English spelling really does make cents sense

Paul Stapleton

March 4, 2017

Faculty of Humanities

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Two questions

1. What is spelling?

2. Why is English spelling so difficult?

1. What is spelling?

Transition 1(In our ancient past before we had oral language)

• Imagine you are hunting together with a partner.

• Two of you are behind a bush.

• You see a deer but your partner doesn’t.

• You need to stay quiet so the deer doesn’t run away.

• Your partner looks at you.• What do you do?

• Wright, E. (2005). Narrative, perception, language, and faith. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan.

Symbolism begins

• You point to the deer and make a gesture.

• Pointing and gesturing may have been our first use of symbolism.

Transition 2: Symbolism becomes abstract

• Visual symbolism;

• Around 100,000 ago likely East or southern Africa;

• Color as a visual symbol separate from bodily gestures.

• http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/14/science/14paint.html?_r=1&ref=science

Symbolism grows in sophistication

• From colors to holes

• Oldest known ornamentation – shells with bored holes circa 75,000 yrs. before present

Transition 3(from 35,000 years ago)

Cave paintings

• Still far from “spelling” but…

• …giant leap forward in symbolism.

• Ideas could be conveyed over time (we can still speculate on the meaning).

• Sophisticated techniques in shading and perspective to convey 3D and movement.

In the human brain

• the shapes and strokes in ancient paintings often resemble our present-day letters.

• Several dots followed by a deer indicates the number of animals, and the vocalization of such a drawing would have been spontaneous with reading as the inevitable result.

• Dehaene, S. (2009). Reading in the brain.New York: Viking.

In the human brain

• Our present writing systems are much more advanced;

• Present remarkable uniformity among our many systems of writing in their method of combining meaning with sound.

• This in turn reflects the human brain’s nature (discussed later).

Transition 4(from 10,000 years ago)

Transition 4

• Economic reason to writewhen agriculture began (about 10,000 years ago).

• a need for accounting to keep track of who owed what to whom, especially ownership of sheep and in the case of taxes*

• *Leroi-Gourhan, A. (1993). Gesture and speech. Cambridge: MIT Press.

• Poe, M. (2011). A history of communication. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

From realia to ……but not yet spelling

Increasing complexity

http://pipux.net/index.php?id=20

Transition 5 Cuneiform script ancient Sumerian

(southern Iraq 6000 years ago)

First phonetic script

http://www.calligraphylearn.com/cuneiform-alphabet.html

China (4,000 years ago)

The same concept exists today

;)

Ancient scripts

Rune (northern Europe) Ancient Roman alphabet

Transition 6

• Gutenberg (1450) and moveable type;

• Before the printing press, all documents were written by hand;

• Literacy rate in Europe was very low.

Result of Gutenberg’s printing press

• Books were no longer expensive and rare.

• Books were available widely;

• Literacy expanded;

• Spelling needed to be regularized;

• Led to Renaissance and scientific revolution.

Early exampleGeoffery Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (1400 AD)

Here bygynneth the Book of the Tales of Caunterbury.•

• 1 Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote

• When April with its sweet-smelling showers

• 2 The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,

• Has pierced the drought of March to the root,

• 3 And bathed every veyne in swich licour

• And bathed every vein (of the plants) in such liquid

• 4 Of which vertu engendred is the flour;

• By which power the flower is created;

• 5 Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth

• When the West Wind also with its sweet breath,

Putting things in perspective

Summary of spelling’s origin

1. Discovery of symbolism, e.g., pointing;

2. Increasingly abstract symbolism, colors;

3. Jewelry, art, e.g., cave paintings;

4. Pictures, strokes and dots representing numbers and ideas;

5. Symbols representing sounds;

6. Books became widespread;

7. A need for regularized spelling arose.

What is “spelling?”

• Spelling is the visual representation of a word or words with letters;

• Spelling attempts to transcribe the sounds of the language into alphabetic letters.

2. Why is English spelling so difficult?

Spelling and intelligence

• We often associate good spelling with high intelligence…

• …and bad spelling with stupidity…

• …but of course it is more complex than that.

Spelling quiz

• Go to

https://kahoot.it

• Or google “kahoot”

• Enter a game pin and nickname

• DON’T shut down your browser until the end of the lecture!!!

How many words are misspelled?

1. It was a lovely occasion.

2. We have no accommodation.

3. I received a promotion from my boss.

4. Try to separate the fighting boys.

5. This word is definitely misspelled.

6. It’s important to be consistent.

7. Do you have a 2017 calendar?

8. You need a good explanation.

Misspellings in English

• http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/words/common-misspellings

Spelling bees

Cro-Magnon spelling bee

Why is English spelling difficult?

• This lecture would not take place if we were discussing Spanish or Finnish.

• These languages map letters onto sounds in a transparent way.

• English does not.

• There are at least five reasons why English spelling is difficult.

• https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/05/30/spelling-bees-are-only-fun-in-english-heres-what-other-countries-do-instead/?utm_term=.93a3771acd15

Why is English spelling difficult?Reason 1

1. English has 12 vowel sounds but only five letters (a, e, i, o, u).

Our ancestors...

• …had to come up with a system to cope with the fact that there were so few letters to represent so many vowel sounds:

• Spoken language came first; writing came later.

• beat, bit, bait, bet, bat, but, boot, book, boat, bought

• And then there are diphthongs:

• Bite, bout, boit

Position of tongue(Cross-section of the mouth)

The nature of the English sound system – consonents

And 24 consonant sounds but only 20 letters.

and some of those letters are not very useful…

– …q (sounds like a “k”)

– x sounds like a “ks”

Many consonant sounds in English...

• ...need to be represented by two letters.

• Th- think , three voiceless

• and father weather – voiced

• ch – chance, chocolate– voiceless

• But the equivalent voiced sound uses a “j”

• Justice, Jason

Other languages

• Japanese

• Italian

• …and later Chinese

Japanese

• http://www.realkana.com/katakana/

• Japanese uses three scripts

• Hiragana=46 characters (only for Japanese words)

• Katakana=46 characters (only for foreign words)

• Kanji=thousands

• Each character represents one of the sounds in Japanese (one character for one sound)

• Actually a syllabary (not an alphabet)

• Example of katakana: マクドナルド

Mini-Japanese lesson:マクドナルド

日本マクドナルド公式ウェブサイトはお得な情報が満載！

English can adapt Japanese words

• The alphabet is quite good at representing the sounds of Japanese:

• Sayonara

• Kounichiwa

• Chinese is another story.

Italian

• http://italian.about.com/cs/pronunciation/ht/pronounceconson.htm

• http://italian.about.com/cs/pronunciation/ht/pronouncevowels.htm

Japanese and Italian

• In both languages, the writing system maps transparently onto the pronunciation.

• Children learn to read much faster than English-speaking children…

• …or Chinese speaking children too

• But that’s another story

• And dyslexia (誦讀困難) is less common (in Finnish and Spanish too)

Summary of reason #1

• The 26 letters of the alphabet do not align well with the English sound system.

• English has at least 13 vowel sounds and 24 consonant sounds…

• …but there are only 26 letters…• …and two of those letters are pretty useless…

– …q (sounds like a “k”)– x sounds like a “ks”

• In other words, if we had an alphabet with over 40 letters that were completely dedicated to the English sound system, spelling would be much more consistent. But our sound system is not the only problem.

Why is English spelling difficult?Reason 2

Who’s accent?

They are …

This is…

What is this?

What is this room called?

How do you pronounce…

• …mandatory

Summary of reason #2

• English is spoken using many different accents.

• The spelling of any one word cannot satisfy all of the different accents.

Can we remove the irregularities of modern English?

• Five-years phased plan for [Euro-English] :

[1st year – Removing soft & hard “C”]

• In the first year, “s” will be used instead of the soft “c.” Sertainly, sivil servants will resieve this news with joy.

• Also, the hard “c” will be replaced with “k.” Not only will this klear up konfusion, but typewriters kan have one less letter.

Sekond year

[2nd year – Replace “ph” by “f”]

• There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome “ph” will be replaced by “f.” This will make words like “fotograf” 20 per sent shorter.

Third year

[3rd year – Remove the double letters]

• In the third year, publikakseptanse of the new spelingkan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikatedchanges are posible. Governments will enkorage the removal of double letters, which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling.

• Also, al wil agre that the horiblemes of silent “e”s in the languagis disgrasful, and they would go.

Forz and fifz yer

[4th year – Replace “th” and “w” by “z” and “v”]By the fourth year, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as

replasing “th” by “z” and “w” by “v”. During ze fifz year, zeunesesary “o” kan be dropd from vords kontaining “ou,” and similar changes vud of kors be aplid to ozerkombinations of leters.

[5th year]• After zis fifz yer, ye vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be

no mor trubls or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tuunderstand ech ozer.

Ze drem vil finali kum tru!

Could there be some hidden logic to English spelling?

• Spelling helps to distinguish word meanings

• To, two too

• I, eye,

• Cue, kew, queue, Q,

Why is English spelling difficult?Reason 3

• English has many homonyms

Homonym exceptions(Same spelling, different meaning)

• Can you think of two meanings for each of these words:– Check

– Book

– Fat

– Glass

– Fire

– Seal

– Watch

Hidden logic

• Some spellings help with meaning and pronunciation

• Insane (inseyn)

• Insanity (insanity)

• Column (silent ‘n’)

• Columnist (‘n’ is pronounced)

• Christ

• Christmas

Summary of reason #3

• Basically, the differing spellings of these English homonyms represent our ancestors efforts to help us distinguish meanings as we read

• Although this means when we are children learning to read, it requires more time, say compared to Spanish, Finnish or German children, once we learn the code, reading becomes easier.

Borrowing from other languages Reason 4

• The British Isles, the home of English has had a long history of invasions and with these invasions, many new words have entered the language.

• In many cases, the original spelling has been retained.

• French has had a profound influence.

French

• Most words ending in the letters “tion” such as “information” or “participation” come from French, but our instinct of English spelling suggests that “tion” should be spelled “shun”

• Most words ending in “que” such as boutique, come from French. Wouldn’t it be easier to simply use a “k?”

Schadenfreude(幸災樂禍)

Unstressed syllable are pronounced the sameReason #5

• Professional

• /prəˈfɛʃənəl/

Summary of five reasons why English spelling is complex

1. English has many more vowel and consonant sounds than there are letters in the alphabet.

2. English is pronounced very differently according to where one comes from but one standard spelling is needed.

3. English has many homophones that need to be distinguished from each other, e.g., “sale” and “sail.”

4. Many English words come from other languages and retain their original spelling.

5. Unstressed syllables mostly have the same sound [ə] but often various letters represent this sound.

Why didn’t Chinese…

• …develop an alphabet instead of characters?

㸃解• Let’s look at a Chinese poem written in

pinyin.

<< Shī Shìshíshī shǐ >>

•ShíshìshīshìShī Shì, shìshī, shìshíshī.Shìshíshíshìshìshìshī.Shí, shìshī shìshì.Shìshí, shìShī Shìshìshì.Shìshìshìshī, shìshǐ shì, shī shìshī shìshì.Shìshíshìshī shī, shìshíshì.Shíshìshī, Shìshǐ shìshìshíshì.Shíshìshì, Shìshíshìshíshìshī.Shíshí, shǐ shìshìshī, shíshī shī.Shìshìshìshì.

https://youtu.be/VJs0Wu7plZ8

A middle

Orthographic transparency(How clearly the writing system maps onto the sound system)

• Chinese

• French

• English

• German

• Finnish

• Spanish

• Italian

• Japanese*• *for hiragana and katagana only

Chinese and Italian

• These two languages are at the two extremities of a continuous scale of spelling transparency:

• Italian has relatively few sounds so the alphabet suits it well.

• Chinese is made up of single syllables; therefore, homophones are relatively frequent.– The alphabet is not suitable

• English is in the middle

Chinese “spelling”

• Each of the symbols could be understood in hundreds of different ways

• Chinese writing also relies on several hundred phonetic markers (聲符) that further specify how a given root should be pronounced,

Could there be some hidden logic to our writing systems?

• How did our ancient ancestors use our brain’s visual system to transfer thoughts and speech into writing?

Letterbox area

Sight to sound

fMRI(functional magnetic resonance imaging)

• MRIs can detect iron in the blood.

• Using very powerful magnets, the MRI can show where blood is flowing in different parts of the brain.

Many new understandings…

• …about the brain in the past 20 years.

How do we read?

• When we read, only four or five letters are in focus at one time

• Our eyes do not move smoothly across the page, but start and stop 3 to 4 times a second.

• We notice only 3-4 to the right and 7-8 to the left.

Neurological domain

• There is a strong similarity among all the world’s writing systems with regard to the shapes and strokes used.

• Only a very small number of shapes and strokes.

• The irrelevance of size.

APPLE

Apple

The flexible brain

• yOu CaN pRoBaBlY rEaD ThIsSeNtEnCe aT ClOsE tO NoRmAlsPeEd.

•Five, six, seven, eight

Chinese too

• 中文 • 中文

• 中文

• 中文

• 中文

•中文

Do we actually silently pronounce a word when we read?

• Read the following words:

• Rabbit

• Bountary

• Culdolt

• Money

• Dimon

• Karpit

• For the familiar words, you probably processed them based on meaning

• But for the unfamiliar words, you pronounced them first, then tried to bring meaning.

Sound into meaning

• Try this sentence:

• Ay fink u shud stop yr dok frum baaking.

• Pal iz a wary gud teechr.

• (This is how you read a sentence when you were a child.)

Spelling in the brain

• In general, there are two reading routes of spelling

• 1. Indirect route:

• First decipher the letter string

convert it into pronunciation

access the meaning of the sound

This how we read as children (or how we read a new foreign language）

This route plays a role when learning new words or reading the sentence in irregular language

Donald Trump has a dystopian view of the world.

2. Direct route: From spelling immediately to meaningfirst recovers the identity and

meaning of the word;and then uses the lexical

information to recover its pronunciation;Happy, sad,

Spelling in the brain

For example – Mistake in Chinese sentence︰

難過：我們家前面有一條大水溝，很難過去。

SAD hard to pass through (the drain)

如果：可樂不如果汁。

If worse than juice

天真：今天真熱，真是游泳的好日子innocent today is really hot

Even punctuation carries meaning

• “A woman without her man is nothing”

• Punctuate this sentence to create meaning from a man’s point of view or a woman’s point of view.

Man’s point of view

• “A woman without her man is nothing”

Man’s point of view

• “A woman: without her, man is nothing.”

Case studies

• In English, we can observe many irregularities of spelling, for example:

Why do we spell <-ce> & <-se> in different words?dense, worse VS dominance, evidence

Why do we use <c>, not <s>, to represent the sound /s/ ?

grace, face, city, ice

Why are there are so many silent consonant in words “Knight”, “night” or “light”?

Influence from French

• Since Britain was conquered by Nomandie in AD1066, English has borrowed many French words [grace, face, city, ice]

Other examples of borrowed words from French:

English French

ask demand

wish decide

room chamber

answer respond

order command

freedom liberty

Some rules of irregularities of spelling

• French adjectives: Nouns related to adjectives ending in <ant/ent> are spelled with a <c>, for example dominant/dominanceevident/evidence.

• Adjectives generally have <s>, such as dense, worse (Horobin, 2013, p.14)

• Mark the sound of the vowel: Silent final e makes the vowel say its name, such as

con conecut cutemat mate

Case study <gh>

• Night, light, sight, etc

• In Old English (before the 12th century), the spelling was niht, liht and siht

• The “h” sound was pronounced.

• But in Middle English (12-15 century), some dialects dropped the “h” sound.

• Remember, travel at this time was by horse and carriage (by the rich only) and there were no telephones.

Case study <gh>

• But London was becoming the center of power and the dialect there was more conservative keeping the “h” sound.

• Spelling with a “gh” was adopted to reflect the London accent, but about 500 years ago, the “h” sound disappeared all over Britain, even in London..

• However, the spelling did not change.

Troublesome <gh>

• In some cases, the <gh> has changed its sound to /f/ and now survives into modern English, such as :

laugh, enough, rough, through

Why didn’t English invent new letters?

• In English <th> sound is represented by two letters, but it has two different sounds

• θ think, without, both

• ð this, father, breathe

• þ (an old letter used for both forms of <th>)

• Why did these old letters disappear?

Answer

• θ ð þ were non-Latin

• Printing presses imported to England from the European continent did not have these letters.

• Also, ð was considered to close to “d” and would cause confusion.

• Therefore decisions were made to simply use “th”

Case study: Vowels

• English has many different spellings of vowels that are not transparent.

• Meat, meet, me, receive, relief, police

• This is just one example of one vowel sound.

• Basically, the spelling of English vowels is a mess.

Case study: VowelsThe Great Vowel Shift (from 1500)

Causes

• Black Death 1350 when over 30% of Europe’s population died from a bacterial disease called the plague.

• Imagine up to half of the population dying!

• One theory: Great migrations of people and mixing of new accents created new pronunciation.

Vowel sounds changed…

• …but over 200-300 years.

• This slow change of vowel sounds over generations could not easily be reflected in the spelling.

• At the same time, migration of people to America, forming new dialects and pronunciation also had to be considered.

In a perfect world

• English would have its own alphabet of over 40 letters.

• Everyone would speak the same dialect with the same pronunciation.

• No new words would have entered English from other languages.

Dyslexia (誦讀困難)

• A genetic disorder in the ability to decode letters into sounds.

• For example

– pa, ba

• Dyslexic children have trouble noticing the difference.

British vs. American• In the early 18th century, English

spelling was not standardised. Differences became noticeable after the publishing of influential dictionaries.

• Today's British English spellings follow, for the most part, those of Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language (1755),

• Many American English spellings follow Noah Webster's An American Dictionary of the English Language (1828).[1]

British vs. American

• Webster was a strong proponent of English spelling reform.

• Many spelling changes proposed in the United States by Webster himself, were not accepted.

• In England, the original spelling of words coming from French was preferred.

Shortlist of differencesOr-our

• Or-our labo(u)r, colo(u)r…

• …but glamor

Shortlist of differencesre-er

• Many words ending in er were originally ending in re (from French).

– Letter, December, thermometer, number

• Theater, theatre

• Center, centre

• Exceptions: mother, anger, danger, quarter, river (words from German)

• …and “program(me)”

Spelling today and tomorrow

• L84AD8

• Late for a date.

• OMG

• BTW

• CU

• IMHO

• WTF

• “What the f@#%”

Kahoot…

• …you think these shortcuts are damaging the language and hurting students’ literacy?

Many are critical but…

• …haven’t we always been doing it?

• “two”

• And

• E.g.

• i.e.

• lb.

• @

Is there a danger for students?

• IMHO…

Non-standard spelling

• Parents recently are spelling their children’s names creatively perhaps to grant them individuality.

• Kathryn

• Stefani

• Rachyl

• ?

Common creative spellings

• Fish ‘n chips

• I’m lovin’ it.

• Kwik

Future spelling(Irregular verbs)

• English has many irregular verbs (about 300)• Be, have, do, go, say, get, make, know, see, think

• 50% of the verbs you see when reading English are irregular!

• Between 6,000 and 12,000 years ago, the ancester of English was Proto-Indo-European.

• Past tense was formed by an “ablaut” which changed the vowel sound of a word.– E.g., sing sang sung

Therefore,…

• …in the ancestral language of English, all verbs might have been “irregular.”

• Then a process of regularization occurred in early German for new words.

• That process was adding an –ed sound to verbs in the past tense, e.g., Google= googled

• Slowly over 100s of years, the original “irregular” verbs were regularized– So help-holp became help-helped

Thinking question

• Why didn’t all the verbs change to the regular spelling?

– E.g., go-went goed

– Maked

– Knowed

Answer

• The regularization of verbs is ongoing and based on frequency.

• What’s the past tense of :

– Sneak

– Fly

– Wed (presently changing to regular form)

• Theory: less frequent verbs get regularized.

Answer

• Big data tells us that one or two of the following verbs may become regularized by 2500:

• Begin, break, bring, buy choose, draw, drink, drive, eat…

• Based on frequency of usage, eventually (if English remains a language) all verbs will become regular.

Similarly(comparatives)

• What is the English rule for making comparatives?

• Beijing is _______than Hong Kong in winter. (temperature)

• Apartments are _____________ in Wanchai than Taipo. (cost of rent)

• Humid,

• safe,

• cheap

Burn, smell, spell, spoil

• Burnt, smelt, spelt, spoilt regularized in the United States first and have mostly regularized in the UK (but not completely)

MS Word

• Auto spell checker helps to regularize spelling and provides less opportunity for spelling to change.

• As more and more written communication is performed on the keyboard (not handwriting), the software controls our spelling.

• Therefore there is less opportunity to introduce a new variety.

Spellchecker

1. It was a lovely occassion

2. I recieved a promotion from my boss.

3. Try to seperate the fighting boys.

Fun spelling

• What sentence contains every letter in the alphabet?

• The quick red fox jumped over the lazy brown dog.

• What word contains all the vowels: a,e,i,o,u

• automobile

• What word contains all the vowels in order:

• facecious

Fun spelling

• What word has the most double letters?

• Committee

• Is there a word that has four vowels in a row?

• Queue

Q&A

deordeer Topics:

English spelling really does make sense

Idioms: Revealing the colors of English Expressions

World Englishes

Connected Speech – Across the Boundaries

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