This is an article from Curious Kids, a series for children. The Conversation is asking kids to send in questions they’d like an expert to answer. All questions are welcome – serious, weird or wacky! You might also like the podcast Imagine This, a co-production between ABC KIDS listen and The Conversation, based on Curious Kids.

Why does English have so many different spelling rules? – Melania P, age 12, Strathfield.

English spelling has been evolving for over a thousand years and the muddle we’re in today is the fall-out of many different events that have taken place over this time.

A bad start

It was a rocky beginning for English spelling. Quite simply, the 23-letter Roman alphabet has never been adequate — even Old English (spoken 450-1150) had 35 or so sounds, and our sound system is now even bigger.

More spelling problems came in when French scribes introduced new spelling conventions — their own of course, and not always helpful. Using “c” instead of “s” for words like city was messy because “c” also represented the “k” sound in words like cat.

And then printing arrived in the 15th century — and with it more mess. William Caxton (who set up the presses in the first place) liked Dutch spellings and so established the “gh” in ghost and ghastly. Some printers were European and they introduced favourite spellings too from their own languages. Not terribly helpful either!

Those pesky silent letters

One of the biggest problems for English spelling has always been changes in pronunciation. Printing helped to stablise the spelling of words, but then some sounds changed their shape, and others even disappeared altogether. Think of those silent letters in words such as walk, through, write, right, sword, know, gnat — these were once pronounced.

If only the printer Caxton had been born a couple of centuries later, or if these sound changes had occurred a couple of centuries earlier, our spelling would be much truer to pronunciation.

And now comes another little wrinkle in this story – there’s a bunch of silent letters that were never actually pronounced. They appeared because of linguistic busybodies who wanted to make the language look more respectable. This caused some serious mess.

Take how we spell the word rhyme. When we swiped the word from French, it had a much more sensible look — rime. But this was changed to rhyme to give it a more classy classical look (like rhythm) – an interesting idea, but hardly helpful for someone trying to spell the word!

The 16th and 17th centuries saw many extra letters introduced in this way. Think of the “b” added to debt to make a link to Latin debitum. Now, the “b” might be justified in the word debit that we stole directly from Latin, but it was the French who gave us dette.

The “b” consonant was a mistake, and now we accuse poor old debt of having lost it through sloppy pronunciation!

Let’s make spelling more sensible

And so it is from this haphazard evolution that we end up with the spelling system we have.

But you know, there are in fact over 80% of words spelled according to regular patterns. So wholesale change is not what we want. However simple improvements could certainly be made without any major upheaval.

We could iron out inconsistencies such as humOUr versus humOrous. To introduce uniform -or spellings would be a painless reform (well, perhaps not painless, since many people are quite attached to the -our in words like humour)

We could also restore earlier spellings like rime and dette, and while we’re at it give psychology and philosophy a sensible look by spelling them sykology and filosofy.

So now, you can see the problem. No matter how silly spellings are, people get attached to them, and new spellings – even sensible ones – never seem to get a foot in the door.

Hello, curious kids! Have you got a question you’d like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to us. You can:

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Kate Burridge, Professor of Linguistics, Monash University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Curious Kids is a series for children. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to curiouskids@theconversation.edu.au You might also like the podcast Imagine This, a co-production between ABC KIDS listen and The Conversation, based on Curious Kids.

Where do rocks come from? - Claire, age 5, Perth, WA.

Wow, Claire, what a great question. Sitting in a university, I rarely get asked such brilliant questions. So, thank you.

As strange as it sounds, rocks are made from stardust; dust blasted out and made from exploding stars.

In fact, our corner of space has many rocks floating around in it. From really fine dust, to pebbles, boulders and house-sized rocks that can burn up in the night sky to make meteors or “shooting stars”.

The Moon and our local planets – Mars, Venus and Mercury – are just the largest rocks floating around our part of space. These are all made from space dust stuck together over billions of years.

The ‘light’ rocks are on the Earth’s surface

Planet Earth is a rock too, but so much has happened since it was formed from dust and small rocks that smashed and stuck together 4.543 billion years ago.

As the space dust hit each other to make the earth, it got super hot and melted. The Earth was, at that time, a spinning ball of red-hot lava flying through space.

In this melted lava planet, heavy bits of the earth sank and the light frothy bits gathered on the surface.

Have you ever looked closely at a glass of milky coffee at a cafe? The dark heavy coffee is at the bottom, whereas the light, frothy milk sits on the top. Well, our planet was a bit like that coffee billions of years ago.

We don’t see the really heavy rocks these days because they sank deep in the planet very early on. The rocks we see on the surface are like the frothy milk! They were light and rose to the top. Then, as time moved on, the planet cooled and froze to become the solid earth we have now.

I know most rocks are heavy. But in fact some rocks – even really big ones like Uluru – are actually much lighter than the rocks found in the deep Earth.

Lava and plates

Those rocks on the Earth’s surface actually move around. Large chunks the size of continents (called “plates”) jostle each other and this can cause earthquakes. Some of them get forced under other plates and heat up and eventually melt. This forms more lava. The lava erupts from volcanoes, then cools and forms new rocks.

Here are some pictures of lava in the melted state and then after it has cooled down:

Mountains and gems are also rocks

Mountains form where two plates smash into each other. The rocks that get caught between two of the Earth’s plates get squashed under huge pressures and heat up. These can form really beautiful rocks. Sometimes gems form in these rocks and people try to find them to make jewellery.

Rain and ice break up the rocks in mountains. These form sand and mud that get washed out to form beaches, rivers and swamps. This sand and mud can get buried, squashed and heated, which eventually turns them into rocks.

Rocks contain a record of the history of our planet; what is has been through and what is capable of. We are only just learning how to read it.

So, next time you see a rock, just think what an incredible story it contains.

Hello, curious kids! Have you got a question you’d like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to curiouskids@theconversation.edu.au

Please tell us your name, age and which city you live in. We won’t be able to answer every question but we will do our best.

Alan Collins, Professor of Geology, University of Adelaide

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

This is an article from Curious Kids, a series for children. The Conversation is asking kids to send in questions they’d like an expert to answer. All questions are welcome – serious, weird or wacky! You might also like the podcast Imagine This, a co-production between ABC KIDS listen and The Conversation, based on Curious Kids.

Hello, The Conversation. How was the ocean formed? Where did all of the water come from? – David, age 5, Brisbane.

On Earth there is more ocean than land. Of course, there is also a lot of water locked up as ice at the North and South Poles. Where all that water came from is a very good question. Scientists have been wondering about it for a long time. We are still not exactly sure but it is probably a combination of two places.

Let’s start with how the Earth and the other planets formed.

In the beginning, there was a huge cloud of dust and rocks in the Universe. Gravity caused the cloud to shrink and gradually the Sun and the planets formed.

The original dust and rocks included minerals that had water in them. The Earth, as it formed, became very hot. It melted and there were lots of volcanoes. The water in the rocks formed steam and came out of the volcanoes as giant clouds that cooled and rained. That is where some of the water came from.

Also, the original cloud of dust and rocks included a lot of rocks that were made of ice, like giant snowballs. There are still lots of them circling the Sun. We call them comets. There were billions of them when the planets were forming and many crashed to the ground and melted. That is where the rest of the water came from.

Now the question is, how did the water form in the Universe in the first place? That is another big question for another time, but the short answer is this: water is made of hydrogen and oxygen atoms. (Atoms are the tiny little building blocks of the Universe - even you and I are made of atoms).

The hydrogen atoms in water formed in the Big Bang that started the Universe. The oxygen atoms were made later in stars. They got together and water was formed.

So, our water is ancient and precious. Let’s look after it.

Hello, curious kids! Have you got a question you’d like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to us. They can:

* Email your question to curiouskids@theconversation.edu.au
* Tell us on Twitter

Please tell us your name, age and which city you live in. You can send an audio recording of your question too, if you want. Send as many questions as you like! We won’t be able to answer every question but we will do our best.

Malcolm Walter, Professor of Astrobiology, UNSW

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

This is an article from Curious Kids, a series for children. The Conversation is asking kids to send in questions they’d like an expert to answer. All questions are welcome – serious, weird or wacky!

How do we get allergic to food? – Younus, age 9, Perth

That’s a really interesting question, and one that many scientists and doctors are also trying to understand better.

It all starts with the immune system. Every person has one - a group of cells, tissues and organs in the body that helps you fight infections.

It does this by fighting off bugs that might make you sick when they enter your body. This is very important both in keeping you well, as well as helping you recover when you do get sick with an infection.

Allergies happen when the immune system starts overreacting to other things which would not usually make you sick. These can include dust, pollens, pets, and as you mentioned, foods.

For example, in someone who is not allergic to cow’s milk, the immune system doesn’t react when they drink the milk.

But if you are allergic to cow’s milk, when you drink it your immune system overreacts and can cause you to have a rash, swelling or trouble breathing.

Passing down allergies

If there are people in your family with allergies, such as asthma, eczema, hay fever or food allergies, then you are more likely to have allergies too.

This means that allergies may be in the genes that are passed down from parents to children, just like there are genes that pass down the colour of your eyes and hair.

Some foods commonly cause allergies, such as cow’s milk, egg, wheat, nuts and shellfish.

It may be that the age when you first try these foods can affect whether you go on to become allergic to that food, and a lot of research is happening to figure out if that is true.

Over the next few years, I think we will understand this question better, and hopefully be able to make food allergies less common.

Hello, curious kids! Have you got a question you’d like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to us. You can:

* Email your question to curiouskids@theconversation.edu.au
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Please tell us your name, age and which city you live in. You can send an audio recording of your question too, if you want. Send as many questions as you like! We won’t be able to answer every question but we will do our best.

Lucinda Berglund, Clinical Senior Lecturer University of Sydney, Immunologist and Immunopathologist Westmead Hospital and NSW Health Pathology, University of Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Curious Kids is a series for children. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to curiouskids@theconversation.edu.au You might also like the podcast Imagine This, a co-production between ABC KIDS listen and The Conversation, based on Curious Kids.

Why are the letters on the keyboard not in alphabetical order?? – Baker, age 9, Arrowtown, New Zealand.

Great question! That question really puzzled me when I was a kid. And so as a grown-up, I decided to research it and write a paper about it.

Let’s turn the clock back. About 150 years ago, all letters and business papers were written by hand. Most likely they were written using a pen that had to be dipped in ink every word or two. Writing was slow and messy.

Then some clever inventors built a machine for typing. The first typewriters were big heavy metal machines that worked a bit like a piano.

Have you ever seen the inside of a real piano? You press a key and some clever levers make a felt hammer hit just the right piano string to make a note.

Early typewriters were similar. They had all these levers with a metal alphabet letter at the end of it. You had to press a letter key quite hard to make the metal lever fly across and hit the paper. Hit the A key and the A lever would hit the paper and type A. The paper then shifted a bit to the left, so the next key would hit in just the right place next to the A. Press more keys and you could type a word, or even a whole book.

The first machine had the letter keys in alphabetical order. The trouble was that if you hit two keys quickly the levers would jam. Jams were most likely when the two keys were close together on the keyboard. Rearranging the letters could reduce jams.

Christopher Sholes was an American inventor who was most successful in reducing jams. He tried various arrangements, always trying to reduce the need to type two keys that were close together. The best arrangement he could find was similar to the QWERTY keyboard we all use today. (Look at the top row of a keyboard to see why it’s called QWERTY.)

He sold his invention to the Remington Company in the United States. In the 1870s, that company built and sold the first commercially successful typewriters. They used the QWERTY keyboard.

For 100 years or so after the Remington typewriter arrived, vast numbers of people all over the world trained to become touch typists (meaning they could type even without looking much at the keyboard). They were employed to type letters and all other kinds of things for business and government. Because so many people became so skilled at using QWERTY, it became very difficult to get everyone to change to any other key arrangement.

Many other key arrangements have been tried. Some are claimed to be easier to learn or faster to use than QWERTY. But none has proved good enough to beat QWERTY. It seems that we are stuck with this layout, even if jams are no longer a problem.

QWERTY was developed for the English language. Some other languages use variations. For example, AZERTY is commonly used for French, QWERTZ for German, and QZERTY for Italian. Perhaps you can find someone from India, Thailand, Japan, Korea, or China. Ask them to show you the keyboard they use in their language.

You’ll never regret being able to touch type

Now, on any keyboard, feel the F and J keys carefully and find some tiny bumps. Place your first fingers on those keys, and your other fingers along the same row. Your left fingers should be on ASDF and your right on JKL;. These are called the “home keys”.

Keep your fingers resting lightly on the home keys. Type other letters by moving just one finger up or down and perhaps a little sideways. Learn how to do that quickly, without watching your fingers, and you can touch type!

When I was a teenager, I owned a typewriter. I made a cardboard shield to stop me seeing my fingers as I typed. I used clothes pegs to fix it to the typewriter. Then I found a touch-typing book and started to practise, making sure that I kept my fingers on the home keys and always used the correct finger to type each letter. After lots of practice, I could touch type. I love being able to touch type. It has helped me all my life, first as a student, then in everything I have done since.

Now with computers it’s easier than ever to learn to touch type, even if QWERTY at first seems strange. There’s lots of good software to help (your school may have some), some of it feeling like a game.

Find software that you like, and put in some practice. It may seem hard at first, but persist and you will soon get good at it. Find a friend or two and do it together. Perhaps make it a competition. You’ll never regret being able to touch type.

Hello, curious kids! Have you got a question you’d like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to curiouskids@theconversation.edu.au

Please tell us your name, age and which city you live in. We won’t be able to answer every question but we will do our best.

Geoff Cumming, Emeritus Professor, La Trobe University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.