1. Spelling & Pronunciation
Orthography-Pronunciation Discrepancies

2. Gap between spelling & sound
Orthography (spelling) does not represent the sounds of utterances in a language systematically.
English or Korean, known as using phonetic writing system, has a great gap between pronunciation and spelling.
Phonetics & phonology always deal with pronunciation instead of spelling.

3. Examples of pronunciation-spelling mismatch
Different letters, a single sound
to too two through threw clue shoe
Did he believe that Caesar could see the people seize the seas?
The silly amoeba stole the key to the machine.
A single letter, different sounds
dame dad father call village many
My father wanted many a village dame badly.
A combination of letters, a single sound
shoot, character, Thomas, physics, coat, glacial, either
Some letters have no sound
mnemonic, autumn, resign, debt, bough, island, knot, gnash
An extreme case:
“Ghoti” can be pronounced as fish

4. Reason for Discrepancies: Spelling Changes
Old English
Christian missionaries used a 23-letter alphabet for approx 35 phonemes of Old English  Deviation from the one-to-one principle
After Norman Conquest (1066)
French spelling conventions introduced
Examples (before  after)
cw  qu ‘quick’
h  gh ‘might’
c  ch ‘church’
u  ou ‘house’
Zealotry of some academics
debt & doubt: borrowed from French dette & doute but silent ‘b’ was inserted to make the words resemble the original Latin debitum & dubitare, respectively.
Carelessnes
colonel: borrowed from French coronelle and spelled with an ‘r’, later adapted from Italian colonello
 Italian spelling, French pronunciation

5. Reason for Discrepancies: Pronunciation Changes
Deletions
/l/ before a /d/  Ø ‘would, should, could’ (however, ‘cold’, ‘hold’)
/k,g/ before a nasal  Ø ‘knee, knife, gnat’
(however, ‘acne, agnostic’)
/l/ before /f, k, m/  Ø ‘calf, walk, balm’
however, ‘self, silk, film’
/ә/  Ø ‘nose, name’
Fricatives
Allophones [v, D, z] becomes phonemic in ME.
[Z] arose in 17C from the palatalization of the [zj] cluster ‘vision [vIzjәn]  [vIZәn]’
Great Vowel Shift (from ME period through 18C)
A major historical change of English pronunciation
Eg) geese [gε:s][gis], tide [tid][taId], loud [lud][laud]
GVS occurred after invention of printing
Borrowings
From French: bizarre, bouquet, beige, debris
From Italian: motto, mezzanine, stucco, grotto
From Spanish: junta, galleon, marijuana
From German: Gestalt, poltergeist
From Portuguese: macaque, verandah
From Russian: czar, intelligentsia

6. Reason for Discrepancies: Summary
Even languages with phonetic writing system such as English and Korean have significant discrepancies between orthography and pronunciation
Pronunciation is more vulnerable and variable than spelling
 We need a better way of representing speech sounds than orthography (move on to the slides on Transcription)