Spelling English

[Bill Phil]

Aren't "ch" and "th" technically their own sounds? Bring back the Thorn!

[White Owl]

I've been told that William Shakespeare didn't always spell his own name the same way. I don't know if it's true... but it sounds good.

[KerbMav]

As a non-native English speaker I should say that English is probably the easiest language to master.

I think this is mostly because lots of entertainment and communication is in English.

Imagine if there had been a cool TV show in Latin ...

All I have to add to the education of children part: If children are into languages, let them learn! We never pick up new languages as fast as when we are young, as the brain is already doing just that, learning to communicate by using a language. Also people that grew up with more than one language are more adept at learning another one later in life.

But please do not make it mandatory for them!

[Yukon0009]

As a non-native English speaker I should say that English is probably the easiest language to master. If you think English is hard, try Korean, for example, or Estonian.

.

Agreement, Korean, Japanese, Chinese or thos without an alphabet are ridicilously hard to learn.

[Mr Shifty]

All I have to add to the education of children part: If children are into languages, let them learn! We never pick up new languages as fast as when we are young, as the brain is already doing just that, learning to communicate by using a language.

Apparently this is not actually true. Adults can learn languages more quickly than children because adults can adapt the rules of grammar and learn cognates easily and already have a large vocabulary in their native language. It takes kids 2 or more years to gain the limited fluency that kids have (with kids' natural limited vocabulary and means of expression), even with constant immersion in a 2nd language, while adults in a rigorous program can become fluent (B2) in 6 months or less.

[cicatrix]

Agreement, Korean, Japanese, Chinese or thos without an alphabet are ridicilously hard to learn.

Despite what most people think, Chinese is not that bad (as compared to Korean) and Japanese is even easier since it technically has an alphabet, not hieroglyphs.

[*Aqua*]

There's some research that suggests English is more difficult to learn than those other languages, which suggests that it's more irregular. (The technical term for irregular spelling seems to be deep orthography.)

Interesting PDF! In the diagram on page 6 it says "Items/min". What items? Do they mean words with that?

As a non-native English speaker I should say that English is probably the easiest language to master. If you think English is hard, try Korean, for example, or Estonian.

Korean works very differently to English. I'm not sure if you can compare them. I believe a Japanese would find it easier to learn Korean than English.

As a native German speaker I'm often confused of how to pronounciate some words. It often makes no sense to me.

A few examples:

sword - Why is the "w" not pronounced?

which - Why is the "h" not pronounced?

know - Why is the "k" not pronounced but in "knock" it is? Edit: In "knock" you don't speak the "k" either. *sigh*

In German pronounciation is easier to find out. There are some letters which are pronounced differently depending on the word which doesn't seem to follow any rules (e. g. "y" can sound like "i", "j" or "ü"). But overall "you speak like it's spelled" (rule of thumb).

When I was in primary school I had to learn three alphabets: A-Z, a-z and the third alphabet is the pronounciation of each letter ("a", "be", "ce",... German pronounciation). I think the English people do the same? Or don't they?

Edited February 11, 2015 by *Aqua*

[cantab]

I'm also starting to believe that no matter how you pronounce a word, there are native English speakers somewhere in the world who pronounce it in the same way.

I think you're not far off the truth there

I've been told that William Shakespeare didn't always spell his own name the same way. I don't know if it's true... but it sounds good.

Pretty believable. Shakespeare wrote in a time when spelling was only just beginning to be standardised. He also didn't actually write much on paper at all - he would come up with the lines and acted in his plays, but the putting of ink to paper was done by others.

[Mr Shifty]

As a native German speaker I'm often confused of how to pronounciate some words. It often makes no sense to me.

A few examples:

sword - Why is the "w" not pronounced?

which - Why is the "h" not pronounced?

know - Why is the "k" not pronounced but in "knock" it is? Edit: In "knock" you don't speak the "k" either. *sigh*

- Yes, and there's a slightly archaic word in English "sward", which means something like a grassy park, and you do pronounce the 'w' in that word.

- Regarding 'which', the first 'h' is actually often pronounced. It's subtle and if the speaker is lazy, they can get away with not voicing it, but there can (should?) be a breathy exhalation at the start of 'which' and 'why' and 'where' to signify the 'h'.

- The 'kn' illustrates the problem of English orthography. At the beginning of a word, the 'k' in 'kn' is never pronounced, but there are potential situations where it could occur in the middle of a word, when the word is compound like 'bleakness', where the k is pronounced. And words like 'acknowledge' where the word 'know' is the root, but the 'k' is pronounced. But in words like 'foreknowledge', where 'know' is also the root it isn't. So you end up with a long list of rules and exceptions just for this one pair of consonants. All of English is like that.

Edited February 11, 2015 by Mr Shifty

[cicatrix]

All European languages inherited their alphabet from Latin (from Ancient Rome). Differences in pronunciation forced people to adapt the old letters to new sounds and even this wasn't enough since German had umlauts, French (here's a language with completely illogical spelling) had diactric symbols too, so did Spanish. Italian remained more or less intact since it is the closest to Latin. This is the core of the problem - all these languages have 'foreign' alphabet. We, the Russians, were luckier since we got a phonetic alphabet when each letter corresponded to a certain sound. Yes, we have 33 letters in Cyrillic instead of 26 but we don't have to use ch-, th-, sh- and other combinations.

[PakledHostage]

Despite what most people think, Chinese is not that bad (as compared to Korean) and Japanese is even easier since it technically has an alphabet, not hieroglyphs.

I think the trouble many people have with Mandarin is how to pronounce the tones with enough accuracy to say the right thing. That was certainly my experience with the little bit of Mandarin that I've tried to speak, and I've heard the same from many others. I once tried to say hello to a friend's mother, (referring to her with the honorific title of "mother" even though she wasn't my mother) and I ended up saying "hello horse" instead of "hello mother". When they finished laughing, they told me that it is an easy mistake to make. They told me that there's even a nursery rhyme about those two words (plus two others) that sound very much the same, differing only subtlety by their tones. Maybe the point is that every language has its idiosyncrasies?

[Jouni]

We, the Russians, were luckier since we got a phonetic alphabet when each letter corresponded to a certain sound. Yes, we have 33 letters in Cyrillic instead of 26 but we don't have to use ch-, th-, sh- and other combinations.

Finnish is actually even more consistent. Russian vowels have an annoying tendency to change, depending on the context they appear in.

[*Aqua*]

@Mr....y

Thanks for your reply!

"sward"

You do pronounce the "w"? Ok, then I must be too unused to spoken English to hear that. When I hear someone speaking the word "sword" I always think about "zord" (of the series Power Rangers). Sorry I can't get around that. ^^

"which"

Here's the same. I don't hear an "h". But the German language also knows an unvoiced "h", e. g. "zehn" (means ten in English). It's spoken like "zen" with a long vowel (don't confuse it with the zen buddism, that has a short vowel!). It's a left-over from the middle ages. The last spelling reform (1996) removed a lot of these unvoiced consonants. I guess the next one will remove all of them.

- The 'kn' illustrates the problem of English orthography. At the beginning of a word, the 'k' in 'kn' is never pronounced, but there are potential situations where it could occur in the middle of a word, when the word is compound like 'bleakness', where the k is pronounced. And words like 'acknowledge' where the word 'know' is the root, but the 'k' is pronounced. But in words like 'foreknowledge', where 'know' is also the root it isn't. So you end up with a long list of rules and exceptions just for this one pair of consonants. All of English is like that.

Is there none who tries to reform that?

In Germany we had a spelling reform where not only a lot of word changed, the grammar rules were changed too. This led to a lot of confusion, that's why a part of the reform was canceled which increased the confusion even more. And then they decided to re-enacted some of it however... so nobody is sure what's allowed and what's not.

Fortunately only officals have to write in the new spelling, the rest can do as they like. Which means that the older Germans still write in the old spelling and the younger ones in the new spelling because they learnt it in school. Some newspapers even invented their own spelling mixing new and old spelling.

But now the German grammar is easier and a lot of exceptions were removed, e. g. in the old spelling there were 57(!) rules about where to place a comma, the new spelling only have 9 which people can merge into 3. That's what I call progress!

Edited February 12, 2015 by *Aqua*

[Bill Phil]

Was that reform in the late twentieth century?

Did it involve changing the way es sets worked?

[Kryten]

I've been told that William Shakespeare didn't always spell his own name the same way. I don't know if it's true... but it sounds good.

True to form, Wikipedia has an entire page on the spelling of 'Shakespeare'.

[cantab]

Is there none who tries to reform that?

Well I'm not sure what you could do about the 'kn' cluster, other than put a hyphen when it's pronounced as two separate letters like in break-neck. But you can't just generally change it to n, because 'know', 'no', and 'now' are different words - the reform would be more confusing than the original.

[Kryten]

As a native German speaker I'm often confused of how to pronounciate some words. It often makes no sense to me.

A few examples:

sword - Why is the "w" not pronounced?

which - Why is the "h" not pronounced?

know - Why is the "k" not pronounced but in "knock" it is? Edit: In "knock" you don't speak the "k" either. *sigh*

The main issue with English is the spelling does not represent how something is pronounced, but how it was pronounced when that spelling became reasonably standardised, mostly in the sixteenth century. 'Sword' had a pronounced w, knee and knife had pronounced k's, e's at the end of words were always pronounced, and so on.

[Tommygun]

True to form, Wikipedia has an entire page on the spelling of 'Shakespeare'.

What, not a single Bill Shakespeare.

[linkxsc]

What, not a single Bill Shakespeare.

Billiam Shakespere?

[*Aqua*]

Was that reform in the late twentieth century?

Did it involve changing the way es sets worked?

- introduction in 1996, also start of transitional period (new spelling is now taught in school, old spelling is still allowed but a mix of old and new isn't)

- second version published in 2004

- obligation in 2005 for officials, public authorities and schools (old spelling was considered wrong from that moment on) in Germany, Austria and Luxembourg

- third version published in 2006

What do you mean with "es sets"? Do you mean the "ß" (Eszett) aka sharp-s? The ß after short vowels is replaced by "ss" and unchanged after long vowels and diphthongs, e. g. "Schloßstraße" became "Schlossstraße" (engl. castle street). "Schloß" has a short vowel, "Straße" has a long one.

Proper nouns are excluded from the change of rules. They still look like what they used to be.

But you can't just generally change it to n, because 'know', 'no', and 'now' are different words - the reform would be more confusing than the original.

Would it? In Germany it worked somehow. A lot of words (and I mean really a lot of words!) were changed. The Duden (dictionary, de facto standard of German spelling) printed marked the new spelling:

There was a lot of marking I can tell you. I found a list with all changed words somewhere, it lists about 9000 words.

One of the main points of the reform was to "update" the rules and words according to how German is used today. So all the changes are in fact a representation of the current use of the German language by the public.

I know there can be somekind of confusion. For example in the past they abandoned the long-s ("ſ"). From that point on some words can't be distinguished by the spelling, e. g. "Wachstube" (tube of wax) and "Wachſtube" (guard post). Both became "Wachstube".

The main issue with English is the spelling does not represent how something is pronounced, but how it was pronounced when that spelling became reasonably standardised, mostly in the sixteenth century. 'Sword' had a pronounced w, knee and knife had pronounced k's, e's at the end of words were always pronounced, and so on.

So it's time to update the language? Like we did in Germany?

It makes no sense to continue writing in 16th century English while speaking 21st century English.

Edited February 12, 2015 by *Aqua*

[Kryten]

So it's time to update the language? Like we did in Germany?

Only problem is there's no body with the authority to do that. If, say, the government did decide to convene a body that started to dictate to dictionary makers how to spell, I can guarantee you the response would be something along the lines of 'shove off'. It's just not the kind of attitude anglophones tend to have towards the language.

[*Aqua*]

In the German speaking countries it worked the other way around. Scientists (including dictionary makers like Duden) worked out the new rules and then went to the goverments, telling them they need to make a new law.

[cpast]

In the German speaking countries it worked the other way around. Scientists (including dictionary makers like Duden) worked out the new rules and then went to the goverments, telling them they need to make a new law.

But there is no body that can make a law for English, and English dictionary authors tend to have a view that "the language is what people use, not what we decide it is."

[Tommygun]

Billiam Shakespere?

William: Bill, Billy, Will or Willie even Liam.

[*Aqua*]

> there is no body that can make a law for English

You can change what language pupils have to learn in school and what language authorities have to use. And that's the only thing what the German goverment did. Of course you can't bind people by law to write "updated" English at home. That's entirely up to them.

> the language is what people use, not what we decide it is

I described it in an earlier post. Scientist analyzed how people spoke and wrote German and changed the old grammar rules to fit that. The only "new" thing was that the new rules were used to change some words to provide consistence.

That's all. There was no decision, it was just an update for outdated rules. In another 50 years or so they'll probably do a reform again because the language changed in the mean time.