English Spelling
English spelling can be difficult to guess because our words come from so many different origins. Below are four tips regarding why we spell words the way that we do in the English language.
1. Spelling was established while big pronunciation changes were underway.
Before the printing press came along, there was a lot of flexibility in English spelling. These are some of the ways beauty used to be spelled: bealte, buute, beauaute, bewtee, bewte, beaute, and beaultye. People did their own thing, trying their best to match up tradition with current pronunciations. But after the printing press came to England in the late 1400s, texts could be spread more widely, and printers started to standardized spelling. The unlucky thing for English spelling is that, during the very same time, huge changes in pronunciation were happening. Middle English became known as Modern English. When this period was over, people had stopped pronouncing the k in knee, the g in gnaw, the w in write, the l in talk, and the b in lamb. They had also stopped using the back-of-the-throat sound (represented by the ch in German words like ach!) that had been spelled by scribes with gh and had been pronounced in words like night, laugh, thought, and eight. But by the time all those sound changes were widespread, the spellings for those words had been established.
There was also a massive shift in the vowel system during that period. This change is called Great Vowel Shift, and by the time it was over, we had settled on spellings that reflected a mix of the old system and the new. So we get one spelling for many vowel sounds — ea in knead, bread, wear, and great — and multiples spellings for one vowel sound — due and dew, so and sew.
2. The literate class used French until the 15th century.
When the Normans invaded England in 1066, they brought their own words with them. While the general population carried on speaking English, French was used in universities and the courts, eventually leaving its imprint on the whole of English vocabulary. Most French words from this period were adapted to English pronunciation and spelling (attend, blame, enchant, flower, farm, join, lesson, minister, proof, etc.), but plenty retain traces of their origin that cause little spelling headaches today: people, jeopardy, muscle, marriage, autumn, etc.
3. It was cool to change spellings during the classical craze.
During the 16th and 17th centuries, a craze for the ideas and artifacts of antiquity caused some writers to introduce spellings for English words based on Latin and Greek, even when those words had never been pronounces according to those spellings. They thought it looked more educated and fancy to write February (on analogy with Latin Februarius) rather than Feverere, and receipt (like Latin receptum) rather than receyt. This is also how debt and doubt got their b, salmon and solder got their l, and indict got its c.
The re-Latinized words did have a very distant connection, through French, with the Latin words they were based on, even though they were borrowed into English without the extra sounds. But sometimes re-Latinizing introduced letters that had no business being there on any etymological grounds. That s in island, for example, never had any reason to be there. The word came from Old English iglund, and was spelled illond, ylonde, or ilande until someone picked up the s from Latin insula and stuck it in, making the word more complicated than it had to be.
Other scholars complicated perfectly clear words by making them look more Greek. So asma, diaria, and fleme became asthma, diarrhea, and phlegm.
4. We let words keep their spellings when we borrow them.
As presented in #2 above, English got a lot of words from French after the invasion of 1066. Around 700 years later, we willingly borrowed a whole slew of other words from French, many of them referring to the finer things in life. We let them keep their spellings, but we pronounce them our own way, so now we’ve got words like bouillon, casserole, vinaigrette, protege, ballet, bouquet, boutique, silhouette, etiquette, faux pas, champagne, and hors d’oeuvres.
Of course, French isn’t the only language we’ve borrowed from. When we see something we’ve got use for, we take it as is. Guerrilla, pinata, llama, angst, kitsch, fjord, Czech, gnocchi and zucchini have been welcomed into the fold. It’s the least English can do, as it spreads around the globe: Let the globe spread into English as well.
Kayla | 2016
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/. Adapted from John Nelson