Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Fredrik (talk | contribs) at 23:30, 15 March 2004 (occured -> occurred). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Natural languages often develop cumbersome manners of spelling words. Particular sounds will be represented by various letter combinations, while one letter may be pronounced in various ways. This is especially true of languages such as English that borrow heavily from other languages.

English spelling reforms

English spelling contains many irregularities due to a number of factors. Borrowing from other languages is one of them; an even greater cause is the fact that English began to be widely written and printed during the Middle English period. The shift to modern English involved undergoing a Great Vowel Shift and many other changes in phonology. English spelling was relatively systematic during the Middle English period. The older, etymological spellings have been retained despite major shifts in the underlying phonology.

Modern English has anywhere from fourteen to twenty-two separate vowel and diphthong phonemes, depending on dialect, and 26 or 27 consonants. Representing this language with the twenty-six inadequate letters of the Latin alphabet is going to be a challenge no matter what sort of system is chosen. Many digraphs or diacritical marks would be needed to create a phonetic spelling for English.

Language reformers propose new systems of simplified spelling to make it more phonetic, sometimes even a full phonemic orthography is suggested. They argue that this will make their language more useful for international communications and easier to learn for immigrants and school children. However, their efforts are faced with concerns that old literature will become inaccessible. Their efforts are further hampered by habit and a lack of a central authority to set new spelling standards.

The idea of phonetic spelling has faced more serious criticism, on the grounds that it would hide morphological similarities between words that happen to have quite different pronunciations. This line of argument is based on the idea that when people read, they do not in reality try to work out the sequence of sounds composing each word, but instead either recognize words as a whole, or as a sequence of small number of semantically significant units (e.g. "morphology" might be read as "morph"+"ology", rather than as a sequence of a larger number of phonemes). In a system of phonetic spelling, these semantic units become less distinct, as various allomorphs can be pronounced differently in different contexts. For example, in English spelling, most past participles are spelled with an "ed" on the end, even though this can have several pronunciations (compare "kissed" and "interrupted").

Another criticism is based on the practicalities of devising a system. The vowel inventory of British English and American English differs substantially, and many words are pronounced differently. A phonemic system would have to pick between the two.

A number of proposals have been made to reform English spelling. Some were proposed by Noah Webster; some, but by no means all, of his suggestions result in the differences between American and British spellings.

Spelling reform is parodied in "A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling" and attributed to Mark Twain who was actually a supporter of reform.

Successes in spelling complication

Samuel Johnson's dictionary of 1755 introduced "Saxon" spellings for English words, actually from French.

• music became musick
• critic became critick

Some dictionaries of this time period also adopted false Latin etymologies:

• iland became island (from the Latin insula, although island is actually a Germanic word)
• ile became aisle (also from insula)

Successes in spelling simplification

Noah Webster, when developing his dictionary in the early 19th century, advocated spelling reform and used many simplified spellings in his dictionary. The most commonly seen, which separate American English from British English in this area, are, from the 1821 edition:

• musick became music
• publick became public
• cheque became check
• colour became color
• plough became plow
• favour became favor
• phantasy became fantasy

The 1806 edition uses some alternate spellings which did not gain acceptance:

• isle became ile
• examine became examin
• feather became fether
• definite became definit
• thread became thred
• thumb became thum

Spelling reform managed to make some progress in the early 20th century. Most notably, beginning in 1934, the Chicago Tribune adopted many simplified spellings for words, which they mainly did not drop until 1975. Some simplified spellings of the 20th century have become the dominant spelling today:

• catalogue became catalog
• analogue became analog
• hiccough became hiccup
• interne became intern
• programme became program
• doughnut became donut
• sulphur became sulfur

Others survive as variant spellings:

• aghast became agast
• prologue became prolog
• cancelled became canceled
• hearken became harken
• medaeval became medieval
• proceed became procede
• gramme became gram
• socks became sox (remembered in the names of the Red Sox and White Sox sports teams)
• through became thru (now an archaicism, as in "drive-thru")
• night became nite (archaicism-- "late nite")
• clue became clew (archaicism)
• telephone became telefone (archaicism)

Finally, some never gained acceptance:

• hockey became hocky
• cigarette became cigaret
• thorough became thoro
• definitely became definitly
• traffic became trafic
• tongue became tung
• subpoena became subpena
• drought became drouth

German spelling reform

Main article: German spelling reform.

German speaking countries signed an agreement for spelling reforms in 1996, planned to be gradually introduced until 2006.

French spelling reform

Main article: Reforms of French orthography.

In 1990, the Académie française had unanimously approved the adoption of a new orthograph. The current spelling would have remained correct, but in parallel a new rectified spelling would have been introduced. Containing a small list of minor modifications, the proposition of the Commission du Dictionnaire was inaccurately presented as a reform. The reaction of the public was a disaster and the "reform" was abandonned. The last major reform of French spelling goes back to the 17th century. Minor reforms occurred in the 18th and 19th century.

Russian spelling reforms

Main article: Reforms of Russian orthography.

Over the time, there were a number changes in spelling. They were mostly related with elimination of letters of the Cyrillic alphabet rendered obsolete by changes in phonetics.

When Peter I introduced his "civil script" in 1708, spelling was simplified as well.

The most recent reform of the Russian spelling was carried out shortly after the Russian revolution. The Russian orthography was simplified by replacing the obsolete letter 'yat' with letter 'e' and eliminating the archaic usage of the 'yer' letter (hard sign) at the ends of words.

Related articles

• Alphabet
• Esperanto
• Cut Spelling
• Simplified Chinese character for the equivalent of spelling reform in a non-alphabetic language