Spelling

Spelling related to the word for casting spells

· common denominator: narration, speaking

o a set of words supposed to possess magical powers

o to make one’s way letter by letter in reading

You’ll find different words for it

· spelling

o connection with speaking, narrating

o verb medieval, noun Renaissance

· orthography:

o a prescriptive term, “right” + “writing”

· spelling rules are like rules in football or like table manners, not like the laws of gravity!

· graphology

o a more neutral linguistic term for the study of a language’s writing system

· formed by analogy with words like phonology

· Crystal: a study of the linguistic contrasts that writing systems express

o grapheme is an abstract unit and usually in angle brackets:

· <s> is the grapheme, its allographs include s, long s, etc.

· spelling in angle brackets, phonemic transcription in slash brackets: <knight> /naɪt/

· we also use combinations of letters: digraph

o in OE, <sc> represented /š/ in words like <fisc>

§ aftereffect of a sound change from /sk/

· just as <hw> used to represent sequence /h^w/

o in ME, French scribes replaced it with <sh>: <fish>

English spelling is basically alphabetic

· Roman alphabet adapted to write Old English

· there should be a correspondence between graphemes and sounds

· but there aren’t as many graphemes as there are sounds

· e.g. Crystal says OE had 27 graphemes for nearly 40 phonemes

English spelling is alphabetic but not phonographic

· there isn’t a one-to-one correspondence between sounds and letters

One letter can represent many sounds, e.g. <i>

· /ɪ/ in bid, bitter

· /aɪ/ in high, fine

o <e> marks “long”

· /ə/ in sordid

o unstressed syllables

· /i/ in pizza, souvenir

o recent loanwords (post-GVS)

One sound can be represented by many graphs, e.g. /i/

· <ee> in meet

· <ea> in meat

· <ei> in receive

· <ie> in field

· <i> in pizza

E.g. /k/

· <k> before front vowels i or e in king, kernel

· <c> before other vowels (back vowels, a) or consonant in cat, corn, crappy

o karaoke looks odd because we would usually have <c> before a back vowel

· <ck> word-finally in rock, <que> word-finally in pique, <che> in ache

And letters can have functions other than representing sounds

· fine and fin, meet and met

o final <e> marks length of preceding vowel

· hug and huge, rigor and rigid; electric but electricity

o <e> and <i> mark that preceding <g> or <c> is not a stop

· breath and breathe, tooth and teethe, house but house

o <e> can indicate that the preceding consonant is voiced

English spelling is more morphographemic: tends to preserve roots of the words rather than indicate their pronunciation

· sign /saɪn/ but signature /sɪg /

· house /s/ but houses /z/

· breath /θ/ but breathe /ð/

Inflectional affixes often more visually than aurally regular

· e.g. cats and dogs: both have <s>, but it’s /s/ and /z/

· e.g.walked, climbed, and thudded: all have <-ed> for /t/, /d/ and /-əd/

Morphological regularity can override “rules”…

· judgement has established itself quite recently (Bauer, Watching English Change)

o 1900 4/11, 1990 10/3

English spelling reflects history: layers of different conventions

o Germanic base with Romance superstructure

Old English

· “overworked” letters: e.g. <s> represented /s/ and /z/

o modern spelling of house, houses

§ at the end of a word <s> represented voiceless /s/

§ between voiced sounds (in the middle of a word) represented voiced /z/

o same principle: spelling of breath, breathe, wife, wives

· “silent” letters from former word-initial “consonant clusters”

o OE cniht -> PDE knight

§ <-h> -> <-gh>

§ <cn> -> <kn>

· others: <hw> hwíl “while”

French patterns from Middle English

· in OE, <c> and <g> also “overworked” (somewhat more ambiguously)

o /k/ corn, cwen (before back vowels and consonants)

o /č/ ceosan, cild (before front vowels)

· French brought in words like cell and city: <c> /z/ before front vowels

o so <k> /k/: king, kernel

o and <qu> for /kw/ in queen

o and <ch> had to disambiguate /č/ choose, child before front vowels

§ and lots of other digraphs: <wh>, <th> for old <ð> and <þ>

· French brought in words like heir and hour: “silent h”

o /h/ lost in pronunciation in late Latin but not always in spelling

Early Modern English and after

· many loanwords from Latin (and Greek)

E.g., Patterns in English words from Greek

· <ch> for ‘chi’: chaos, archetype

· silent <p>: pneumonia, psychology, pterodactyl

· <ph> /f/: philosophy

§ often through French, which keeps <ph> (cf. Sp. <f>)

· <k>: kinetic, kaleidoscope

o if via Latin or French, <c>: cinema

Other Greek words via Latin

· Greek <k> as <c>: calligraphy, calendar

· Greek <th> as <t>: ME trone, teater

Once Renaissance scholars became aware of word origins, there was sometimes “etymological respelling”

§ e.g. to reflect Greek origins of some words borrowed via Latin and French)

o e.g. <trone> became <throne>, <teatre> <theatre>

§ more often, of French loanwords to reflect Latin origins

o e.g. <parfait> became <perfect>, <caitiff> <captive>, <aventure> <adventure>

§ pronunciation changed in these cases

o e.g. <dette> became <debt>

§ /bt/ not an allowable combination in English, so pronunciation didn’t change

Which etymology: most recent? ultimate?

· colour (English got the word from French)

· color (but it was ultimately from Latin)

Etymological respellings weren’t always complete

§ phantom but fantasy

Etymological respellings weren’t always correct: by perceived analogy with Latin scindere “to cut” we now have <sc> in

§ OE sið “scythe”

§ ME cisoirs “scissors”

Later loanwords tend to keep foreign forms

· e.g. French rendezvous

· e.g. Italian spaghetti

· e.g. Dutch yacht

· e.g. Japanese karaoke

Printing initially multiplied variation

§ an imported technology: early printers were foreign

§ line justification often achieved by adding extra letters

o Randy McLeod’s amongst and amongest (latter italic)

But spelling standardized fairly early, before major sound changes occurred

§ Silent letters retained

o knight

§ not always silent: rough

o herb

§ <r> still written in non-rhotic accents

· /h/ introduced in some varieties with the influence of the spelling: “spelling pronunciation”

§ Great vowel shift

§ same sound, different spelling: meat, meet originally different sounds: /ɛ:/ and /e:/ converge on /i/

§ same spelling, different sound: polite shows GVS, later borrowing police doesn’t

o we usually keep spelling of source language

Spelling pretty much standardized by 1700

· a few subsequent changes, e.g.

o C18th: chuse, stile, shew, compleat/complete

If anything, it’s the pronunciation that goes

· German <ch> in Bach: /x/ or /k/?

o we don’t have that fricative in English

o we are used to <ch> representing /k/ in loanwords from other languages like Greek …

Spelling can influence pronunciation

· temporarily/incorrectly: e.g. pronunciation of foreign or unfamiliar names like Reading, Gloucester

· permanently, by analogy: profile up until C17th /i/, then /aɪ/ by analogy with other GVS’d <i> words like polite

· permanently: reversal of sound changes

o restoration of /h/ in words that had lost it (or not/consistently had it in English, like herb)

o restoration of /w/ in swore and swollen (but not sword)

o in compounds like waistcoat, mastiff

Once standardization effected, deviations from uniformity symbolic

· of … use of “classical”/ “rational” spellings in C18th

· of informality (early modern private letters, modern email)

· of carelessness and stupidity

Some (acceptable) variation

· apostrophe has blurry areas: 1990s or 1990’s? VIPs or VIP’s

· what’s the plural of mango

· check out dictionaries for whether they contain imposter, judgement, vermillion

o Longman New Universal Dictionary, Collins (Graddol 344)

§ Mackinnon: English has no academy – editors, publishers

Influence of computers/internet?

· are spellcheckers spreading American spelling into Canada…

o irrelevant: “scandal service” for “scandoc service”

· more public spelling errors

o web

o informality of email

o fewer secretaries between the boss and the world

· more expressive spellings

o reflecting pronunciation: noooooo, hehehe

o use of case

· some distinctive spellings

o replacement of plural s with z to refer to pirated versions of software: tunez, gamez, pornz

· more access to typography and its expressive potential

Influence of industry

· unusual spellings (often with manipulation of upper/lower case, e.g. HarperCollins)

o memorable, trademark

o symbolic: lite

· capitalization on trendiness of lower caps

o innovative / technology /

o anti-corporate?!