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How did English spelling end up so... | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| sebngwa3 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6164 days ago 200 posts - 217 votes  Speaks: Korean*, English | Message 1 of 24 22 October 2009 at 6:55am | IP Logged | ||
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...irregular?
Is there any other alphabetical language that is more irregular? Is there a list of scripts with the most irregularities? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6768 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek | Message 2 of 24 22 October 2009 at 8:52am | IP Logged | ||
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English spelling was standardized by the introduction of the printing press and the emergence of the publishing
industry at the end of the 15th century, in the latter stages of the Middle English period. Shortly afterwards, English underwent the Great Vowel Shift, in which the pronunciation of nearly every word changed. The transition to Modern English also introduced a few new sounds. As a result of that plus the huge influx of French vocabulary, English has some of the world's most complicated spelling rules and irregularities. I've heard Irish is pretty tricky to spell too, though. 9 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| maaku Senior Member United States Joined 5574 days ago 359 posts - 562 votes Speaks: English* | Message 3 of 24 22 October 2009 at 9:20am | IP Logged | ||
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Tibetan is extremely irregular in its spelling. Or rather, regularly irregular, which describes English as well. Spelling was standardized around the start of the last millennium, and the only difference between Classical Tibetan and modern written Tibetan is grammar and choice of words--the spelling is identical, despite the many phonetic shifts that have happened in between. As with English, the spelling of loanwords often reflects their origin, especially with Sanskrit words. So I don't think there's any connection between spelling irregularities and choice of phonetic script.
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| Gusutafu Senior Member Sweden Joined 5521 days ago 655 posts - 1039 votes Speaks: Swedish* | Message 4 of 24 25 October 2009 at 10:37pm | IP Logged | ||
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I believe that if you learn English through immersion rather than being given some kind of handbook of how sounds correspond to letters, you're fine. To me it seems extremely regular, if not always one-to-one. Thus while it might not always be obvious how (out of two or three possible ways) a given word is supposed to be spelled the first time you hear it, once you've seen it, it sticks.
I think the problem lies in the way it is taught. If you start with a list of letters and say that "such and such a letter is pronounced in this, that or some other way, unless it is preceeded by this or followed by that, ir was borrowed from this language during this period etc" then the task is quite hopeless. If, on the other hand, you are just told that the word orange is spelled O-R-A-N-G-E, monkey is spelled M-O-N-K-E-Y and so on, your brain will very quickly see the patterns (that's where brains excel) and get the idea. It's very counter-productive to try to condense the correspondances to a set of rules, try to teach those rules to students that might possibly not be overly analytical in disposition, and then have them apply said rules. Edited by Gusutafu on 26 October 2009 at 7:56pm 8 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6768 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek | Message 5 of 24 26 October 2009 at 5:32am | IP Logged | ||
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I've noticed that this makes English difficult to learn for Asians who aren't familiar with other European languages
(not to mention the fact that it requires access to a native speaker to get pronunciation right). I do a lesson with a Chinese friend once a week, and not only are English pronunciation rules confusing to her, she is completely tripped up by the names, places, words, and expressions from French, German, Spanish, etc. that find their way into nearly every English-language article. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| administrator Hexaglot Forum Admin Switzerland FXcuisine.com Joined 7376 days ago 3094 posts - 2987 votes 12 sounds Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian Personal Language Map | Message 6 of 24 26 October 2009 at 5:02pm | IP Logged | ||
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In French we say that English says élastique but writes caoutchouc.
Definitely I would go with De Saussure and go from ear to hand, first listen and learn how to prounounce exactly like the natives do, then go about learning to write. The spelling is a real joke, but hey, my native French can't give many lessons in that department! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Elwing Tetraglot Groupie United Kingdom Joined 5508 days ago 43 posts - 51 votes Speaks: Swedish, Finnish*, English, French Studies: Norwegian | Message 7 of 24 26 October 2009 at 6:45pm | IP Logged | ||
That makes me think of my French teacher and how she always complains about the irregular English pronunciation (mainly in response to us complaining about the irregularities in French grammar). She gave us a brilliant poem which did sum up the weirdness of English pronunciation actually. Anyone know a poem like this? It was quite funny, I should probably try and find it. But no, I remember finding the pronunciation of certain words very strange when I first started learning English and there are still words which I avoid in speech only because I'm not quite sure how to pronounce them correctly. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Gusutafu Senior Member Sweden Joined 5521 days ago 655 posts - 1039 votes Speaks: Swedish* | Message 8 of 24 26 October 2009 at 8:27pm | IP Logged | ||
I think this expresses the issue wonderfully. It is of course not the case that the pronunciation is irregular, it is a question of spelling. The trouble comes when Asians and others learn English through the written medium. That way you'll have to explain how to pronounce the letters, which is an utterly hopeless task. If you go about the other, natural, way (as mentioned above) you will not have these difficulties. In school we are given books with printed words in them, and it is only natural to ask "how is this word pronounced", but when you think of it, that question is really absurd. The point of writing is merely to capture (potential) speech, not the other way around. In the beginning scripts were non-vocalic, you only wrote down the consonant sounds, which made it necessary to know the language to be able to pronounce the words in a way that was even close to what was intended. It is not impossible to understand a modern English sentance with the vowels removed! Even modern scripts, while they do capture the vowel sounds, it has to be remembered that only a fraction of the phonetic information in an utterance can be written down. The point of writing is merely to record as much of the sound that is necessary for conveying the message reasonably well. A lot of information is inevitably lost, like intonation, inflection, accent, the subtle differences in pronunciation of sounds depending on surrounding sounds etc. Some of this information can be recreated by native speakers. For example, any native Russian will automatically devoice his finals (chleb is pronounced chlep), even though it is not indicated in script. You could add this as a pronounciation rule, but other things are harder or impossible to systemise or even decode from the written message, that information is just lost. To put it short, the point of writing is really just to convey enough information to tell you which word was meant, out of the thousands of words that you know. It is not strictly necessary to be able to correctly pronounce a word the first time you see it, that is just an added bonus in many modern writing systems. Perhaps I am biased because Swedish is quite far from having a one-to-one correspondance between sound and letter, so I never expect that from other languages either. Also, I have never learnt a single "pronunciation rule" wouldn't even be able to construct any, even for Swedish, I just know a lot of words and how they are spelled. Much easier. Edited by Gusutafu on 26 October 2009 at 8:31pm 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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