Profile Books, 2012
Why is there an 'h' in ghost? William Caxton,
inventor of the printing press and his Flemish employees had no dictionary or style guide to hand in 15th century Bruges,
so the typesetters simply spelled it the way it sounded to their foreign
ears, and it stuck. Seventy-five per cent of English spelling is regular
but twenty-five per cent is complicated. In Spell It Out linguistics expert David Crystal explains how and why English is spelt the way it is. A fascinating read - especially if you feel you area poor speller or have children currently learning to read and write.
Telling the stories behind the rogue words that trip us up, he explains why they entered the mainstream. Some examples are that 6th century monks wrote using the Roman alphabet of 23 letters but added 3 more to cope with the 37 different sounds found in the Anglo-Saxon language; the arrival of the French in 1066 meant French spelling practice was grafted on; the Great Vowel Shift, which took place over 200 years beginning in the 15th century, cahnged pronunciation but we kept the spellings the same; later writers used the history of words (etymology) to regularise spelling; and loanwords from other languages have spellings that often do not follow regular English spelling patterns.
David Crystal also advocates a new approach to teaching spelling. He feels that words need to be learnt in context and often in related groups: sign, signs, signing, signal and signalling - and which also demonstrate specific spelling rules - in this case when and when not to use the silent 'g' principle. Where words are often confused [principal and principle], he suggests the word used more frequently is taught first on its own and in context - principal boy, principal girl, school principal. Some spelling mistakes come from mispronunciation - pome for poem, libry for library, reconised for recognised - and this needs to be addressed.
[Note: It may be reassuring to learn that in practice four-fifths of English spellings conform to patterns we can readily see and that only 3% of English words are spelt in genuinely anomalous ways.]
Telling the stories behind the rogue words that trip us up, he explains why they entered the mainstream. Some examples are that 6th century monks wrote using the Roman alphabet of 23 letters but added 3 more to cope with the 37 different sounds found in the Anglo-Saxon language; the arrival of the French in 1066 meant French spelling practice was grafted on; the Great Vowel Shift, which took place over 200 years beginning in the 15th century, cahnged pronunciation but we kept the spellings the same; later writers used the history of words (etymology) to regularise spelling; and loanwords from other languages have spellings that often do not follow regular English spelling patterns.
David Crystal also advocates a new approach to teaching spelling. He feels that words need to be learnt in context and often in related groups: sign, signs, signing, signal and signalling - and which also demonstrate specific spelling rules - in this case when and when not to use the silent 'g' principle. Where words are often confused [principal and principle], he suggests the word used more frequently is taught first on its own and in context - principal boy, principal girl, school principal. Some spelling mistakes come from mispronunciation - pome for poem, libry for library, reconised for recognised - and this needs to be addressed.
[Note: It may be reassuring to learn that in practice four-fifths of English spellings conform to patterns we can readily see and that only 3% of English words are spelt in genuinely anomalous ways.]
