It can also serve to create heterographs out of homophones, which helps when reading. For example, consider the word pronounced /raɪt/. That can be any of:I don't think I'd ever seen the word "heterograph" before. It's not even in the OED...
wright
right
write
rite
As soon as you see it on the printed page, you know which of those four words it is. You don’t have to puzzle it out. This increases reading speed and proficiency.
The other largely unsung reason for how English spelling helps you is because if you actually spelled things the way people said them, no one could ever read anything anyone else ever wrote! Well, nobody outside their own current dialect — if that.
... but the word is immediately understandable, because it's written in the style we're used to in English.
By the way, "heterography" is defined in the OED as "Spelling that differs from that which is correct according to current usage; ‘incorrect’ spelling" — as in "There is a pretty general consensus that unconventional spelling or heterography is bad spelling." But Wikipedia says: "In linguistics, heterography is a property of a written language, such that it lacks a 1-to-1 correspondence between the written symbols and the sounds of the spoken language. Its opposite is homography, which is the property of a language such that written symbols of its written form and the sounds of its spoken form have a 1-to-1 correspondence."
Posts
52 comments:
Phonics.
The phonics program my kids use teaches that there are nine different reasons why a word might end with a "silent" e. My favorite one is that "Native English words do not end in I, U, V, or J."
This is useful when one comes across a word that DOES end in I, U, V, or J, because it signals that this is likely not a native English word and therefore may be irregular in other ways.
I was a volunteer adult literacy tutor for about 15 years. Helping my student improve his spelling was really difficult because of things like this. Plus, there were exceptions to every rule.
"Native English words do not end in I, U, V, or J"
The native English word "you" ends in "u."
Explain to your kids that there are exceptions to every rule.
By "native English" you mean Anglo-Saxon?
It is not really a matter of mere
spelling ... The words stand for different concepts too. It's also the reason English is so open to borrowing words.
On the other hand if you are in a polyglot milieu same sound can mean different things also. Heterophony?
E.g. if you are in India, the sound for "bus" can mean
vehicle >>> bus
Sit in Marathi
Enough in Hindi
English has evolved and the history is in the language.
Babies start to talk using grammar rules that don't deal with irregular verbs.
Take the verb to go.
It should be go, goed, gone. Goes follows the rule.
Instead an archaic verb gets mixed in.
Wend, Went, Wend.
In Gray's Elegy.
The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea,
The plowman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me. <
The original version, probably altered for modern readers, reads "wends slowly o'er the lea."
I think the reel reezon was to make us hillbillies easier to spot on line.
Modern Chinese cannot speak their ancient languages, no more than any of us can read Beowulf in the original, but they can read their ancient literature.
"Modern Chinese cannot speak their ancient languages,"
Israelis learned how to speak Hebrew from Yemeni Jews that had been undisturbed for centuries.
How can America be great again when people insist on spelling "lose" as "loose." Amirite?
Some of us can read Beowulf in the original. Old English is much simpler than the modern version.
Learning etymologies not only helps me retain vocabulary in Germanic and other Indo-European languages, but illustrates the word's history and pronunciation.
Example:
English words had used to vocalize the "-ght" coming from Anglo-Saxon/Old German.
"Macht" (noun = "power"), "machen" (verb = "to make," or "to do") ---> Eng. "Might" = "power"
"Richtig" (adj. = "right," "straight," "correct"), (verb = richten: "to adjust"),
"Rechts" (adj. = "right," [as opposed to left]).
This also helps with learning a little Latin to better grasp Romance languages.
English spelling firmed up when the k in knife, the ght in night and knight (though actually cht as in German nacht and knecht were still being pronounced.
And about a fifth of the "native English" words are not from Anglo-Saxon, but from Old Norse, including most of those having to do with weather and the sea.
The realm creative use of language is sometimes described as colloquial. Word mean, and may be pronounced, things very different from what they are otherwise taken to mean. A fun way to approach grammar is by way of Weird Al Yankovich's video "Word Crimes". I ended up there after watching "Tacky" last night.
The original version, probably altered for modern readers, reads "wends slowly o'er the lea."
Which still survives in the phrase, "to wend one's way".
Is "wrought" really the same word as "rot"? I guess you pronounce them the same way, but I surely don't hear them the same way. I can hear that w.
"What hath God wrought?"
"...As each separate, dying ember,
Wrought its ghost upon the floor."
"the ght in night"
which I surmise comes from the c in Latin noct-, as the one in right comes from rect-
Old English is closer than we think.
"Beowulf
Hwæt. We Gardena in geardagum,
þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon,
hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon.
Oft Scyld Scefing sceaþena þreatum,
monegum mægþum, meodosetla ofteah,
egsode eorlas. Syððan ærest wearð
feasceaft funden, he þæs frofre gebad,
weox under wolcnum, weorðmyndum þah,
oðþæt him æghwylc þara ymbsittendra
ofer hronrade hyran scolde,
gomban gyldan. þæt wæs god cyning."
Learn a few symbols, see how the strong verbs inflect, see how the adjectives and nouns agree, let the sound of it sink in, and you're halfway there.
My comment above shows what can happen when one focuses too much on superfluous precision and thus ignores the ultimate message to be communicated. I was too worried about getting quotation marks around certain words, and overlooked how spell-check mangled the first part of the post. I suppose language may now be influenced by spell-check so that common words end up with new (mis)spelled synonyms. When I type XOXO to my wife it comes out coconuts, so all I need is the palm tree emoji to express my desire for hugs and kisses. Maybe a tropical vacation would be nice.
Jupiter: Different regions divide up sounds differently. I clearly hear a difference between "cot" and "caught" as I come from Michigan. Here in California they're identical. On the other hand, "Mary" and "merry" sound the same to me, but in Boston the name is pronounced mah-ree.
There is ALREADY a word for this - homophone.
ho·mo·phone
ˈhäməˌfōn,ˈhōməˌfōn
noun
each of two or more words having the same pronunciation but different meanings, origins, or spelling, e.g., new and knew.
Gee, @Owen (8:13), I wish I'd known how easy Old English was when I was a sophomore in college. I considered taking a course on Beowulf, but when I sat in on the first class I was told we'd all have to learn Old English, and that seemed pretty daunting. I had never been able to master pig latin. Of course I now see that understanding "Hwæt. We Gardena in geardagum, þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon, hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon" is a piece of cake.
Hweat we Gardena...
I deal with this daily in my work. Reading through Early Modern English letters, especially if not transcribed is a continual headache, especially if you are not familiar with the writer's particular hand. So many writers use their own abbreviations, it is a nightmare. English is whatever the writer believed it to be, at any particular time. I've read a letter, where the author was describing that bastarde, who was his tennante, as Smith, Smyth, and Smythe, all in a one page letter. The author believed to be owned a heriot, which saidd baastard Smythe hath done hidd ammonsgst the heather, or evyn beond, which might yet be felony, and aginst my just right.
I'm now with a group of Australians in northern Norway. When I told them we'll be having reindeer filet for dinner they heard it as reindeer flayed. I was initially puzzled by their expressions of shock and disgust. Showing them a written menu would have prevented this misunderstanding.
The native English word "you" ends in "u."
Of course, and that is usually the first question they ask when we cover this rule. The reason why has to do with the etymology--the three true exceptions to this particular rule are 'I,' 'you,' and 'thou,' which are all leftovers from Old English. The rhyme to remember the exceptions is,"You and I are very special, so we get to break this rule."
While there are a few true exceptions, the 31 phonics rules cover 98% of English words. Chances are you were not taught all 31 rules in elementary school.
We got some serious entymologists here......
We got some serious entymologists here...
Only for words with exactly six letters.
My mother, who was from Brooklyn originally, pronounced the words merry, marry, & Mary differently. It was quite funny/interesting actually. I was born and raised in California, and I pronounced the words exactly the same. I would have called these words homophones, but not when my mother pronounced them with a pronounced East coast accent.
Korean developed a phonetic alphabet (called hangul) in the 15th century, prior to that Chinese characters (called hanja) were used for writing, afterwards Koreans used a varying over time mix of hangul and hanja. At some times, hangul was banned and some other times, hanja was banned. One hanja ban period (for South Korea) is in living memory, my mother said it was hard to read for a while because of too many words spelled the same (i.e. homonyms). Hanja has been banned in North Korea for some time, and the mix is strongly slanted to hangul in South Korea now.
ESL students must be driven insane by the inconsistency of English pronunciation. There is no way a student, by reading alone, would know how to pronounce:
Bough
Cough
Enough
Through
Though
German, now. . .
SweatBee said: " Chances are you were not taught all 31 rules in elementary school."
I wasn't taught any rules. My school didn't use phonics.
I was reading way beyond what the school was teaching. I was reading at an 11th grade level when I was in 6th grade, even though I skipped third grade.
"Bough
Cough
Enough
Through
Though"
There was an episode of the classic sitcom "I Love Lucy" in which Ricky (who hailed from Cuba) expressed confusion at that.
My favorite here, because of my partner, are French words. Her paternal grandparents were native French speakers, and she has a French surname that ends with an accented vowel. Which, I think is supposed to mean that it is emphasized. But, without the accent, she treats the final vowel as silent. Which makes no sense to me, so I just use a more phonetic English pronunciation, guaranteed to punch her buttons. Of course, it doesn't help that she grew up with her names being mispronounced, including, intentionally I think, by some of her teachers. Worst was one teacher who failed her in citizenship because she refused to respond when the teacher called her name every day in roll call, deliberately mispronouncing it. I don't stop there, of course - there are a number of French loan words that we routinely use, that I intentionally, mostly for her benefit, mispronounce, or at least use more non-French pronunciation rules. One of my favorites is going to the cafe to drink coffee, esp since café apparently comes from the French and means coffee. Indeed, this originally French word has lost its accent in normal spelling, yet it is retained in speaking - at least by most normal people (excluding myself, of course).
One consistent mispronounciation situation that I found interesting was in the German belt around Austin when I lived there. They have Germanized a number of Spanish words, that I almost inevitably screwed up the pronunciation of, since I was brought up with a much more Spanish pronunciation of those words. Apparently, being Texan means recognizing this, and using the more German pronunciation, unless, of course, you are Hispanic, and can thus use the more standard pronunciation. Never quite adapted there.
I love these posts on obscure isms and ologies and graphys, etc. but there are so many of them and they are so obscure that there is no point in using them without giving their definition at the same time. Few people would understand "His writing is prone to heterography.". You'd have to say "His writing is prone to heterography--the practice of using unconventional or incorrect spelling". Few people study Latin or Greek anymore and are capable of deducing the approximate meanings. So, while the practice of inventing Greek or Latin-rooted composites could once be defended on grounds of economy or precision, is there any reason for them now except pretension?
I had a anthropology professor, back in the day, that laughed at the idea of "reforming" English spelling phonetically because she attended international conferences and said you often couldn't understand what a speaker was saying due to the accent and simply had to rely on the paper. People who want English to be spelled phonetically seem to think there is only one dialect/accent used to speak it.
Peter: "...Few people study Latin or Greek anymore and are capable of deducing the approximate meanings...". Agree and what a loss. Not saying that to be pretentious (I never studied either of them formally) but because it's such a powerful tool to decode meaning and build networks of associated words: with a handful of Latin roots and a pocketful of prefixes and suffixes, you can generate (or guess with confidence the meaning of) about half the entries in the dictionary.
Few people study Latin or Greek anymore and are capable of deducing the approximate meanings.
I don't think you have to have an in depth knowledge of Latin or Greek to deduce the meanings. A knowledge of commonly used prefixes and suffices usually gets me most of the way there.
By the way, English is actually a Germanic language with so many loan words that its actual vocabulary is less than 50% Germanic. Some linguists even consider English to be a piden language.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OynrY8JCDM
Anglish
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIo-17SIkws
Origins of English
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEaSxhcns7Y
"How can America be great again when people insist on spelling 'lose' as 'loose.' Amirite?"
Yes, yur rite.
And also, "have" as"of," as in, "I would of never come if I'd of known you were coming."
Aaaaarrrrgggghhhh!!!!!
I threw in the second "of" (unnecessary to the sentence as either "of" or "have,") just to amplify the agony quotient.
Sorry, not pidgen, creole.
"The United States and England, two countries divided by a common language."
Owen quoting Beowulf:
...egsode eorlas. Syððan ærest wearð
feasceaft funden, he þæs frofre gebad...
I've always been bummed that English ditched "ð" and "þ" for "th". That doesn't even make any sense. (I once had a substitute teacher in grade school who tried to persuade us kids that the two "th" phones were made by pronouncing "t" and "h" together. We weren't buying it.)
Why? Norman cultural imperialism? I wish our written language still looked as cool as Icelandic.
Ron W: Sorry, not pidgen, creole.
Do creoles start out as pidgens? Or is there some other linguistic process going on?
(I guess I could look it up but maybe there's a linguistically knowledgeable person who could indulge my laziness.)
I always pronoun the s in Illinois and the O in Opossum. If they didn't want in pronounced then don't put it there.
@Owen
A loss? Yes and no. Like with the decline of general familiarity with scripture, the loss of Latin and Greek has cut us off from a rich literary heritage of mythical symbolism and allusions. Who knows who all the Greek gods and muses were anymore (though Narcissus seems to be enjoying a revival these days)? But as fun as this all is in a brain-teaser kind of way, Latin-rooted English is the aesthetically ugly half of English. Great poetry and music and the best evocative prose largely use the Germanic-rooted half of English, a.k.a. plain English, while Latin roots are the plinth on which bureaucratese and professional gobbledygook are built. It's striking how much popular scientific literature is full of never-ending isms and ologies that end up actually distorting the message or just making the banal sound profound.
What an interesting post.
I never realized that about spellings - makes sense.
And I taught earl for a while.
Esl
Do creoles start out as pidgens? Or is there some other linguistic process going on?
I'm not really all that linguistically knowledgeable, but yeah. A pidgen has no native speakers. A creole is what happens when kids grow up using the pidgen the adults are speaking around them. It becomes their native language and thus is a creole.
Ron W: A pidgen has no native speakers. A creole is what happens when kids grow up using the pidgen the adults are speaking around them. It becomes their native language and thus is a creole.
Thanks Ron. I assume on the route from pidgin to creole it "fills out" and becomes a complex language.
I assume on the route from pidgin to creole it "fills out" and becomes a complex language.
Yep.
A student asking why there is an "h" in rhubarb is an excellent opportunity to teach something about ancient history and languages and the mutual cultural appropriation between Greece and Rome. Of course, now people think that anything that didn't happen to them didn't happen, so why talk about old stuff?
Fahnix iz stoopid.
"I" before "e" except when it isn't.
Post a Comment