- English orthography
English orthography is the alphabetic spelling system used by the
English language . English orthography, like other alphabetic orthographies, uses a set of rules that generally governs how speech sounds are represented in writing. English has relatively complicated spelling rules when compared to otherlanguages withalphabet ic orthographies. Because of the complex history of the English language, nearly every sound can be legitimately spelled in more than one way, and many spellings can be pronounced in more than one way.Function of the letters
"Note: In the following discussion, only one or two common pronunciations of American and British English varieties are used in this article for each word cited. Other regional pronunciations may be possible for some words, but indicating all possible regional variants in the article is impractical."
Phonemic representation
Like most alphabetic systems, letters in English orthography may represent a particular sound. For example, the word "cat" (pronounced IPA|/kæt/) consists of three letters "c", "a", and "t", in which "c" represents the sound IPA|/k/, "a" the sound IPA|/æ/, and "t" the sound IPA|/t/.
Single letters or multiple sequences of letters may provide this function. Thus, the single letter "c" in the word "cat" represents the single sound IPA|/k/. In the word "ship" (pronounced IPA|/ʃɪp/), the digraph "sh" (two letters) represents the sound IPA|/ʃ/. In the word "ditch", the three letters "tch" represent the sound IPA|/tʃ/.
Less commonly, a single letter can represent more than one sound. The most common example is the letter "x", which often represents more than one sound as in the
prefix "ex-" where it represents the consonant cluster IPA|/ks/ (for example, in the word "ex-wife", pronounced IPA|/ɛkswaɪf/).The same letter (or sequence of letters) may indicate different sounds when the letter occurs in different positions. For instance, the digraph "gh" represents the sound IPA|/f/ at the end of single-
syllable , single-morpheme words, such as "cough" (pronounced IPA|/kɔf/ in many dialects ofAmerican English ). At the beginning of syllables (i.e. thesyllable onset ), the digraph "gh" represents the sound IPA|/g/, such as in the word "ghost" (pronounced IPA|/gost/ or IPA|/gəʊst/). Furthermore, the sound value represented by a particular letter (or letters) is often restricted by its position within the word. Thus, the digraph "gh" never represents the sound IPA|/f/ in syllable onsets and never represents the sound IPA|/g/ insyllable coda s. (Incidentally, this shows that "ghoti " does not follow English spelling rules to sound like "fish".)Word origin
Another type of spelling characteristic is related to word origin. For example, when representing a vowel, the letter "y" in non-word-final positions represents the sound IPA|/ɪ/ in some words borrowed from Greek (reflecting an original
upsilon ), whereas the letter usually representing this sound in non-Greek words is the letter "i". Thus, the word "myth" (pronounced IPA|/mɪθ/) is of Greek origin, while "pith" (pronounced IPA|/pɪθ/) is a Germanic word. Other examples include "th" representing IPA|/t/ (which is usually represented by "t"), "ph" representing IPA|/f/ (which is usually represented by "f"), and "ch" representing IPA|/k/ (which is usually represented by "c" or "k") — the use of these spellings for these sounds often mark words that have been borrowed from Greek.Some, such as Brengelman (1970), have suggested that, in addition to this marking of word origin, these spellings indicate a more formal level of style or register in a given text, although Rollins (2004) finds this point to be exaggerated as there would many exceptions where a word with one of these spellings, such as "ph" for IPA|/f/ (like "telephone"), could occur in an informal text.
Homophone differentiation
Letters are also used to distinguish between homophones (words with the same pronunciation) that would otherwise have the same pronunciation and spelling but different meanings. The words "hour" and "our" are pronounced identically in some dialects (as IPA|/aʊə/ or IPA|/aʊr/). However, they are distinguished from each other orthographically by the addition of the letter "h". Spoken language often creates subtle difference to alleviate confusion, "our" often can if desired be pronounced like "are". Another example of this is the homophones "plain" and "plane" where both are pronounced IPA|/pleɪn/, but are marked with two different orthographic representations of the vowel IPA|/eɪ/. Often this is because of the historical pronunciation of each word where, over time, two separate sounds become the same but the different spellings remain: "plane" used to be pronounced IPA|/pleːn/, but the IPA|/eː/ sound merged with the IPA|/eɪ/ sound in "plain", making "plain" and "plane" homonyms.
In written language, this may help to resolve potential
ambiguities that would arise otherwise (cf. "He's breaking the car" vs. "He's braking the car"). This can be seen in a positive light since withwritten language (unlikespoken language ) the reader usually has no recourse to ask the writer for clarification (whereas in aconversation , the listener can ask the speaker about lexical uncertainties). Some proponents ofspelling reform view homophones as undesirable and would prefer that they be eliminated. Doing so, however, would increase orthographic ambiguities that would need to be resolved via the linguistic .Marking sound changes in other letters
Another function of English letters is to provide information about other aspects of pronunciation or the word itself. Rollins (2004) uses the term "markers" for letters with this function. Letters may mark different types of information. One common type of marking is that of a different pronunciation of another letter within the word. An example of this is the letter "e" in the word "cottage" (pronounced IPA|/kɒtɪdʒ/ or IPA|/kɑtɪdʒ/). Here "e" indicates that the preceding "g" should represent the sound IPA|/dʒ/. This contrasts with the more common value of "g" in word-final position as the sound IPA|/g/, such as in "tag" (pronounced IPA|/tæɡ/).
A particular letter may have more than one pronunciation-marking role. Besides the marking of word-final "g" as indicating IPA|/dʒ/ as in "cottage", the letter "e" may also mark an altered pronunciation for other vowels. In the pair "ban" and "bane", the "a" of "ban" has the value IPA|/æ/, whereas the "a" of "bane" is marked by the "e" as having the value IPA|/eɪ/.
Functionless letters
Other letters have no linguistic function. For example, there is a general "graphotactic" constraint in English orthography against words that end in the letter "v". Thus, in order to satisfy this constraint, syllable-final "v" is followed by the letter "e", such as in the word "give". Spellings such as "rev" and "slav" are extremely rare.
Multiple functionality
A given letter or (letters) may have dual functions. For example, the letter "i" in the word "cinema" has a sound-representing function (representing the sound IPA|/ɪ/) and a pronunciation-marking function (marking the "c" as having the value IPA|/s/ opposed to the value IPA|/k/). For another example, see Pronunciation of English "th".
Underlying representation
Like many other alphabetic orthographies, English spelling does not represent non-contrastive
phonetic sounds (that is, sub-phonemic sounds). The fact that the letter "t" is pronounced with aspiration IPA| [tʰ] at the beginning of words is never indicated in the spelling, and, indeed, this phonetic detail is probably not noticeable to the average native speaker not trained in the phonetics. However, unlike some orthographies, English orthography often represents a very abstractunderlying representation (ormorphophonemic form) of English words (Rollins 2004: 16-19; Chomsky & Halle 1968; Chomsky 1970)." [T] he postulated underlying forms are systematically related to the conventional orthography...and are, as is well known, related to the underlying forms of a much earlier historical stage of the language. There has, in other words, been little change in lexical representation since
Middle English , and, consequently, we would expect...that lexical representation would differ very little from dialect to dialect inModern English ... [and] that conventional orthography is probably fairly close to optimal for all modern English dialects, as well as for the attested dialects of the past several hundred years." (Chomsky & Halle 1968:54)In these cases, a given
morpheme (i.e. a component of a word) is represented with a single spelling despite the fact that it is pronounced differently (i.e. has different surface representations) in different environments. An example is thepast tense suffix "-ed", which may be pronounced variously as IPA| [t] , IPA| [d] , or IPA| [ɪd] (for example, "dip" IPA| [dɪp] , "dipped" IPA| [dɪpt] , "boom" IPA| [bum] , "boomed" IPA| [bumd] , "loot" IPA| [lut] , "looted" IPA| [lutɪd] ). Because these different pronunciations of "-ed" can be predicted by a fewphonological rules, only a single spelling is needed in the orthography.Another example involves the vowel differences (with accompanying stress pattern changes) in several related words. For instance, the word "photographer" is derived from the word "photograph" by adding the derivational suffix "-er". When this suffix is added, the vowel pronunciations change:
:
For instance, the letter "a" can represent the lax vowel IPA|/æ/, tense IPA|/eɪ/, heavy IPA|/ɑr/ or IPA|/ɑː/, or tense-r IPA|/ɛr/ or IPA|/ɛə/. Heavy and tense-r vowels are the respective lax and tense counterparts followed by the letter "r".
Tense vowels are distinguished from lax vowels with a "silent" "e" letter that is added at the end of words. Thus, the letter "a" in "hat" is lax IPA|/æ/, but when the letter "e" is added in the word "hate" the letter "a" is tense IPA|/eɪ/. Similarly, heavy and tense-r vowels pattern together: the letters "ar" in "car" are heavy IPA|/ɑː(r)/, the letters "ar" followed by silent "e" in the word "care" are IPA|/ɛə(r)/. The letter "u" represents two different vowel patterns, one being IPA|/ʌ - ju - ə(r) - jʊ(r)/, the other IPA|/ʊ - u - ʊ(r)/. There is no distinction between heavy and tense-r vowels with the letter "o", and the letter "u" in the IPA|/ʊ-u-ʊ(r)/ pattern does not have a heavy vowel member.
Besides silent "e", another strategy for indicating tense and tense-r vowels, is the addition of another orthographic vowel forming a digraph. In this case, the first vowel is usually the main vowel while the second vowel is the "marking" vowel. For example, the word "man" has a lax "a" pronounced IPA|/æ/, but with the addition of "i" (as the digraph "ai") in the word "main" the "a" is marked as tense and pronounced IPA|/eɪ/. These two strategies produce words that are spelled differently but pronounced identically, as in "mane" (silent "e" strategy), "main" (digraph strategy) and "Maine" (both strategies). The use of two different strategies relates to the function of distinguishing between words that would otherwise be homonyms.
Besides the 20 basic vowel spellings, Rollins (2004) has a reduced vowel category (representing the sounds IPA|/ə, ɪ/) and a miscellaneous category (representing the sounds IPA|/ɔɪ, aʊ, aɪr, aʊr/ and IPA|/j/+V, IPA|/w/+V, V+V).
Consonants
Notes:
*The dash has two different meanings. A dash after the letter indicates that it "must" be at the beginning of a "syllable", eg j- in jumper and ajar. A dash before the letter indicates that it "cannot" be at the beginning of a "word", eg -ck in sick and ticket.
*More specific rules take precedence over more general ones, eg 'c- before e, i or y' takes precedence over 'c'.
*Where the letter combination is described as 'word-final',
*The dialect used is RP.
*Isolated foreign borrowings are excluded.
*This relies highly on knowledge of where the stress in a word is, but English has no consistent way of showing stress.
Diacritics
English includes some words that can be written with accent marks. These words have mostly been imported from other languages, usually French. But it is increasingly rare for writers of English to actually use the accent marks for common words, even in very formal writing. The strongest tendency to retain the accent is in words that are atypical of English morphology and therefore still perceived as slightly foreign. For example, "café" and "pâté" both have a pronounced final "e", which would be "silent" by the normal English pronunciation rules.
Some examples: appliqué, attaché, blasé, bric-à-brac, brötchen,Included in Some words such as "rôle" and "hôtel" were first seen with accents when they were borrowed into English, but now the accent is almost never used. The words were considered very French borrowings when first used in English, even accused by some of being foreign phrases used where English alternatives would suffice, but today their French origin is largely forgotten. The accent on "élite" has disappeared from most publications today, though "Time" and the "New Yorker" magazines still use it. For some words such as "soupçon" however, the only spelling found in English dictionaries (the Italics, with appropriate accents, are generally applied to foreign terms that are uncommonly used in or have not been assimilated into English: for example, " It was formerly common in English to use a diaeresis mark to indicate a hiatus: for example, coöperate, daïs, reëlect. One publication that still uses a diaeresis for this function is the "New Yorker" magazine. However, this is increasingly rare in modern English. Nowadays the diaeresis is normally left out (cooperate), or a hyphen is used (co-operate). It is, however, still common in loanwords such as naïve and noël. Written accents are also used occasionally in In certain older texts (typically British), the use of ligatures is common in words such as archæology, diarrhœa, and encyclopædia. Such words have Irregularities The English spelling system, compared to the systems used in other languages, is quite irregular and complex. Although French presents a similar degree of difficulty when "encoding" (writing), English is more difficult when "decoding" (reading)Fact|date=February 2007. English has never had any formal regulating authority, like the Spanish The only significant exceptions were the reforms of Besides the quirks the English spelling system has inherited from its past, there are other idiosyncrasies in spelling that make it tricky to learn. English contains 24-27 (depending on dialect) separate Of course, such a philosophy can be taken too far. For instance, there was also a period when the spellings of words was altered in what is now regarded as a misguided attempt to make them conform to what were perceived to be the etymological origins of the words. For example, the letter "b" was added to "debt" in an attempt to link it to the Latin "debitum", and the letter "s" in "island" is a misplaced attempt to link it to Latin "insula" instead of the Norse word "igland", which is the true origin of the English word. The letter "p" in " Furthermore, in most recent The spelling of English continues to evolve. Many loanwords come from languages where the pronunciation of vowels corresponds to the way they were pronounced in Old English, which is similar to the Italian or Spanish pronunciation of the vowels, and is the value the vowel symbols [a] , [e] , [i] , [o] , and [u] have in the Commercial advertisers have also had an effect on English spelling. In attempts to differentiate their products from others, they introduce new or simplified spellings like "lite" instead of "light", "thru" instead of "through", "smokey" instead of "smoky" (for "smokey bacon" flavour crisps), and "rucsac" instead of "rucksack". The spellings of personal names have also been a source of spelling innovations: affectionate versions of women's names that sound the same as men's names have been spelled differently: Nikki and Nicky, Toni and Tony, Jo and Joe. As examples of the idiosyncratic nature of English spelling, the combination "ou" can be pronounced in at least seven different ways: /ə/ in "famous", /ɜː/ in "journey", /aʊ/ in "loud", /ʊ/ in "should", /uː/ in "you", /aʊə/ in "flour", /ɔː/ in "tour"; and the vowel sound /iː/ in "me" can be spelt in at least ten different ways: "paediatric", "me", "seat", "seem", "ceiling", "people", "chimney", "machine", "siege", "phoenix". (These examples assume a more-or-less standard non-regional British English accent. Other accents will vary.) Sometimes everyday speakers of English change a counterintuitive pronunciation simply because it is counterintuitive. Changes like this are not usually seen as "standard", but can become standard if used enough. An example is the word "miniscule", which still competes with its original spelling of "minuscule", though this might also be because of analogy with the word "mini". "Ough" words The most notorious group of letters in the English language, "ough", is commonly pronounced at least ten different ways, six of which are illustrated in the construct, "Though the tough cough and hiccough plough him through", which is quoted by * "though": /IPA|oʊ/ as in "toe"; History of the English spelling system Throughout the The regular spelling system of Old English was swept away by the For example, the sound IPA|/ʌ/, normally written "u", is spelled with an "o" in "son", "love", "come", etc., due to Norman spelling conventions which prohibited writing "u" before "v", "m", "n" due to the graphical confusion that would result. ("v", "u", "n" were identically written with two minims in Norman handwriting; "w" was written as two "u" letters; "m" was written with three minims, hence "mm" looked like "vun", "nvu", "uvu", etc.) Similarly, spelling conventions also prohibited final "v". Hence the identical spellings of the three different vowel sounds in "love", "grove" and "prove" are due to ambiguity in the There was also a series of linguistic sound changes towards the end of this period, including the By the time See also * References Bibliography External links * [http://www.all-about-spelling.com Teaching Spelling] - Information on teaching English spelling
Wikimedia Foundation.
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* "tough": /IPA|ʌf/ as in "cuff";
* "cough": IPA|/ɒf, ʌf/ as in "off";
* "hiccough" (a now uncommon variant of "hiccup"): /IPA|ʌp/ as in "up";
* "plough" (
* "through": /IPA|u/ as in "boo".
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* Albrow, K. H. (1972). "The English writing system: Notes towards a description". Schools Council Program in Linguistics and English Teaching, papers series 2 (No. 2). London: Longmans, for the Schools Council.
* Aronoff, Mark. (1978). An English spelling convention. "Linguistic Inquiry", "9", 299-303.
* Brengelman, Fred H. (1970). Sounds and letters in American English. In "The English language: An introduction for teachers" (pp. 77-98). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
* Brengelman, Fred H. (1970). Generative phonology and the teaching of spelling. "English Journal", "59", 1113-1118.
* Brengelman, Fred H. (1971). English spelling as a marker of register and style. "English Studies", "52", 201-209.
* Brengelman, Fred H. (1980). Orthoepists, printers, and the rationalization of English spelling. "Journal of English and German Philology", "79", 332-354.
* Carney, Edward. (1994). "A survey of English spelling". London: Routledge.
* Chomsky, Carol. (1970). Reading, writing and phonology. "Harvard Educational Review", "40" (2), 287-309.
* Chomsky, Noam; &
* Cummings, D. W. (1988). "American English spelling: An informal description". Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press.
* Derwing, Bruce; Priestly, Tom; Rochet, Bernard. (1987). The description of spelling-to-sound relationships in English, French and Russian: Progress, problems and prospects. In P. Luelsdorff (Ed.), "Orthography and phonology". Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
* Dixon, Robert. (1977). "Morphographic spelling program". Eugene, OR: Engelman-Becker Press.
* Emerson, Ralph. (1997). English spelling and its relation to sound. "American Speech", "72" (3), 260-288.
* Hanna, Paul; Hanna, Jean; Hodges, Richard; & Rudorf, Edwin. (1966). "Phoneme-grapheme correspondences as cues to spelling improvement". Washington, D.C.: US Department of Health, Education and Welfare.
* Jespersen, Otto. (1909). "A modern English grammar on historical principles: Sounds and spellings" (Part 1). Heidelberg: C. Winter.
* Luelsdorff, Philip A. (1994). Developmental morphographemics II. In W. C. Watt (Ed.), "Writing systems and cognition" (pp. 141-182). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
* McCawley, James D. (1994). Some graphotactic constraints. In W. C. Watt (Ed.), "Writing systems and cognition" (pp. 115-127). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
* Mencken, H. L. (1936). "" (4th ed.). New York: A.A. Knopf.
* Rollins, Andrew G. (1998). Marking devices in the spelling of English. "Atlantis", "20" (1), 129-143.
* Rollins, Andrew G. (1999). Markers in English and other orthographies. In L. Iglesias Rábade & P. Nuñez Pertejo (Eds.), "Estudios de lingüística contrastiva" (pp. 441-449). Universidad de Santiago.
* Rollins, Andrew G. (2003). System and chaos in English spelling: The case of the voiceless palato-alveolar fricative. "English Language and Linguistics", "7" (2), 211-233.
* Rollins, Andrew G. (2003). "The spelling patterns of English". LINCOM studies in English linguistics (04). Muenchen: LINCOM EUROPA.
* Sampson, Geoffrey. (1985). "Writing systems: A linguistic introduction". London: Hutchinson.
* Seymour, P. H. K.; Aro, M.; & Erskine, J. M. (2003). Foundation literacy acquisition in European orthographies. "British Journal of Psychology", "94" (2), 143-174.
* Simpson, J. A.; & Weiner, E. S. C. (Eds.). (1989). "Oxford English dictionary". Oxford: Clarendon Press.
* Steinberg, Danny. (1973). Phonology, reading and Chomsky and Halle's optimal orthography. "Journal of Psycholinguistic Research", "2" (3), 239-258.
* Stubbs, Michael. (1980). "Language and literacy: The sociolinguistics of reading and writing". London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
* Venezky, Richard L. (1967). English orthography: Its graphical structure and its relation to sound. "Reading Research Quarterly", "2", 75-105.
* Venezky, Richard L. (1970). "The structure of English orthography". The Hague: Mouton.
* Venezky, Richard L. (1976). Notes on the history of English spelling. "Visible Language", "10", 351-365.
* Venezky, Richard L. (1999). "The American way of spelling". New York: Guildford Press.
* Weir, Ruth H. (1967). Some thoughts on spelling. In W. M Austin (Ed.), "Papers in linguistics in honor of Leon Dostert" (pp. 169-177). Janua Linguarum, Series Major (No. 25). The Hague: Mouton.
*Rules for English Spelling: [http://www.kwiznet.com/p/takeQuiz.php?ChapterID=10015&CurriculumID=26 Adding Suffixes] , [http://www.kwiznet.com/p/takeQuiz.php?ChapterID=10016&CurriculumID=26 QU Rule] , [http://www.kwiznet.com/p/takeQuiz.php?ChapterID=10017&CurriculumID=26 i before e] , [http://www.kwiznet.com/p/takeQuiz.php?ChapterID=10018&CurriculumID=26 Silent e] , [http://www.kwiznet.com/p/takeQuiz.php?ChapterID=10021&CurriculumID=26 'er' vs. 'or']
* [http://www.espindle.org/whitepaper.pdf White Paper] Research based Tutoring of English Spelling
* [http://zompist.com/spell.html Hou tu pranownse Inglish] describes rules which predict a word's pronunciation from its spelling with 85% accuracy
* [http://www.thephonicspage.org/On%20Spelling/onspellinglinks.html Free spelling information] and [http://www.thephonicspage.org/On%20Spelling/spellinglessonsl.html Free spelling lessons in QuickTime movie format] at [http://www.thephonicspage.org/ The Phonics Page] .
