How Spelling Got To Be So Difficult
Robert Allen, author of One Step Ahead: Spelling and editor of Pocket Fowler's Modern English Usage, looks back on how we ended up with such a crazy system of spelling...
More sounds than letters
All language exists as speech long before any written form
appears. We would like the spelling of words to match the way
we pronounce them, whereas in English for much of the time
it doesn't seem to correspond at all. This is partly because we
use an alphabet, called the Roman alphabet, that was originally
devised for Latin, an older language with patterns of sounds
and grammatical structures that differ from English.
There are over forty sounds in English but only twenty-six
letters to represent them. Some letters simply represent one
sound, for example f, l, m, and z. But most letters can represent
more than one sound. For example, the consonant c is pronounced
differently in the three words cake, city, and (combined
with h) church. The vowel e is different in the words den, pretty,
and patient, and sometimes it is not pronounced at all,
especially at the end of words (as in come and dance).
Letters have to double up
In order to cope with the large number of sounds, two or more
letters are often used together to form one sound: vowels as in
meet and soak and consonants as in ch, sh, and th. The same set
of letters can represent different sounds (although there are
variations in some regional accents): oo stands for three different
sounds in the words book, soon, and cooperate, and ch stands
for two different sounds in character and church.
It works the other way round, too. The same sound can be written
by different letters; for example, the words sleeve, weave,
receive, and relieve all rhyme, but the syllables that sound the
same are spelt in different ways; furthermore, two of the
spellings are the same two letters put in a different order,
which is bound to cause confusion. The -ee- sound in these
word can be written in other ways too, as in the words people,
quay, and machine.
Some letters are silent
Other letters can, in some positions, have no pronunciation at
all, for example g in words like gnome, k in words like knife, the t
in castle and the n in autumn and column, and r in hundreds of
words ending in -er and -or such as butter and anchor (except in
some varieties of English and in all varieties when they are followed
by a word beginning with a vowel).
Pronunciation has changed
Some spelling difficulties have arisen
because the pronunciation of words has
changed over the centuries since they
were first written down, so that the mismatch
between pronunciation and
spelling has widened.
The most far-reaching of these changes is
known as the Great Vowel Shift, which
took place in the fourteenth century in
the lifetime of the poet Chaucer. During
this process, which was remarkably rapid,
the number of 'long' vowels (for example
the one in heed as distinct from the one in
head) was reduced from seven to the five
we use today (in the words bean, barn,
born, boon, and burn). Before this change,
the word life was pronounced as we now
pronounce leaf, and name was pronounced
as two syllables to rhyme with farmer.
After the change, the spellings stayed the
same, which explains why we spell so
many words with an e at the end that we
do not pronounce any more.
Words from Anglo-Saxon
The reason for all these complications lies
partly in the way English has developed
over many centuries, drawing on many
other languages to build up its stock of
words. A lot of the words we use today are
genuinely English in the sense that they
come from Anglo-Saxon, the language
spoken in Britain from the fifth to the
eleventh centuries: examples include go,
good, and house. But many others come
from other languages.
Words from Latin and Greek
When the Normans conquered England at the Battle of Hastings
in 1066 they brought with them a form of French that became
the official language of the court and gradually infiltrated the
language of general use, producing a form that is called Middle
English. The ultimate sources of these words were Latin and
Greek, and in English many of them are more formal in use,
like commence and purchase. Words of this kind often survive
alongside older words derived from Anglo-Saxon which are
used in everyday English, like begin and buy.
Many of these words are spelt in a way that is close to the original
forms, and this accounts for the strange appearance of
words like castle, column, and foreign.
The spread of the Norman language affected the spelling of
existing English words too: queen, for example, is the Norman
spelling of a word that in Anglo-Saxon was spelt cwen.
Words from other languages
In more recent times, English has borrowed words from many
other languages. Some of these words have changed their form
to look like English words: for example cockroach from Spanish
cucaracha. Others have retained their original spelling: for
example gnu (from an African language, pronounced noo) and
karate (from Japanese, pronounced ka-rah-ti).
Author: Robert Allen
Date: 01/07/2002
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