Spelling rules need updating, not scrapping

Adam   Wed Aug 20, 2008 6:27 pm GMT
Here's an article from The Economist magazine about English spelling.....



English spelling

You write potato, I write ghoughpteighbteau

Aug 14th 2008
From The Economist print edition

The rules need updating, not scrapping


GHOTI and tchoghs may not immediately strike readers as staples of the British diet; and even those most enamoured of written English’s idiosyncrasies may wince at this tendentious rendering of “fish and chips”.

Yet the spelling, easily derived from other words*, highlights the shortcomings of English orthography. This has long bamboozled foreigners and natives alike, and may underlie the national test results released on August 12th which revealed that almost a third of English 14-year-olds cannot read properly.

One solution, suggested recently by Ken Smith of the Buckinghamshire New University, is to accept the most common misspellings as variants rather than correct them. Mr Smith is too tolerant, but he is right that something needs to change. Due partly to its mixed Germanic and Latin origins, English spelling is strikingly inconsistent.

Three things have exacerbated this confusion. The Great Vowel Shift in the 15th and 16th centuries altered the pronunciation of many words but left their spelling unchanged; and as Masha Bell, an independent literacy researcher, notes, the 15th-century advent of printing presses initially staffed by non-English speakers helped to magnify the muddle. Second, misguided attempts to align English spelling with (often imagined) Latin roots (debt and debitum; island and insula) led to the introduction of superfluous “silent” letters. Third, despite interest in spelling among figures as diverse as Benjamin Franklin, Prince Philip and the Mormons, English has never, unlike Spanish, Italian and French, had a central regulatory authority capable of overseeing standardisation.

Yet as various countries have found, identifying a problem and solving it are different matters: spelling arouses surprising passions. Residents in Cologne once called the police after a hairdresser put up a sign advertising Haarflege, rather than the correct Haarpflege (hair care). Measures to simplify German spelling were rejected by newspapers such as the Frankfurter Allgemeine, and defeated in a referendum in Schleswig-Holstein (though later endorsed by its legislature). A similar fate befell the Dutch, when opponents of the government’s 1996 Green Book on spelling (Groene Boekje) released a rival Witte Boekje. French reforms in the 1990s didn’t get off the runway, despite being presented as mere “rectifications”, and attempts this year to bring European and Brazilian Portuguese into line were denounced in Portugal as capitulation to its powerful ex-colony.

There are linguistic reasons too why spelling reform is tricky to undertake. Written language is more than a phonetic version of its spoken cousin: it contains etymological and morphological clues to meaning too. So although spelling English more phonetically might make it easier to read, it might also make it harder to understand. Moreover, as Mari Jones of Cambridge University points out, differences in regional pronunciation mean that introducing a “phonetic” spelling of English would benefit only people from the region whose pronunciation was chosen as the accepted norm. And, she adds, it would need continual updating to accommodate any subsequent changes in pronunciation.

Yes despite these concerns, some changes are worth considering; it takes more than twice as long to learn to read English as it does to read most other west European languages, according to a 2003 study led by Philip Seymour of Dundee University. Standardising rules on doubled consonants—now more or less bereft of logic—would be a start.

Removing erroneous silent letters would also help. And as George Bernard Shaw observed, suppressing superfluous letters will in time reduce the waste of resources and trees. In an era of global warming, that is not to be sniffed at.

economist.com
Adam   Wed Aug 20, 2008 6:28 pm GMT
*Fish: gh as in tough, o as in women, ti as in nation (courtesy of GB Shaw). Chips: tch as in match, o as in women, gh as in hiccough.
Guest   Wed Aug 27, 2008 6:11 pm GMT
Learners are really stumbling over English because Hiccough isn't spelled Hiccup (except in most cases it is)
Guest   Wed Aug 27, 2008 6:18 pm GMT
Of course English does have some odd spellings but why pick on an extreme and solitary example like that?
Guest   Thu Aug 28, 2008 8:08 pm GMT
Yo pienso que el ingles deberia crear una academia que regule su idioma como la del español o el frances.
Skippy   Thu Aug 28, 2008 10:19 pm GMT
Interesting article. I've seen the "ghoti" spelling before (there's a band called Ghoti Hook, but I believe they pronounce it /goti/) but not the 'tchoghs.'
guest2   Fri Aug 29, 2008 3:18 am GMT
The "ghoti" example is funny, but, as others have pointed out, an impossible example for spelling "fish." 'gh' pronounced as 'f' only occurs at the end of words. 'ti' pronounced as 'sh' only occurs in the '-tion' ending. And I don't know of many places besides "women" where 'o' is pronounced as 'i.'

I'll be the first to admit that English orthography is bizarre--I marvel at foreigners who master it. But there are at least SOME patterns to it, which the "ghoti" example ignores.

As for spelling reform--good luck. Just trying to reconcile the differences between American and British pronunciations would be a great battle.
Moionfire   Fri Aug 29, 2008 4:25 am GMT
the differences between GA and RP are not too great, as to make spelling reform impossible. However, other english accents and american accents vary greatly...
guest3   Tue Sep 02, 2008 2:46 pm GMT
G.L. Brook in his "a History of the English Language":

"... the pronunciation of English is constantly changing and we have reason to be grateful that spelling is not constantly changing along with it."
Travis   Tue Sep 02, 2008 3:33 pm GMT
>>the differences between GA and RP are not too great, as to make spelling reform impossible. However, other english accents and american accents vary greatly...<<

And then the question is, would we want to explicitly make many dialects whose pronunciations of many words are different from those in GA and RP explicitly non-standard by actually changing English orthography to reflect just GA and RP?
Damian in Edinburgh   Tue Sep 02, 2008 9:04 pm GMT
I am an ardent member of SPEL......the acronym for the Society for the Protection of the English Language.

Our stark warning to anybody out there with schemes and plans to meddle around with the English Language do so at their peril! Leave well alone. It's fine as it is.

Of course I speak purely from a British perspective, and this dire warning from all of us in SPEL is directed towards any such devious schemers and plotters and planners intent on any form of change or revision apropos the English Language as it exists in the United Kingdom, the very birthplace of the Language.

Other speakers of the Language elsewhere across the word are, of course, perfectly at liberty to do what they wish with their own versions of English, and devise and change spellings and goodness knows what else to their hearts' content. We will learn to recognise them but will not replicate them, much as happens already really, so it's nae fash anyway! ;-)

NB: SPEL doesn't really exist as such, but there are of course several groups dedicated to the preservation, protection and promotion of the English Language, some even having sub groups similarly protecting regional EL dialects within the British Isles. Scots is one such, naturally.
Travis   Tue Sep 02, 2008 9:10 pm GMT
>>NB: SPEL doesn't really exist as such, but there are of course several groups dedicated to the preservation, protection and promotion of the English Language, some even having sub groups similarly protecting regional EL dialects within the British Isles. Scots is one such, naturally.<<

The thing is that it seems that the various Anglic dialects spoken throughout the British Isles, including both Scots dialects and many rural Anglic dialects spoken in England itself, are in much more need for protection and preservation than, say, English English or Scottish English as wholes are.
Damian in Edinburgh   Tue Sep 02, 2008 10:49 pm GMT
But there are groups of people who take the "preservation" of standard English English (or Scottish English) very seriously indeed. By that I mean they are absolutely opposed to any attempts to "simplify" standard English as we know it, such as possible spelling reforms and changes to rules of grammar of any kind. Call them traditionalists if you like, because in effect that is exactly what they are.

However, aside from deliberate spelling and grammar reforms, the Language itself continues to evolve in different ways with the passage of time anyway, mostly in the way it is spoken, as we all know. That's inevitable I reckon. Even within my own Scots dialect* I speak noticeably differently from the way my Scottish grandfather does, and I would guess even more differently from the way his grandfather spoke.

*I use this only when I feel I need to and in the right place, of course. I never use it at work, for instance.
eito(*:*)   Wed Sep 03, 2008 6:04 am GMT
>>Guest Wed Aug 27, 2008 6:11 pm GMT
Learners are really stumbling over English because Hiccough isn't spelled Hiccup (except in most cases it is) <<

>>Guest Wed Aug 27, 2008 6:18 pm GMT
Of course English does have some odd spellings but why pick on an extreme and solitary example like that? <<


Because it's an easy target. OUGH-related words ar simply odd.

As for "hiccup", it has been accepted alreddy. So let's use it insted of "hiccough". Let English evolve so that it will be easier than it is!