Spell

It in
English
nglish spelling is

I confusing and chaotic,

TR as any student of English
knows all too well. "How can

the letters ough spell so many

different sounding words,"

Bex Begynneth thfe Seggre of thebe6 ful they ask, "like dough, bough,
rough, and through?" And what
lamentably toldo By John Lidgate ayonke of about a word like colonel,
Biry annevynte it to pe trllys which clearly contains no
1ro quod1.1uth of youn Enitefive yet pretends it does, and ache,

auttise an • oa to yonre Couptune with its k sound instead of the

2nd admtid. st tale forto oulo chuh sound of arch? And why

By hyn dac Batt powar to compele does four have a u while forty
mene oune hofte govornae and gvie doesn't? There are no simple
rules for English spelling, but
of none erieone. rydeugt here Bythe there is an explanation behind
#hogth my Tore bareyno Be and duulle its complexity. We have only to
~wolle reljero.al ftorvy wridafulle look back in history.
Over the centuries, the

Of worthy thebes. the mgghty woyith Fog English language has been like

d magnet, attracting words from

Nopon the tyme on novittry clofue numerous other languages. It

rby Trhgena•of biyuge Drphyion all started with the Britons,

sheefs cange fnft of thso foundaryon an ancient people living in a

part of Western Europe that

eventually became the British

Language
 which was a combinasof
spoke a language calledCeltic, the Britons wero the
Isles.1 The Britons and Welsh.4 When
Scottish,
language was als Onquered
sollque,.
early forms of
Irish,-
Germanic tribes, their Invad.d
by the
Romans and
later the
gave birth
Old English
to(an early forlf of
of the languages with a few
the
The merging
and a Latin
alphabetreplaced, E^ception
English we know), century, the conquering waPtions,
Modern ninth orsem
Germanicalphabet. In the
the ancient
Ireland
Scotland, Wales) and
the British Isles:
Great Britain (England,
of Ireland
Irish: the language
of Scotland
Scottish: the language Wales
of
1 Welsh: the language

ShowingWillian
1476
 READING 1

from Scandinavia added their pinch of language spice,5 as did the French in the

11th century.
By the 14th century, English, with its mix of at least five languages, had
evolved into what is called Middle English and had become Britain's official

language. At that time, however, its spellings were far from consistent or rational.

Many dialects had developed over the centuries, and sometimes people adopted the
spelling used in one part of the country and the pronunciation used in another. For
instance, today we use the western English spellings for busy and bury, but we give
the first the London pronunciation bizzy and the second the Kentish® pronunciation
berry. Of course, this all happened when English was primarily a spoken language,
and only scholars knew how to read and write. Even

they appear to have been quite indifferent to matters

of consistency in spelling and were known to spell the

same word several different ways in single sentence.
Even after William Caxton set up England's first
printing press in the late 15th century and the written

word became available to everyone, standard spelling

wasn't considered very important. As a matter of fact,

the typesetters in the 1500s made things even worse

by being very careless about spelling. If blank space

needed to be filled in or a line was too long, they

simply changed the spellings of words to make them
fit. Moreover, many of the early printers in England

were from Germany or Holland and didn't know

English very well. If they didn't know the spelling of

a word, they made one up. Different printers each had
their favorite spellings, so one word might be spelled
five or six different ways, depending on who printed
the passage.
Throughout this period, names and words appear

in many different forms. For instance, where can be

found as wher, whair, wair, wheare, were, and so on.

People ere even very liberal about their names. More

than 80 spellings of Shakespeare's name have been

found, among them Shagsspeare, Shakspeare, and even

Shakestaffe. Shakespeare himself didn't spell his name

the same way in any two of his six known signatures

he even spelled his name two different ways in his will.

pinch of language spice: a little bit of variety in the language

6 Kentish: of Kent, a county in southeast England

Language
 some progress been had
17th century, made
century and early
late 16th scholars. By then,
By the of various however.
due to the work
in standardizing spelling phonetic system.
For one
thing, word
was far from a simple
English spelling phonetic spelling to keep
rapidly for a truly up.
pronunciations had changed
too
and ended up having far
borrowed from many languages too
Also, English had in its Roman alphabet. By the time
for the 26 letters
many sounds (more than 40) of these
to agree on
standard spellings, many written
printing houses finally began other words, spelling and
shadow of their spoken selves. In
forms were only a
common.
pronunciation sometimes had little in first great dictionary. His
English its
Finally, in 1755, Samuel Johnson gave best the easiest, but the book
choice of spellings may
not have always been the or

most English words uniform. Eventually, people

helped to make the spellings of
became aware of
the need for "correct" spelling. Meanwhile, on the other side of
his An American
the Atlantic, Noah Webster was standardizing American English in
and The American Spelling Book. Although the
Dictionary of the English Language
British had been complaining about the messiness of English spelling for some
time, it was the Americans, with their fanaticism for efficiency, who screamed the
loudest. Webster not only favored a simplified, more phonetic spelling system, but
also tried to persuade Congress to pass a law making the use of nonstandard spelling

a punishable offense.
Mark Twain' was of the same mind-but laziness figured into his opinion. He

wasn't concerned so much with the difficulty of spelling words as with the trouble
in writing them. He became fan of the "phonographic alphabet," created by
Isaac Pitman, the inventor of shorthand-a system in which symbols represent
words, phrases, and letters. "To write the word 'laugh," Twain wrote in A Simplified
Alphabet, "the pen has to make fourteen strokes- no labor is saved to penman." But
to write the same word in the
phonographic alphabet, Twain continued, the pen
had to make just three strokes. As much as Twain would have loved it, Pitman's
phonographic alphabet never caught on.
Interest in
reforming English spelling continued to gain momentum on both
sides of the Atlantic. For a while, it seemed as if
every famous writer and scholar had
jumped on
the spelling bandwagon. $ Spelling reform associations began to pop up
everywhere. In 1876, the
American Philological Association called for the "urgent"
adoption of
and ar. In the same
11 new spellings: liv, tho, thru, wisht, catalog, definit, gard, giv, hav, infinit,
year, the Spelling Reform Association was formed, followed three
years later by a British version.

Mark Twain: an American

Adventures of Tom author (1835-1910) who wrote many books.
8
jump on Sewper and The Advontures of Hiuckleberry Thany including The
the bandwagon: Join a popular movement
 READING B 1

10 In 1906, the philanthropist Andrew Carnegie gave $250,000 to help establish

the Simplified Spelling Board. The board quickly issued a list of 300 words that were

commonly spelled two ways, such as ax and axe, and called for using the simpler of
the
two. The board helped to gain acceptance for quite a few American spellings,
including catalog, demagog, and program.
11
Eventually the Simplified Spelling Board got carried away with its work,
calling for such spellings as tuff, def, troble, and yu. The call for simplified spelling
quickly went out of fashion, particularly with the onset of World War and the

death of Andrew Carnegie. The movement never died out completely, however.

Spelling reform continued to be an ongoing, if less dramatic, process, and many

words have shed useless letters. Deposite has lost its e, as have fossile and secretariate.
Musick and physick have dropped their needless ks, and catalogue and dialogue have
shed their last two vowels.

12 As long as the world goes around, language will continue to change. New words
will be added to English; spellings will be altered. But because people are most

comfortable with the familiar, it's not likely that we'll ever see a major change in the
way most words are spelled. Anyway, what would we do without the challenge of
English spelling?

VOCABULARY

VOCABULARY IN CONTEXT

A What are the meanings of the bold words or phrases? Circle the letter of the best answer.

1. The merging of the different languages gave birth to Old English.

a. crossing c. blending
b. confusion d. complication

2. By the 14th century, English, with its mix of languages, had evolved into what is
called Middle English.
a. improved c. spread
b. appeared d. developed

3. Even scholars were quite indifferent to matters of consistency in spelling and were
known to spell the same word several different ways in single sentence.
a. uncaring about C. unsocial about

b. superior about d. confused about

4. People were even liberal about the spelling of their names, using different spellings
on the same page.

a. receptive c. understanding
b. interested d. free

Lanquage