English orthography

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article needs additional citations for verification.
Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (March 2009)

English orthography is the alphabetic spelling system used by the English language. English orthography, like other alphabetic orthographies, uses a set of rules that generally governs how speech sounds are represented in writing.

English has relatively complicated spelling rules [[2]]when compared to other languages with alphabetic orthographies. Because of the complex history of the English language [3], nearly every sound can be legitimately spelled in more than one way, and many spellings can be pronounced in more than one way.

Function of the letters

Note: In the following discussion, only one or two common pronunciations of American and British English varieties are used in this article for each word cited. Other regional pronunciations may be possible for some words, but indicating all possible regional variants in the article is impractical.

Phonemic representation

Further information: Phonemic orthography

Like most alphabetic systems, letters in English orthography may represent a particular sound. For example, the word cat (pronounced /ˈkæt/) consists of three letters ‹c›, ‹a›, and ‹t›, in which ‹c› represents the sound /k/, ‹a› the sound /æ/, and ‹t› the sound /t/.

Single letters or multiple sequences of letters may provide this function. Thus, the single letter ‹c› in the word cat represents the single sound /k/. In the word ship (pronounced /ˈʃɪp/), the digraph ‹sh› (two letters) represents the sound /ʃ/. In the word ditch, the three letters ‹tch› represent the sound /tʃ/.

Less commonly, a single letter can represent multiple sounds voiced in succession. The most common example is the letter ‹x› which normally represents the consonant cluster /ks/ (for example, in the word ex-wife, pronounced /ˌɛksˈwaɪf/).

The same letter (or sequence of letters) may indicate different sounds when it occurs in different positions within a word. For instance, the digraph ‹gh› represents the sound /f/ at the end of some words, such as rough /ˈrʌf/. At the beginning of syllables (i.e. the syllable onset), the digraph ‹gh› represents the sound /ɡ/, such as in the word ghost (pronounced /ˈɡoʊst/). Conversely, the digraph ‹gh› never represents the sound /f/ in syllable onsets and almost never represents the sound /ɡ/ in syllable codas (Pittsburgh is an exception). (Incidentally, this shows that ghoti does not follow English spelling rules to sound like fish.)

Word origin

See also: Hard and soft C, Hard and soft G, and Silent k

Another type of spelling characteristic is related to word origin. For example, when representing a vowel, the letter ‹y› in non-word-final positions represents the sound /ɪ/ in some words borrowed from Greek (reflecting an original upsilon), whereas the letter usually representing this sound in non-Greek words is the letter ‹i›. Thus, the word myth (pronounced /ˈmɪθ/) is of Greek origin, while pith (pronounced /ˈpɪθ/) is a Germanic word. Other examples include ‹th› representing /t/ (which is usually represented by ‹t›), ‹ph› representing /f/ (which is usually represented by ‹f›), and ‹ch› representing /k/ (which is usually represented by ‹c› or ‹k›) — the use of these spellings for these sounds often mark words that have been borrowed from Greek.

Some, such as Brengelman (1970), have suggested that, in addition to this marking of word origin, these spellings indicate a more formal level of style or register in a given text, although Rollins (2004) finds this point to be exaggerated as there would be many exceptions where a word with one of these spellings, such as ‹ph› for /f/ (like telephone), could occur in an informal text.

Generally, the ability to trace meaning through orthography is far more important than the sound, as English, like many other languages, has many homophones.

Homophone differentiation

Spelling may also be used to distinguish between homophones (words with the same pronunciation but different meanings). For example, the words hour and our are pronounced identically in some dialects (as /ˈaʊ(ə)r/). However, they are distinguished from each other orthographically by the addition of the letter ‹h›. Another example is the pair of homophones plain and plane, where both are pronounced /ˈpleɪn/ but are marked with two different orthographic representations of the vowel /eɪ/.[1]

In written language, this may help to resolve potential ambiguities that would arise otherwise (cf. He's breaking the car vs. He's braking the car). This is particularly advantageous in writing since, unlike in the spoken language, the reader often has no recourse to ask for clarification. Nevertheless, homophones that are unresolved by spelling still exist (for example, the word bay has at least five fundamentally different meanings).

Some proponents of spelling reform view homophones as undesirable and would prefer that they be eliminated. Doing so, however, would increase orthographic ambiguities that would need to be resolved via the linguistic context.^{[clarification needed]}

Marking sound changes in other letters

Functionless letters

Further information: Silent letter

Some letters have no linguistic function. In Old and Middle English [v] was an allophone of /f/ occurring between vowels. The deletion of historical final schwas at the end of words such as give and have phonemicized /v/, but the now-silent ‹e› remained at the end of most /v/-final words . Words spelled with final ‹v› such as rev and Slav remain comparatively rare.

Multiple functionality

A given letter or (letters) may have dual functions. For example, the letter ‹i› in the word cinema has a sound-representing function (representing the sound /ɪ/) and a pronunciation-marking function (marking the ‹c› as having the value /s/ opposed to the value /k/).

Underlying representation

Like many other alphabetic orthographies, English spelling does not represent non-contrastive phonetic sounds (that is, sub-phonemic sounds). The fact that the letter ‹t› is pronounced with aspiration [tʰ] at the beginning of words is never indicated in the spelling, and, indeed, this phonetic detail is probably not noticeable to the average native speaker not trained in phonetics. However, unlike some orthographies, English orthography often represents a very abstract underlying representation (or morphophonemic form) of English words.[2]

“ [T]he postulated underlying forms are systematically related to the conventional orthography ... and are, as is well known, related to the underlying forms of a much earlier historical stage of the language. There has, in other words, been little change in lexical representation since Middle English, and, consequently, we would expect ... that lexical representation would differ very little from dialect to dialect in Modern English ... [and] that conventional orthography is probably fairly close to optimal for all modern English dialects, as well as for the attested dialects of the past several hundred years.[3] ”

In these cases, a given morpheme (i.e. a component of a word) is represented with a single spelling despite the fact that it is pronounced differently (i.e. has different surface representations) in different environments. An example is the past tense suffix -‹ed›, which may be pronounced variously as /t/, /d/, or /ɨd/ (for example, dip /ˈdɪp/, dipped /ˈdɪpt/, boom /ˈbuːm/, boomed /ˈbuːmd/, loot /ˈluːt/, looted /ˈluːtɨd/). Because these different pronunciations of -‹ed› can be predicted by a few phonological rules, only a single spelling is needed in the orthography.

Another example involves the vowel differences (with accompanying stress pattern changes) in several related words. For instance, the word photographer is derived from the word photograph by adding the derivational suffix -‹er›. When this suffix is added, the vowel pronunciations change largely owing to the moveable stress, a feature of the indo-european language group:

Spelling Pronunciation
photograph /ˈfoʊtəɡrɑːf/
photographer /fɵˈtɒɡrəfər/

It could be argued that the underlying representation of photo is a single phonological form, such as /ˈfoʊtəɡrɑːf/. Since the (surface) pronunciation of the vowels can be predicted by phonological rules according to the different stress patterns, the orthography only needs to have one spelling that corresponds to the underlying form. Other examples of this type include words with the -‹ity› suffix (as in agile vs agility, acid vs acidity, divine vs divinity, sane vs sanity, etc.). (See also: Trisyllabic laxing.)

Contents