ENGLISH LANGUAGE – 2° YEAR A HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE Annalisa Federici, Ph.D. Textbook: J. Culpeper, History of English, Routledge (unit 3)

SPELLINGS AND SPEECH SOUNDS English spelling used to represent speech sounds in a relatively simple way, but it has become less PHONEMIC over the centuries (cf. Italian basta – graphemes represent phonemes – and English enough – the spelling does not represent the sound unit that make up the spoken word in a straightforward way). Today English spelling is not always PHONEMIC, that is to say there is no simple one-to-one correspondence between phonemes and the graphemes representing them (N.B.: phoneme = the smallest unit of speech which is perceived to be a single distinctive sound in a language; grapheme = the smallest unit of a writing system). In OE almost each letter of the spelling corresponded to a phoneme of the spoken word: in twa (“two”) and lang (“long”) both w and g were pronounced.

SPELLINGS AND SPEECH SOUNDS Why has the spelling system become less phonemic? 1.English adopted the Roman alphabet: Today we have over 40 phonemes in English, but only 26 letters to represent them (in particular: about 20 vowel sounds, but only 5 vowel letters); even in OE, in addition to Latin consonant letters, the Runic “thorn” þ and the Gaelic “eth” ð were used interchangeably for the phonemes / ð / and // that we now represent with th; in addition to Latin vowel letters, the letter “ash” æ was used for the phoneme / æ / that we now represent as a. Some OE phonemes were represented by pairs of letters (digraphs): sc represented the first phoneme // in OE scep (“sheep”), and cg represented the last phoneme // in OE ecg (“edge”). In both OE and ME there were no strict rules for spelling: the writer’s spelling tended to reflect the variety they spoke.

SPELLINGS AND SPEECH SOUNDS Exercise: given that spelling used to represent much more closely the pronunciation of words, what can you infer about the changes in the pronunciation of the following words? Two, sword, answer Walk, half, folk Wreck, write, wring Gnat, gnarl, gnaw Knee, know, knight

SPELLINGS AND SPEECH SOUNDS 2.New spellings were introduced by Middle English scribes, particularly Norman scribes who adapted spelling to French conventions. They introduced digraphs such as: sh for sc in words like OE scip (“ship”) qu for cw in words like OE cwen (“queen”) gh for h in words like OE riht (“right”) ch for c in words like OE cin (“chin”) wh for hw in words like OE hwæt (“what”) c for s in words like OE is (“ice”) ou for u in words like OE wund (“wound”)

SPELLINGS AND SPEECH SOUNDS 3.The advent of printing (1476): a step towards standardisation of spellings. Printing was cheaper if one set of spelling conventions reflecting one dialect was chosen Printing promoted a standard in spelling Early printers did not entirely agree on a standard spelling, nor were they consistent in applying it Printers, mostly Dutch, introduced new spellings of Dutch influence (e.g. adding an h to OE gast = ghost, because of the Flemish word gheest) Dutch printers used continental characters and non-Latin letters were transformed (they used y for þ, as in Ye Olde Tea Shoppe); they also added a superfluous e or doubled consonants to match the lenght of lines in a text.

SPELLINGS AND SPEECH SOUNDS 4.Sixteenth century: etymological respellings due to the influence of Greek and Latin (words were respelled by adding silent letters to make them look more like the originals): ME langage became language (from Latin lingua) ME dette became debt (from Latin debitum) ME receite became receipt (from Latin receptum) ME samon became salmon (from Latin salmo) 5.In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries many words entered English from French (grotesque, colonel), Latin (necessary, relaxation), Greek (chaos, pneumonia), Italian (piazza, piano), Spanish (canoe, tobacco), bringing in the spelling conventions of those languages.

SPELLINGS AND SPEECH SOUNDS 6.Though variation in spelling was criticised, and dictionaries (e.g. Dr Johnson’s 1755 Dictionary of the English Language) began to be consulted for an authoritative spelling, changes in pronunciation were occurring because of the GREAT VOWEL SHIFT: The GVS affected the pronunciation of long vowels and is the main reason why words such as make, sweet and ride were (and are) no longer pronounced as they were spelt. During the GVS vowels articulated at the front of the mouth were raised and fronted, and vowels articulated at the back were raised and backed. The highest vowels, which couldn’t be raised any further, became diphthongs.

PHONETICS AND SOUND CHANGE

All Middle English short vowels in accented syllables remained stable in Modern English, while long vowels underwent a process of extensive alteration known as GVS, which mainly consisted in raising long vowels. The GVS is responsible for many of the irregularities of the English spelling system: spelling had become fixed before the shift, and therefore did not change when the quality of long vowels changed. Consequently, our vowel symbols no longer correspond to the sound they once represented. This is the reason why we have such pairs as serene/serenity, profound/profundity, divine/divinity.