answer.

You know, like I said, we could come up with, you know, the American Pie song, you know, this will be the day that I die.

I felt like anything goes in music, but spelling thistle as a contraction, it just didn’t make sense to either of us as an appropriate word for them to be learning.

What an interesting question.

Were there any other outliers like that, like thattle?

No, I didn’t see thattle.

And I think that’s maybe my main argument with it was there wasn’t any other outliers.

Everything else seemed like common usage words.

And I know this is a national spelling with the youth at different schools.

And so I was just surprised to see that word appear.

Oh, it is a nationalist?

Because I was going to ask if it was possibly pulled from readings that they’re doing in class.

Like, did it come from books or chapters or other things that they’re reading?

Well, oddly enough, I had a discussion about it with their teacher because we were just kind of bantering about it.

And she said, boy, I hope that wasn’t something I tossed in there.

And she went back to the list and said, no, this is provided as, you know, from the source material that they use and that they’re teaching at, you know, at multiple schools, I’m sure, across the country.

How about that?

Huh.

So the teacher started backpedaling?

She was nervous if it was a word.

She said, I sure hope that’s not a Mrs. V word.

And I said, well, let’s look.

And she said, no, it’s definitely on the list.

Well, it’s a loud contraction.

There’s nothing morphologically wrong with it.

It’s a perfectly legitimate contraction in English.

Certainly you can find zillions and zillions of use of it.

It’s not a common contraction.

I mean, compared to the other contractions, it’s a sound formation in English, and it’s perfectly well formed.

And I think Grant raised a good point, which is that they may well be encountering it in books or other things that they’re reading.

And it would be useful to know, but I can hear your point as well that you might not want to see that in a paper.

Yeah, and if we were to look at the most common, say, top million words in English, I’m not even sure that would be in there.

I mean, you would encounter she-el or he-el or we-el, you know, we-will, she-will, he-will, long before you would encounter thistle.

It had to be somebody’s favorite word that they included it on the list.

Maybe, or maybe somebody had homophones on the brain and they were thinking of the word thistle, T-H-I-S-T-L-E.

Well, that was my first thought was we’re doing contractions.

Don’t be messing around with thistle.

Yeah, yeah.

With thistle.

Ouch.

So, Jason, did your daughters have any input on this?

You know, they just thought that I was being goofy, that I was so worked up about, you know, a spelling word.

Dad, it’s on the list.

Of course we have to learn to spell it.

You know, just they kind of thought I was being silly.

Yeah.

There’s no harm in learning it.

I don’t know that there’s a lot of value.

It’s interesting.

It could easily, though, be a nice jumping off point.

And I’d be interested to hear from the teacher on this.

If you have thistle on the list, it does give you a jumping point for all the other apostrophe LL contractions.

So you just use that word to talk about all the other contractions that can be formed in that way.

So maybe it isn’t a standalone word.

We can then talk about wheel and sheel and heel and da-da-da-da-da and all the other words that are formed with will as a contracted form.

Yeah, it’s weird.

I think of that’ll be $5.95, and I don’t think twice about that.

That would be far more common, right?

Yeah.

That’ll be far more common choice than thistle.

Huh.

Or thosele.

Thosele.

Or thesele.

Maybe.

I’m worried about thosele than thesele.

They sound so weird standalone, but as part of a sentence, they sound normal.

Well, I’d be real curious to know what other parents of students in your classroom or other parents who are listening might have to say about that.

Maybe, but I just want to reassure you, Jason, that no harm is being done here.

All right, I’m going to have to accept it.

Yeah.

Yeah, and your daughters are going to have to admit that dad’s maybe not quite so goofy.

I better correct you that it’s a daughter and a son or they’ll be really mad at me.

Oh.

All right.

You have to know twins come in all forms.

Yes, absolutely they do.

Tell your children we said hello and congratulate them on having a father who cares and pays attention to their schoolwork.

Thank you so much, you guys.

I really appreciate it.

All right.

Take care now.

Bye-bye.

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