RIGHTING THE MOTHER TONGUE, FROM OLDE
ENGLISH TO EMAIL: THE TANGLED STORY OF
ENGLISH SPELLING
by David Wolman
New 421.52 Wol
Orthography is a little-known and relatively caliginous subject; its broadest definition is the investigation as to how spoken language is committed to a written format, including the symbols utilized and the process by which such characters are engendered and employed.
In other words, orthography is a synonym for spelling.
David Wolman plumbs the heady depths of English language spelling in his book Righting the Mother Tongue, etc., which was published in October 2008 by Collins. I love the English language and rejoice in its bizarre spelling traditions. I find it delightful that the letter combination ough can be pronounced in such a bewildering multiplicity of ways. Consider the following words: bough, cough, dough, enough, and through -- each corresponds with the following words, pronunciation-wise: cow, scoff, flow, puff, and zoo. Behold the glorious, mercurial inconsistency of it all!
The feckless irregularities of English are the very things which make it an extremely difficult language to learn. For centuries, English spelling has been the bane of its speakers' existence, and through the ages scores of individuals have petitioned to have its orthography radically simplified. One of the earliest pioneers of such a movement was the father of the English language dictionary: Samuel Butler (an Englishman), who authored one of the earliest lexicons in 1755.
We are perhaps more familiar with Noah Webster, an American who published the first dictionary on U.S. soil in 1806. Webster championed spelling changes not only to make orthography easier to comprehend, but also to highlight the difference between American English and its British parent. Webster's influence brought about the disappearance of the superfluous "u" in the American spelling of such words as honor, valor, and color (in England they remain honour, valour, and colour to this day). President Theodore Roosevelt, author H.G. Wells, and playwright George Bernard Shaw were all devoted disciples of spelling mediation.
I was quite surprised to find Melvil Dewey not only on this illustrious list, but that he was at one time America's most impassioned disciple of the simplified spelling movement. Melvil created the Dewey Decimal System, the numerical classification scheme used by public and school libraries to arrange non-fiction materials. At birth his first name was spelled Melville, but in college he dropped the second "l" and silent "e"--for a brief time he even spelled his surname "Dui" in an effort to prove more phonetic. Dewey was cautioned to stifle his spelling-streamline-mania by his employer at his first job as a librarian, at New York's Columbia University.
Dewey courted the philanthropic paragon Andrew Carnegie and was given a generous allottment of financial support for his spelling simplification efforts (Carnegie was himself a poor speller who was very much in sympathy with Melvil's spelling philosophy.) Clearly, however, Dewey's and his colleagues' designs to reinvent English spelling were met with a stunning paucity of success (although various organizations championing the same cause are still extant today.)
Spelling reform does have its positive points. Children would have a much easier time of things in learning the language, for one; non-English speakers would benefit greatly as well if the many contradictory, illogical, and arcane traditions of our written language were to be eradicated.
On the other hand, spelling reform initiaitves have traditionally met with incredibly robust resistance from the masses. Spelling purists (of whom I am one) find the very concept alarming (indeed!), but the majority just cannot be bothered having to re-learn the nuts and bolts of spelling. One of the reasons English has such convoluted spelling practices is because the bulk of the language is borrowed from other tongues. Wolman shares a very brief list of some examples: bungalow (Hindi), guitar (Spanish), bamboo (Malay), kiosk (Turkish), algebra (Arabic), parasite (Greek), cameo (Italian), and curry (Tamil). A huge number of English words are derived from Dutch and German, the two languages with which English shares the most common ground. Moreover, English has a substantial variety of vowel sounds but very few vowels-- re-establishing spelling rules would mean instituting tortuous letter combinations to represent the same sounds, or inventing altogether new letters.
English, like all languages, is constantly encountering alteration, moderation, permutation, and even corruption. An excellent example of this is the contemporary phenomenon of texting, where "texters" utilize all manner of abbreviation in order to save themselves time and exertion. I find this practice as annoying as I do unseemly; besides which, I end up mouthing what the bizarre alpha-numeric symbols are supposed to mean and become frustrated that I'm not reading actual words.
I laughed at myself at times while reading this book. While the American spelling of the word is catalog, I still insist on writing catalogue, which is the British style. I also append the silent "e" in the purals of words that do not actually require them ("volcanoes") and insist on doubling consonants (also a British holdover) for some words (the plural of "bus" in the U.S. is "buses", which to me looks like the second syllable of the word "abuses", and thus has me pronouncing it the same way when I see it written--I use "busses").
This book is not solely for those of us with a penchant for orthographic chronology. Wolman is a breezy writer whose infectious curiosity and self-deprecating humor make for an engaging style of prose. At the outset he bluntly confesses his spelling ineptitude and part of his interest in this subject was a desire to learn why he has always found the subject so very arduous. Both its tone and content make for a highly enjoyable read and I recommend it unreservedly!
1 comment:
Quotes:
"I love the English language and rejoice in its bizarre spelling traditions. I find it delightful that the letter combination ough can be pronounced in such a bewildering multiplicity of ways. Consider the following words: bough, cough, dough, enough, and through -- each corresponds with the following words, pronunciation-wise: cow, scoff, flow, puff, and zoo. Behold the glorious, mercurial inconsistency of it all!"
You rejoice in its bizarre spelling traditions? And you find it delightful? Are you serious?! Try being a foreign learner struggling with it. It's ridiculous. There's no sensible reason English orthography should be so needlessly inconsistent.
"The feckless irregularities of English are the very things which make it an extremely difficult language to learn."
That's my point exactly; its written form needn't be so difficult. Its grammar and pronunciation are problematic enough as it is.
"Spelling reform does have its positive points. Children would have a much easier time of things in learning the language, for one; non-English speakers would benefit greatly as well if the many contradictory, illogical, and arcane traditions of our written language were to be eradicated."
Not only would children and foreign learners have a much easier time learning how to read and write (is that not a good enough reason in itself?), but deaf and dyslexic learners would have a lot less difficulty as well.
"On the other hand, spelling reform initiaitves have traditionally met with incredibly robust resistance from the masses. Spelling purists (of whom I am one) find the very concept alarming (indeed!), but the majority just cannot be bothered having to re-learn the nuts and bolts of spelling."
No-one would have to re-learn the nuts and bolts of spelling, if the spelling revisions are implemented sensibly and legibly (A good example would be "through" becoming "thru"). It's not about re-inventing the proverbial wheel; it's simply taking that same wheel and smoothing it out, and giving it a newer, better-designed bearing so it can roll faster and more efficiently. The main reason spelling reform initiatives have historically had so little success is that no-one has come up with a system that works well enough, and that everyone agrees upon. I've studied this phenomenon for years, and I've noticed that there are so many revised spelling systems proposed by so many educated and scholarly (and not so scholarly) people, ranging from the reasonable to the ridiculous (and illegible). That's the main reason, I believe, that there has been so much "resistance" to spelling revisions; people seem to be afraid that these proposed revisions might actually make the inconsistencies worse than they already are, which is not an unfounded concern, as that's what has happened before, historically. So any spelling revision proposal, if it is to stand any chance of being adopted, must be easily readable and evolutionary rather than revolutionary. It must be keyboard-friendly (meaning no new characters, just the standard Roman alphabet), and it must be compatible with all the various regional accents in the English-speaking world, e.g. British, Scottish, Irish, American, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand, South African, etc. It would probably have to be gradually phased in, with new forms introduced alongside traditional forms and becoming deemed equally "acceptable" (we already do this with words like "through/thru," "though/tho," "minuscule/miniscule," etc.) The question is, deemed by whom? As far as I know, we have no central body of scholars who "call the shots" as to orthography, grammar, and pronunciation. It might be necessary to establish an international group of linguists and educators from all the English-speaking countries, perhaps something analogous to the Académie Française in France. That would lend the new system some clout and credibility, which it would need in order to gain any sort of widespread acceptance. So, it wouldn't be easy, but not impossible either.
"Moreover, English has a substantial variety of vowel sounds but very few vowels-- re-establishing spelling rules would mean instituting tortuous letter combinations to represent the same sounds."
Not necessarily; and not any more tortuous (or torturous!) than some of the letter combinations we already have.
"English, like all languages, is constantly encountering alteration, moderation, permutation, and even corruption. An excellent example of this is the contemporary phenomenon of texting, where "texters" utilize all manner of abbreviation in order to save themselves time and exertion. I find this practice as annoying as I do unseemly; besides which, I end up mouthing what the bizarre alpha-numeric symbols are supposed to mean..."
That's my point, too: linguistic change is inevitable. Therefore, when a language undergoes any significant phonological changes over time, its orthography should then be adjusted and "tweaked" to reflect those changes. Again, the spelling revisions I'm advocating are fairly conservative and evolutionary rather than revolutionary. I see what you mean about texting, but texting is not just about saving time and exertion; it's about saving space. You're forced to confine the body of your text to a certain fixed number of characters per text message, including spaces (on my phone the limit is 160 characters). So you have to get creative and improvise, using various abbreviations and shortened spellings to get your point across. I agree; it's sometimes unseemly and annoying, especially if it's nigh-on illegible. But if I can easily read it, I don't really mind. This is also an example of how technology is influencing our language and how we communicate.
"...and become frustrated that I'm not reading actual words."
Of course you're not reading actual words; it's the same way with any orthography, whether it's traditional or simplified, foreign or domestic. Words are invisible; they consist of sound, not written text. The written text is simply a visual representation of the spoken words. And it helps a lot when the written form is at least mostly accurate in representing the spoken form, unlike English (and French). I had to treat each English word as if it were an ideogram (word picture), like a Chinese Han character, because there was nothing remotely resembling a consistent system of orthographic rules for me to follow, and the written form scarcely followed the spoken form at all. That was why I and many others in my classes had such a hard time learning to read and spell, and why we need to find a way to fix it ASAP, or at least adjust it wherever necessary.
Post a Comment