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Should spelling be linked to sound? | ||
Tags: Spelling | Pronunciation | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Glemt Triglot Newbie Netherlands Joined 4982 days ago 1 posts - 1 votes Speaks: Dutch*, EnglishC1, German | Message 1 of 17 06 April 2011 at 10:40pm | IP Logged | ||
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I am a natively Dutch, first-years student at a university, studying to become an English teacher. Since I grew up with the English language in my home, by means of modern media, I have developed some sort of feeling for the spelling and pronunciation of the language. My girlfriend, who is natively German, is less fortunate. When she sees a word for the first time it happens in most cases that a few fumbles are made before the right pronunciation is found.
In my first internship as a teacher I’ve noticed the same problem amongst a lot of my pupils. More than once the question ‘Why is example A spelled like this and example B spelled like this, even though they sound the same?’ was raised. This question is, no doubt, floating around in many conversations every day, but a bigger underlying question can be raised on the same grounds as well: should a language be spelled the way it is pronounced? Or is there some sort of veiled romanticism behind languages that follow spelling and pronunciation like the English and Danish, for example, do? Let me elaborate by giving an example. A few years ago I journeyed through a small village in The Netherlands and saw an old billboard with the word ‘Akku’ on it. Nowadays, we spell it ‘Accu’ which in my eyes is quite strange. Since our language does not distinguish a difference between the C and K, and the C and S, one could argue that the C could be left out altogether. The English language is an even better example. I guess most of the readers of the forum have undoubtedly heard the ‘plough, though, through, tough’ comparison. They are all spelled in the same way but pronounced differently. Personally, I see a beauty in the unchanging nature in language and the chaos that it can bring. I do, however, also see a logical system in wanting to have the sound and spelling coincide. It would make communication a lot easier, and is this not what language is for? One could argue of course that the task to change the spelling to fit the sound would be enormous, if not impossible. Think of all the different dialects and accents for example. Would you rather have a language keep its original spelling, even if it doesn’t fit into the spelling? Or would you rather have a world wherein the spelling and pronunciation share common ground? Feel free to react and explain your opinion, or philosophise on the many problems one or the other answer to either of these questions imposes. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| mr_chinnery Senior Member England Joined 5758 days ago 202 posts - 297 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 2 of 17 07 April 2011 at 1:09am | IP Logged | ||
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English spelling is a joke, I really feel for anyone not lucky enough to be a native
speaker ;) On the other hand, it adds to the beauty of the language, and every word shows it's history because of the way it is spelt. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6012 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 3 of 17 07 April 2011 at 1:37am | IP Logged | ||
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Alphabets developed specifically because a phonological script is mentally more efficient. Anyone trying to justify the dismal orthography of English with anything other than "too many people use the current spelling" is deluding themselves.
Etymology. Try asking an average English speaker what "depends" means and you won't getting "hangs from" and people talk about "one month anniversaries", showing a complete lack of awareness of etymology. The old pronunciation of "house" as "hooss" isn't made any clearer by the spelling, particularly given that most Germanic languages spell it "hus" or similar -- the usefulness of Middle English etymologies is nil for most speakers. Diary -- most people don't see "day" in there anywhere, and contrast this with "daily" where the root "day" is phonetically present, but orthographically obscured. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tbone Diglot Groupie United States Joined 4992 days ago 92 posts - 132 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Russian | Message 4 of 17 07 April 2011 at 2:01am | IP Logged | ||
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‘plough, though, through, tough’
You forgot 'bought', and 'cough'. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5557 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 5 of 17 07 April 2011 at 3:06am | IP Logged | ||
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And let's not neglect our friends "thorough", "hiccough", "hough" and "lough" (see full list of pronunciations for "ough"). ;)
Personally, I love to find clues about the etymology of English words, but I guess that's easy to say when you don't need to learn the language from scratch. So for all those having a hard time with English orthography tonight, here's a little poem I found from the link above to reassure you that you're certainly not alone. Edited by Teango on 07 April 2011 at 3:11am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Keilan Senior Member Canada Joined 5087 days ago 125 posts - 241 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 6 of 17 07 April 2011 at 8:07am | IP Logged | ||
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As a native speaker, I enjoy being able to look to the history of a language in the spelling. But as a learner of German, I am SO glad that the language is relatively easy to pronounce as it lines up with spelling.
My ideal orthography is one where the spelling represents sounds exactly. As in, dictionaries are silly and unnecessary because someone reading the alphabet can hear the words in their head and react exactly as if someone had said it out loud. Spelling tests would be unneeded as people would be able to say the word in their head and write it down. And yes, maybe different dialects would spell things differently... but they say them differently and that works out fine. Now, that's probably a far off dream, if doable at all in a world with written language. For the present, I would very much support an English spelling reform to line it up with the sounds if a movement to enact one every sprung up. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| aabram Pentaglot Senior Member Estonia Joined 5534 days ago 138 posts - 263 votes Speaks: Estonian*, English, Spanish, Russian, Finnish Studies: Mandarin, French | Message 7 of 17 07 April 2011 at 8:43am | IP Logged | ||
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I too have had an opportunity to watch my SO to learn English, coming from German
background. Sense? The English makes none. Just take off your thinking cap and accept all the idiosyncracies. I used to think that it'd be better off if all languages would have strict 1:1 correspondence between spoken and written word but by now I believe that it really doesn't matter. We're able to produce infinite amount of sound combinations and written word is always just an approximation anyway. Some languages are just better at it than others.
Ha! You understimate our collective stu... erm... ability to make mistakes even within clear ruleset. Having corresponding spelling and pronunciation does not work to the extent you'd think it would. In Estonian you pretty much write as you speak (save for few exceptions), but illiterate folks still manage to commit unbelievable amount of mistakes. They still manage to write down not the correct words but their own approximation of them. Writing follows spelling just as it should, it's just not the same word anymore. Granted, reading and then pronouncing correctly is definitely easier than with English, but you can't abolish writing tests from schools just because you have sensible orthography. The struggle to pin down spoken words will never end and it's a battle that can't be won. English is fine, just think of it as your weirdo cousin from countryside. Yea, he acts funny but he's a good guy and you still love him. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| BartoG Diglot Senior Member United States confession Joined 5448 days ago 292 posts - 818 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Italian, Spanish, Latin, Uzbek | Message 8 of 17 07 April 2011 at 9:33am | IP Logged | ||
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The biggest nightmare in the world would be a spelling system that captures exactly how a language sounds. There are at least four big problems:
1) Complexity: Look at something written in IPA. While you can get a pretty clear idea of how the language used sounds, it is not easy on the eyes. Most languages use more sounds than their orthographies capture, but the inexact spelling (even with "phonetic" languages) serves its purpose: it's adequate for a native speaker to sort of sound out and recognize a familiar word in its inexact representation. 2. Morpheme/morphology variation: The letter "s" marks plural nouns and 3rd person singular verbs in English. We pronounce it "s" or "z" according to built-in euphonic rules. Does your precise spelling system have a letter that represents "'s' or 'z' as appropriate" to normalize marking of a common grammatical feature? Or do the words "sits" and "seez" get different endings since they have them in speech. 3. Which sounds? People joke about the United States and Britain being "separated by a common tongue," but there's a flip side to the joke. People from Kansas, Georgia, New York, London and Yorkshire can take dictation of a sentence and with the exception of an added or missing "u" here and there will come up with the same thing. With exact spelling, English fragments into a number of dialects. The same thing happens with Italian and French. And god help the Germanophones. People think of German spelling as regular and sound, but they're just thinking of Hochdeutsch. In Austria, Switzerland and parts of Germany, an insistence on spelling things as they sound, and not according to the conventions of High German, would make it problematic even to read the newspaper of a town more than 30 or so miles away in certain cases. The alternative would be to give up their local variants of German and take up High German entirely. Lots of local color lost there! 4. From when? Language is constantly changing. Spell things as they sound and Anglophones are cut off from a heritage that includes Shakespeare, the King James Bible and the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and all of them at least decipherable to native speakers of English. What's more, in 50 years, they'll be cut off from what we're writing today. Don't we want our commentaries in these forums to remain accessible to future generations? It's easy to note the flaws of most writing systems, especially if you're looking for an easy way to learn a new language and speak it the way it is spoken. But even with a language with phonetic spelling like Spanish, if you transcribe a native speaker talking for twenty minutes and match it up with what the idealized IPA transcription would offer, you'd find some variation. And, as I noted above, both versions would be a pain in the neck to read. The practical application of writing is not to capture sound perfectly, but to capture language sufficiently for one native speaker to know what another has said in its meaning. Because our use of language is variable and inexact, but only an extremely complicated writing system could capture the facial expressions, body stances and tonal variations that make up for this in spoken communication, we need a writing system that splits the difference. You can argue about whether that system should bias toward sound, toward heritage or toward something else. But it's too much to try to find a system that replicates the experience of being there for the hearing. I'd add that while the bias toward sound or phonetic spelling is common, my experience of living in the Midwest and California, spending time in the South, and chatting in French with an Englishman I knew in Brittany because we couldn't understand each others' spoken English makes me skeptical. At times, it might be best to keep the spelling we know and dislike because 1) we know it and 2) not changing it means we don't have to argue about whose pronunciation is right. Just some idle thoughts on this. 8 persons have voted this message useful |
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