Comment by nkrisc
1 month ago
English spelling is one of the hardest parts of the language to learn because the spelling represents ~16th century pronunciation. However what we gained is a common orthography for all the different dialects and accents of English. I can barely understand some people from Appalachia or Western England when they speak, but if they write it down it’s no problem.
> English spelling is one of the hardest parts of the language to learn because the spelling represents ~16th century pronunciation.
English spelling doesn't represent any pronunciation. English spelling represented pronunciation before the Normans, and afterwards was turned into something that would allow Norman speakers to do nearly-intelligible imitations of unpronounceable English words. Even worse, 1) French spelling also had drifted far from pronunciation (although not as far as now), and 2) English picked up a ton of that French and further mispronounced it.
Such as how place names that now end in "-shire" pre-conquest ended in "-scr," which is how they're still pronounced.
> However what we gained is a common orthography for all the different dialects and accents of English.
True, but those dialects came after the spelling changes. Vowels in English multiplied out of control and became more of a system of how vowels could relate to each other rather than specific sounds, like in (very regular) Old English when a long or doubled vowel was simply the same vowel sounded longer. Germanic vowels are crazy and got crazier.
To understand somebody's English, you listen to them for a while and figure out what they're doing with their vowels - we know from experience that some vowel sounds move together with each other, so when we hear X we can guess Y, and we then look for exceptions and mergers. Once we've figured out the vowels, the words become clear. A fun example is when you compare the Canadian accent to the US accent, and you see some words rhyme in both British and Canadian English that don't rhyme in US English.
IIRC, English is often described as having between 16 and 22 vowels, depending on who is speaking it. Writing that would be hellish, and as you say, you'd have to change spellings when you crossed rivers. English orthography is more like Chinese orthography than one would think.
I should have said it represents the pronunciation of English in and around London in the 16th century.
English spelling wasn’t normalized until long after the Normans. Norman scribes did their part but it was the printing industry in London that crystallized it.
Some of it is. Some of it is arbitrary. The "h" in "ghost" is said to be partly accidental. The "b" in "debt" due to folk etymology. There will be numerous other examples.
In his book The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy, John DeFrancis calls the English orthography the worst among the alphabetic ones, and Japanese the worst among the logographic ones.
Re English, maybe among major languages. Faroese orthography is bad in phonetic terms, but Faroese is not a well known language. I'm sure other smaller languages have even worse systems than English.
Among the major languages, French is also pretty awful. Its orthography is much less practical than Spanish or Italian.
Tibetan orthography is notoriously bad, but is neither alphabetic nor logographic. This is a result of Tibetan changing a great deal since it was first transcribed.
-shire has several pronunciations: sher, sheer and shire (as written). I've heard all three and caught myself using at least two of these.
Sort of. I am seeing American spellings invading here a lot. "Jail" is well established now, but "color" etc are coming in.
Sure, there are some recent exceptions. But nearly all words that contain vowel pairs like “ea” and “ai”, for example, represent a much older pronunciation regardless of the current one. Words like “hear” and “wear” would have rhymed at one point. Most words ending in “ed” would have had that syllable fully pronounced instead of reduced to a “t” sound.
That vast majority of words among all English dialects are spelled similarly and go back to the 16th century or thereabouts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_and_British_English_s...
Where is "here"? They've been a thing for 200 years so I'm curious
"Where is here?"
Not the USA. :)