Ep.14: Why Is English Spelling So Strange?
Sometimes it can be pretty stressful to try to guess how to pronounce some words when you have never heard them, I understand :D
So today, I will tell you why English spelling is so different from pronunciation (= from how we actually say the words).
Hopefully, you will learn something new :)
Also, you can find the vocabulary and comprehension quiz under the transcription!
(Česky: Najdete seznam slovíček a krátký kvíz porozumění pod přepisem)
Link for the episode:
WRITTEN TRANSCRIPTION OF THE PODCAST:
Hello and welcome to my podcast My Life and Other Funny Stories. My name is Dagmar Tomášková, I am an English tutor and I created this podcast for students at intermediate and upper intermediate levels who want to get better in their oral comprehension. As always you can find the transcription of this episode, comprehension quiz, and vocabulary list in the notes of the podcast.
Today I wanted to look at one interesting story. The story of English one would say. As I already mentioned in my previous episodes, I was studying English at the university, and the history of English was a whole thing there. We had a whole subject about it. I was studying different versions of English and trying to understand English from the Middle Ages and older - which looks like a completely different language - while asking myself where the hell will I use this information in life and career. I was looking for a way to use it for so long now I will use it, whether you like it or not.
Don't worry, I will not bore you with dates and annoying information. I just want to talk about English spelling and how we write words. Sometimes when you not only learn the language but also learn ABOUT the language, it will give you a lot of information and you can understand and remember things a little better.
I mean…English spelling is extremely confusing, am I right?
Let me give you a little demonstration. Just take the word "hear" - we say hear but add T at the end and suddenly we pronounce it "heart" and if we end D there, it is "heard". And I don't even want to talk about words ending with "ough"- literally every one of them is pronounced differently even though on paper they look almost the same. You can look into the notes of the podcast to see those words written. I mean, they look similar to me. But listen to their pronunciations: bough, through, tough, rough, cough - sound like they should be spelled differently, right?
Or you can go and bathe in the river. But once you change the "r" for "d", suddenly you don't have a "river" but you have a "diver".
That is why sometimes you are not sure how a word is pronounced until you have heard it somewhere. It happened to me many times when I was reading and learning vocabulary from the book and then, several months later, I found out that I thought the words are pronounced differently.
So why is that? Let's look at some of the reasons…
1. The Great Vowel Shift
A vowel is an open sound, in Czech we have A,E, I, O, U,Y.
Between 1350-1700 the pronunciation of many English vowels gradually changed in a process known as the Great Vowel Shift. However, the spelling of many words became standardized in the 1400s-1500s with the arrival of more widespread printing - in 1476 the printing press was invented so the books were produced with the old spelling and it just stayed this way.
I will give you an example with three words: "food", "good" and "blood". In 14th and 15th centuries, time they would have rhymed with "load" /loud/.
The three words still rhymed in Shakespeare's time, but not as before. Instead, they sounded like we pronounce the word "food" today. Of course, "good" and "blood" have since changed again, their vowels now even shorter. So we say for example: "How are you? Good!" or "The blood is red". But their spelling stayed the same. Because it was printed in the book. So the pronunciation changed, in the past, all the words had the same pronunciation, and we still spell them the same even though they don't sound the same anymore.
So English spelling is quite literally frozen in the Middle Ages!
2. Disappearing Consonants
What is a consonant? Again, it is the opposite of a vowel - vowels are A, E, I, O, U, and Y, and consonants are all the other letters (H,CH, K, R,...etc.) Some of the silent letters in English were not actually silent in the past. For example, 'gh' in the word 'light' was once like the German word "Licht". I am very very sorry to everyone, who speaks German, I don't speak German.
Or the 'k' in 'knight' was also pronounced in the past. It was pronounced similarly to "knicht" – as you can see, the words, how we write them, we still kept the K and the GH in light...but we don't pronounce them at all.
Again, with the printing press, they were being printed with the GH and K's there and so it just stayed this way even though we just ignore them today.
3. Influences of other languages
This pattern - habit - of taking words from another language is very common for English- and then taking the spelling but changing the pronunciation. Let's look at some words that come from different languages:
Celtic and Germanic origins are the base of the old English as Celtic and Germanic tribes were living on the island of today's Great Britain. With time, it started to be influenced by more and more languages.
Latin and Greek are big ones- English really took what it could. Words coming from Latin are for example (a very short list): Kitchen, school, church, days of the week and planets.
And from Greek, they are for example: Dialogue, grammar, architect and so on. As you can see in Greek, for example, or even in Czech, we say "arCHitekt" because we have the sound CH but in English they don't have the sound CH so they pronounce it as "K", as you can see, they pronounce it as /arkitekt/ even though the CH is still in the word.
Another place where English borrowed words is the north - specifically Scandinavian languages because when the Vikings arrived, they started to not only build their own territory, but bringing new vocabulary.
We can thank the Scandinavian languages for words such as (again, only an example): skirt, egg, husband, skin and bank.
Then we cannot forget about my beloved French language. The Normans (people from Normandy that is in the North of France) invaded England in 1066 and arrived there with their language, Norman French. As it was the language of the king, Norman French primarily influenced the language of the court (the rich and influential people), as well as the areas of politics, law and higher education = higher education includes for example universities.
British English has kept many French spellings, but not the pronunciations.
English has a rich vocabulary thanks to the doubling of word meanings, e.g. 'begin' (Germanic origins) and 'commence' (French origins).
Of course, there are other languages where English took some of the words, but that would be a list too long for this episode.
4. English Evolves Easily
Nowadays with globalization, the internet and travelling, more and more words are exchanged between languages- you can see the influence of English in the Czech language- teenagers are using English slang words all the time!
English has adopted many words from other languages and has usually kept the original spelling and changed the pronunciation! Great for making it interesting, but not so good for our spelling ability.
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If you take one thing from this podcast, it is that if you have problems with spelling and pronunciation, it is probably not your fault. It takes a lot of time to be able to, at least, guess the pronunciation based on experience.
I hope you learned some new information as well as practiced your listening skills today! Thank you so much for listening to this episode and don't forget that you can find the transcription, vocabulary list, and comprehension quiz in the notes. Please please give this podcast a five stars rating on the platform that you are listening to this, since it's the only way for me to get feedback and making these episodes takes me a lot of time.
That is all and I will see you next time, bye-bye.
VOCABULARY LIST:
- I will not talk about boring things
- nebudu vás nudit
Confusing
- something that makes you feel confused or it makes you not understanding
- matoucí
Demonstration
- showing of something
- ukázka
Pronounce
- say the words
- vyslovit
Similar
- looks almost the same
- podobné
bough, through, tough, rough, cough
- větev, skrz, ačkoliv, hrubý, kašel
Gradually
- slowly progressing in something
- postupně
The Great Vowel shift
- change of vowels in spoken language
- velká změna samohlásek
vowel
- open sound
- samohlásky
Printing press
- machine that prints books
- knihtisk
silent
- opposite of loud
- tichý
Consonant
- a sound that is not that open- there is some "obstacle" in the mouth to produce it :D
- souhláska
Pattern
- repeated design
- vzor
Tribes
- a social division in a traditional society consisting of families or communities linked by social, economic, religious, or blood ties, with a common culture and dialect, typically having a recognized leader
- kmeny (rody)
sound
- vibrations that travel through the air or another medium and can be heard when they reach a person's or animal's ear
- zvuk
Invaded
- to attack a territory of a different country
- napadli
Court
- rich and influential people below the king
- dvůr
doubling
- making the same thing twice
- zdvojnásobení
fault
- a mistake
- chyba
