Pre-amble
The English language has great strengths sharing common ground with many European languages and can assimilate words from languages around the world. It has the beauty of simplicity Inflectional Simplicity: noun –only plural & possessive (e.g. boy; boys; boy’s): adjective –only comparative and superlative (e.g. fat; fatter; fattest) : verb –few personal endings, little singular/plural (e.g. he runs; she runs; they run)
Natural gender (mainly neuter) instead of Grammatical gender (masculine or feminine).
It has disadvantages for instance its idioms e.g. go fast/stand fast are a problem for speakers of other languages, but its main disadvantage is the chaotic spelling.
How did we get here
From the Celtic language many place names remain but other words are negligible. The Romans introduced Latin, but it declined following their withdrawal. The dialects brought by the Jutes, Saxons and Angles formed the English language, the sole basis of its grammar and the source by far of the largest part of its vocabulary.
After the Norman Conquest French was brought in by the invaders and was used by the upper class, the English courts and the Church.
English was confined mainly to the poor and lower classes. They could not read or write so English was not written down.
Following disagreements between the English nobility (of Norman ancestry) and the French over matters of allegiance and land ownership, links with France were broken and hostilities increased.
French became the language of the enemy.
Among the rural population villeinage was dying out. Fixed money payments gradually substituted the day’s work due to the lord of the manor. There was more incentive to individual effort and more opportunity for a man to reap rewards of enterprise. The process was accelerated by the Black Death 1348-1350 resulting in a shortage of labour. Villeins frequently made their escape and many cotters left the land in search of high wages commanded by independent workers. Discontent led to the Peasants Revolt 1381. An increase in the economic importance of the labouring class brought with it the importance of the English language they spoke.
There was a rise in craftsmen and the merchant class. By 1250 some 200 towns of 1000-5000 population became free self governing, electing own officers, assessing & collecting own taxes and paying to the king a lump sum. The changes benefited the English-speaking population.
All of these contributed to the resurgence of English – a simpler English with natural gender and inflectional simplicity. Perhaps we should thank the poorer classes for this major benefit.
By the beginning of the 14th century English was once more known by everyone
1400 Written English the last step was employment of English in writing – competing with Latin as well as French. Only in the 15th century did English succeed in displacing both but after being spoken and not written down for so long spelling became a problem. Different people had different ideas over how to spell; some used Latin spelling as a standard, others did not bother about any standard. It was not unknown for someone to use three different spellings for the same word in a single article or letter.
Chaos began!
The introduction of printing added to the problem with printers using alternate characters for those they could not supply.
Can we/Should we try to do anything about it?
There have been many attempts to formalise spelling with minimal success.
For a long time I have thought that there was a case for changing the spelling of a lot of words, but with the passing of time I have modified my views.
Reasons:-
Continuity- ability to read old books and documents.
Avoiding dictionary chaos, due to the potential large number of changes
Different pronunciations of some words in different places -whose pronunciation should the spelling match?
Whilst many people have a pronunciation of a word that does not match its spelling, some do e.g. the Scots pronunciation of ‘iron’
We could change a spelling to match a common pronunciation only to find at some future date a new pronunciation comes into use, do we change the spelling yet again?
An alternative solution would be to match the pronunciation to the spelling.
My own thinking
Having studied many words given the chaotic situation I see no perfect solution.
My first choice would be to match the pronunciation to the spelling. In some instances there could be conflict with similar sounding words or difficult sounds.
Failing this my second choice would be to change the spelling to match the pronunciation. For reasons given above approach with caution, but I think there are instances where this might be the best choice.
I see instances where no change is practical, and we may choose to live with an anomaly.
Where do we go from here?
I cannot tell anybody where to go, I can just say what I have been doing and plan to continue to do. Some thirty years ago I started looking at words and thinking they were not spelt correctly. Being consumed in my family and work there was no time for action only occasional contemplation. By the time I got to retirement I became more conscious of the different ways people would pronounce the same word, that moved my thinking away from spelling change towards change of pronunciation. Realising how complex and immense the task too much for one person and getting older has lost some the drive of youth. Why not involve others? I didn’t know someone with similar interest and I would like to have something to offer when I did.
What are my qualifications – None! I am not an academic. Could that be an advantage? I am encouraged that ordinary people played an important role in our language. In England, the common people were responsible for inflectional simplicity, natural gender. but not for our complex spelling.
With the need to release years of pent-up emotion I made a start prepared to accept critical judgement of my proposal.
About pronunciation key
Dictionaries use symbols to define the pronunciation of words. Many of the symbols, particularly consonant symbols are usual letters of the alphabet, but others are a variety of designs and the sounds they represent is not self-evident and need to be looked up and learnt. Partly for that reason and partly because of problems in creating those shapes I have chosen usual letters of the alphabet individually or in combinations representing the sounds for which they are best known.
A difficult area is vowels; these as individuals, pairs or coupled with a consonant.
For my own convenience I have divided vowels into three types namely:- short vowels (sounds); long vowels (sounds); diphthongs (this is convenient if not quite correct).
Short vowel sounds - I see resulting from single vowels ie a as in bat; e as in bet; i as in bit; o as in bog; u as in bull. I have a problem with ‘a’ as in about. For the purpose of identifying this pronunciation I have reluctantly made an exception to use the symbol- a:
Long vowel sounds – There are frequent instances in pairs of vowels where the first vowel is changed to a ‘long’ sound by the addition of a second vowel as in ‘tail’ ‘beet’ ‘pie’ ‘goat’ ‘vacuum’. I am promoting this approach.
Diphthongs Other vowel pairs make different sounds (also a vowel plus a consonant) eg:-
au as in autumn; also or as in orbit.
Pronunciation key
| SYMBOL | as in | alternate symbols | example of alternates | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CONSONANTS | ||||||
| b | bug | |||||
| d | dad | |||||
| f | fat | ph | pharmacy | |||
| g | gun | |||||
| h | hop | |||||
| j | jam | |||||
| k | kit | |||||
| l | live | |||||
| m | man | |||||
| n | net | |||||
| p | pin | |||||
| r | run | |||||
| s | sit | ps | psychology | |||
| t | tip | |||||
| v | vine | |||||
| w | wit | |||||
| y | you | |||||
| z | craze | |||||
| CONSONANT PAIRS | ||||||
| wh | white or hwite | |||||
| zh | azure | |||||
| ch | chip | |||||
| sh | sham | |||||
| th | thongs | |||||
| th: | leather | |||||
| ng | ring | |||||
| VOWELS -SHORT (single) | ||||||
| a | bat | |||||
| e | bet | |||||
| i | bit | y | busy | |||
| o | bog | |||||
| u | bull | |||||
| a: | about | |||||
| VOWELS-LONG (pairs) | ||||||
| ai | maid | ay | ae | pay brae | ||
| ee | bee | ea | ei | ey | eo? | beat deceive key people |
| ie | pie,kite | ia? | ? | |||
| oe | bone,toe | oa | goat | |||
| uu | vacuum | ew | new | |||
| OTHER SOUNDS | ||||||
| oo | soon | ue | ui? | blue fruit | ||
| oi | coin | oy | boy | |||
| ow | now | ou? | bough? | |||
| our | flour | |||||
| air | chair | |||||
| ar | arm | |||||
| ire | fire | |||||
| ur | burn | |||||
| or | fork | aw | au | paw august | ||
| ear | ear | eer | ere | ier | steer here tier | |
| ure | cure | |||||
| kw | kwash-i-or-kor | qu | quack | |||