ETL112: KAL: Reading 2.1
34.4. Problems of English Spelling
Although English uses an alphabetic writing system, it doesn’t seem to use it
very well: the problems of English spelling are notorious, as illustrated in Box
34c. Basically there are two types of problems:
(a) Some letters can represent more than one sound, and sometimes no
sound at all; for example, the s in see does sound like an “s”, but that in sugar
sounds like “sh”, that in rise sounds like “z”, that in measure sounds
like—how shall we write it? “zh”?—and that in island is silent. The same is
true of digraphs, i.e. combinations of two letters; for example, the digraph ea
represents one sound in bead, another in dead, and a third in idea. The fact that
the digraphs ou and gh can both have several pronunciations results in the
variation heard in through, thorough, bough, ought, cough, hiccough, and tough.
On occasion this makes it possible for the same spelling to represent two
words with different pronunciations: wind has one pronunciation in the wind
blows and another in wind the watch, for example. Such words are called
homographs, from homo- ‘same’ and -graph ‘writing’. Other examples include
bow, row, wound, read, lead, use and house (both have a “s” sound as a noun
but a “z” sound as a verb), resign (either ‘quit’ or ‘sign again’), coop (one of
the pronunciations is sometimes shown by adding a hyphen, thus co-op), and
sake (although the Japanese beverage is often written as saké).
Many other homographs result from the fact that stress is not shown in
English spelling. For example, such spellings as digest actually represent two
words, one a noun with stress on the first syllable (as in I read the 'digest) and
the other a verb with stress on the second syllable (as in But I didn’t di'gest
it). Other examples abound: e.g. contest, permit, present, progress, record, reject,
secret, suspect.
(b) Some sounds can be represented by more than one letter: for example,
the “sh” sound is written as sh in she, as s in sugar, as ss in mission, as ti in
nation, as ch in chic, and as sch in schwa. As a result there are many words in
English that sound alike but are spelled differently, e.g. knows/noes/nose,
I/eye/aye, seed/cede, choose/chews, wood/would, phial/file, past/passed, sold/soled,
and right/rite/write/wright. Such sets of words are called homophones, from
homo- ‘same’ and -phone ‘sound’.
BOX 34C. WARE WOOD WEE BEE WITH OUT HOUR SPELL CZECH?
Fry day 13 Awe gust
Deer Farther,
Too day eye halve en ex sell ant sup prize four ewe. My daze of pour righting halve
fine lea past bee cause weave in stalled gnu spelling chequers on awl of hour awe fuss
come pewters. Aft er aye Finnish this let her on thee pea sea hear aisle ewes thee
check her two sea weather theirs en knee miss take, sew icon core wrecked as kneaded.
Well watt dew ewe no. Thee wonder full soft wear tolled me theirs knot eh sing gull
era. Aye dint real lies sit, butt eye mussed bee imp proving grate lee. Thee chequer is eh
reel bless sing, witch every won mussed Shirley prays.
Isle rite ewe moor necks weak sum thyme.
Yore sun,
Pall
34. WRITING SYSTEMS 269
These factors certainly make it a bit more difficult for people to learn to read
and write English, but at the same time the writing system is not entirely
unsystematic, and to some extent the problems are balanced by certain
advantages. One of the biggest advantages is that English spelling is fairly
consistent across many dialects. If we spelled words in ways that matched up
better with their sounds, we’d see great differences in spelling between
Australians and Americans, for example, and even between speakers of
different dialects within America alone, or within Britain alone.
Let’s consider some specific examples. In Australia, such pairs of words as
court and caught sound alike, so presumably they should be spelled the same,
perhaps as cort, to follow the model of such words as port and short. In America,
on the other hand, they sound different and so should be spelled differently,
perhaps as cort (for court) and cawt (for caught). The latter is more in the
direction of how an Australian pronounces the word cot, while the way an
American pronounces cot is more like the way an Australian pronounces cart.
To an Australian the first vowel of both father and farther is like that in cart, but
to an American the first vowel in father is like that in cot, and the one in farther is
like that in cart. It’s starting to get complicated, isn’t it. Maybe we need a set of
spellings like the following:
(1) Current Spelling “Australian spelling” “American spelling”
court cort cort
caught cort cawt
cot cot caht
father farther fahther
farther farther farther
cart cart cart
cat cat cat
This isn’t the only possible way of revising the spellings, but the point should
be clear: whatever you do to make the spellings consistent for any one English
variety, you’ll need some different spellings to make them consistent for other
varieties. Accordingly, if everyone started spelling words the way they said
them, it could become a bit more difficult to read things from other Englishspeaking
countries—although possibly no more difficult than understanding
the different spoken varieties.
The fact that we don’t spell words quite as we say them thus may make it
somewhat easier to share written works across all English varieties. Chinese is
in a similar position: some pairs of spoken Chinese varieties are not mutually
intelligible, but because the writing is logographic—based on meaning rather
than sound—there is little problem in communicating through writing. Indeed,
even though the Japanese speak an entirely different language, even they can
get quite a lot out of written Chinese because of their familiarity with many of
the same characters.
Another advantage of our orthography is that it provides a more consistent
spelling for some related forms; in technical terms, it allows the allomorphs (or
variants) of some morphemes to be spelled the same even though they are
pronounced differently. For example, in many words we write the plural suffix
as -s whether it actually sounds like “s”, as in cat-s, or whether it actually
sounds like “z”, as in day-s (which sounds just like daze). Notice also how the
vowels a in secretary and o in territory may sound the same (many Australians
do not pronounce them at all), but that you can clearly hear the difference in
such related forms as secretarial and territorial. Similarly, even though the ence
270 G. SOUNDS AND SPELLING
in sentence may sound just like the ance in substance, you can hear the difference
between the vowels in the related forms sentential and substantial.
If we wrote such words as they sound, we might write the plural suffix as -s
on cat-s but as -z on day-z. We might also write something like sekrutree but
sekrutareeul, terutree but terutoreeul, sentuns but sentenchul, and substuns but
substanchul. There would thus be a bit less consistency in the spelling of each
morpheme. Since it’s the same inconsistency as found in the pronunciation of
each morpheme, however, this may not represent any real problem. What do
you think?
To some extent the problems with English spelling are due to the fact that
the last big changes were to suit the way English was pronounced in the
fifteenth century. Even then it wasn’t perfect, and that since then we’ve
changed our pronunciations considerably without changing our spellings to
match. Spelling systems that have been developed for various languages more
recently, such as for Australian Aboriginal languages, are usually far more
consistent in the way they match up with the sounds of the languages.
34.5. Summary
A writing system, or orthography, can have symbols representing words
(logographic), syllables (a syllabary), or consonants and perhaps vowels
(alphabetic). English uses an alphabetic system which allows homographs
because the same letter can represent different sounds and homophones
because different letters can represent the same sound.
Black, Paul 1995, The Dance of Language, Centre for Studies of Language in Education, Northern
Territory University, Darwin.