The Labyrinth of English Spelling and Pronunciation

By Jennie Parker

Cemetery.  I'll never forget its spelling because it's the word I missed in the second-grade spelling bee. The concept of spelling bees - spelling competitions - or even explicit spelling lessons may be foreign to you if you speak a highly-phonetic language, such as Turkish, Spanish, Czech, or Italian. English orthography, however, is highly nonphonemic.  How did English become such a mess? It's a long tale of borrowed letters and words, phonological shift, and the lack of a governing body overseeing the consistency and expansion of the language.

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Let's start around the 5th Century AD. After the Romans left England, Germanic tribes invaded and settled, forming what became known as Old English from various West Germanic dialects. By the 6th Century, the Roman alphabet was adopted to express the language in written form, but there were more sounds than letters, leading to one of the first issues with English spelling.

In addition to juxtaposing the Roman alphabet onto English, which was problematic but not uncommon, we have the issue of words borrowed from other languages. With the Norman invasion of England beginning in 1066, French became the language of the English aristocracy, while the lower classes continued speaking English. French words related to politics and legislation, for example, such as evidence, justice, and soldiers, entered the English language.  Sometimes spelling was adapted to match pronunciation, and sometimes pronunciation was adapted to match French spelling, leading to more confusion.

The influence of other languages on English continued with the introduction of the printing press in 1476.  While the printing press ushered in a desire for spelling consistency, it actually led to more confusion. Many printers were Dutch, and they sometimes used Dutch spellings for words, such as ghost with its silent "h."  Over the next couple of hundred years, scholars attempted to standardize English by writing spellling guides. However, there was little collaboration or agreement, so these early attempts were futile. Some wrote guides that were descriptive, reflecting how people actually wrote the language. Others were more prescriptive, devising rules and standards for the way people should write the language.

Around this time, English was also going through what would become known as the Great Vowel Shift (roughly 1400-1700). The cause of this shift is debated, but it resulted in a change in the way Middle English long vowels, as well as a few consonants, were pronounced. For example, the word bite had been pronounced "beet," and the word meat had been pronounced "met" before the Great Vowel Shift. Many scholars attribute the nonphonetic nature of English primarily to this Great Vowel Shift.

To make matters even more complicated, in the 16th and 17th centuries, scholars began borrowing words from Latin and Greek for scientific and technicial concepts and altering English spelling to reflect the classical roots of words. For example, "det" became debt from the Latin debitum.  And, conversely, across the Atlantic, in 1828, Noah Webster published the first dictionary of the American English language, putting an American spin on the language by removing some of the French influence on words.  For example, "colour" became color, and "centre" became center in American English.

Finally, as English language learners know, English is truly a global language.  It is estimated there are over 400 million native English speakers in the world and over one billion people for whom English is a second language. And while there is some consensus as to what constiutes both standard written English and standard regional accents, there is no royal, governmental, or international regulatory body overseeing the rules of English or the expansion of the language.  English remains open to the influence of other languages, phonological shifts, and tension between prescriptivists and descriptivists in areas such as grammar, spelling, pronunciation, and the inclusion of new words.

 So, don't feel badly if you have trouble pronouncing English. Even native English speakers may have a difficult time pronouncing a word that is new to them. When in doubt, I check the pronunciation in a dictionary, but I am also familiar with phonological guidelines that dictate correct pronunciation much of the time. I've compiled the guidelines here to help you out.  Please comment below if you have questions, and I'll do my best to answer quickly!

Further Reading

How the English Language Became Such a Mess (BBC)
Why is English Spelling So Irregular? (ESL Stories)
The Absurdity of English Spelling and Why We're Stuck with It (The Conversation)
What Caused the Great Vowel Shift? (Guernsey Donkey)