I have a web handout on English spelling and its relation to the
phonology of the language at this URL:
http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba/phon/phon.spel.html
Feel free to read it and use any of the information in your teaching.
Please restrict it to lectures, though, or referring students to the
website. There are remarks on how useful many silent letters or
seemingly stupid things like double letters are. Silent 'g' in words
like 'sign', 'malign' cue the 'i' as having the so-called "long"
pronunciation ("eye").
Like fancy terminology? Here's one: trisyllabic laxing. It explains the
difference in vowel pronunciation between pairs like "sane-sanity",
"profane-profanity", "serene-serenity", "divine-divinity",
"ferocius-ferocity" (some of these examples from a U Toronto course web
page). The "long" vowel in the second syllable of the word without the
suffix changes to its "short" pronunciation when a suffix puts it in the
first of the word's last three syllables. Talk about a crazy rule! (And
there are exceptions ... "obese-obesity"). Anyway, just for fun.
For more fun on the history of English spelling:
English was spelled very differently during the Old English period,
approx. 600 CE to 1100 CE. It also had, as some have pointed out, sounds
that it has since lost, such as the sound like the "ch" of German or
Scots "loch". After the Norman Conquest of 1066 CE, the English literate
classes were replaced by French speakers, who introduced numerous French
spelling practices to English. In addition, it used to have consonant
clusters at the beginning of words in which the first consonant was
lost; in some cases, the lost sound is still spelled, in some cases it
has been dropped. Here are some of my favorite examples:
Old English Modern English
cwen queen (French influence)
ciric church (French influence)
cniht knight (French influence)
hnutu nut
hros horse
(in this one, the /r/ and /o/ switched places)
hwæt what
hwic which (French influence)
hus house (French influence)
gos goose
ges geese
god good
axian ask (yes, it really was pronounced "aks" back then).
To oversimplify pretty drastically, the spelling system of today
reflects the pronunciation of the Middle English period (roughly
1100-1500 CE), when English really did have long and short vowels.
Drastic pronunciation changes in the long vowels took place over a long
span between 1400 or so and 1700 or so (the Great Vowel Shift), which
caused the long and short vowels to part ways. We no longer have long
vowels (at least not in the sense that would require us to spell the
long-short difference).
In Middle English, the double vowel letter spelled a long vowel (hence
'ee' in 'queen' and 'oo' in 'goose', while the short vowels remained
largely spelled with a single vowel letter ('met' vs. 'meet').
The video series "The Story of English" has a nice episode that covers
the origins of English and its transplantation to America, "The Mother
Tongue" (episode 2, I believe). You hear some Old English, the true
pronunciation of Shakespeare's time (which sounds a lot more like Irish
than like the English of the Royal Shakespeare Company).
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Johanna Rubba Associate Professor, Linguistics
English Department, California Polytechnic State University
One Grand Avenue • San Luis Obispo, CA 93407
Tel. (805)-756-2184 • Fax: (805)-756-6374 • Dept. Phone. 756-2596
• E-mail: [log in to unmask] • Home page:
http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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