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U n i v e r s i t y o f S i n d hJ a m s h o r o

L e x i c a l S t u d i e s

M A E n g l i s h - L i n g u i s t i c s

5 / 2 5 / 2 0 1 0

Tabassum

Document provides an insight of relationship between

English speaking and spelling along with rules, regularities

and irregularities which lay the bases of the link between

spelling and pronunciation. In short it summarizes various

aspects and answers of quarrels on “Should English be spelt

as she is spoke? ”

English Spelling

and Speaking; Pros

and Cons

A s s i g n m e n t

S u b m i t t e d t o :

S i r S h a i b S h a h

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English Spelling and Speaking; Pros and Cons

Lexical Studies Assignment

Tabassum

S e c t i o n :

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Contents1. English Writing Background .................................................................................................................. 1

2. English Orthography ............................................................................................................................. 2

3. Irregularities in English Spelling System ............................................................................................... 2

4. Spelling Rules and Pronunciation .......................................................................................................... 3

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Tabassum

S e c t i o n : S p e l l i n g R u l e s a n d P r o n u n c i a t i o n

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some very common words having irregularities, inconsistencies, and arbitrariness that have led

some to proclaim that relationship among spelling and pronunciation is simply mad.

Table 1 - Irregular Words

Aisle Could Isle Quay Are Debt Key Rough Although Do

Knight Son Aunt Does Knock Sugar Dough Autumn Laugh Trough

Blood Eye Listen Two Bought Fought Move Victuals Climb Fraught

Of Water Color Friend Once Where Come Ghoul People Who

Cough Hour Psalm You We Foot Tooth Brought Knife Adobe

Other than this list of words there are many more irregular words including names of places

such as Czechoslovakia, pronounced as “Chekoslovakia” and persons such as Jacques

pronounced as “ Jake” .

4. Spelling Rules and Pronunciation

English spelling is not totally unpredictable. We can conclude it from our own personal experiences, as

we usually don’t hesitate to pronounce unknown words such as euphoria. Reason why we know how to

pronounce unfamiliar words is spelling is reasonably phonemic. English spelling is not chaotic. There are

strict restrictions on letter combinations that are allowed to represent speech sounds in different

positions.

Although English system is essentially phonemic but correspondence between speech sounds and

letters are sometimes undermined. A stock example of irregularity in English spelling is variety of

spelling corresponding to /f/ phoneme. But these words are rare and odd ‘gh’ spelling of phoneme is

extremely infrequent. Few examples of such words are shown in following table.

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Table 2 - Words having 'gh' as /f/ (CrimsenAngel, 2006)

Cough Tough Rough Laugh

Enough Trough Graph Alphabet

Waugh Nigh Keogh Slough

There are almost 400 words in English including above mentioned which are pronounced irregularly.

However as mentioned above these irregularities are overwhelmed. For example if you only recognize

spelling of word plough which is always associated with this vocabulary item, the irregularity needs to be

noticed only once, since plough, ploughs, ploughing and ploughed are all forms of the same word.

Even along with presence of these substantial irregularities, English is neither whimsical nor crazy. We

would now examine the historical reasons why English spelling is non-phonemic. We will start with

examining words and phonemes as g when pronounced with get, has phoneme /g/ but when

pronounced with word ghost has phoneme with digraph gh. Many words show that gh is pronounced

digraph gh when it is before a vowel in start of sentence, few such words are: ghost, ghoul, ghetto and

aghast , while its sound when preceded by vowel in end of sentence is pronounced as /f/ phoneme, as in

words depicted in Table 2. Though there are exceptions, for instance in some words gh is not

pronounced at all. Following table consisted few such words.

Table 3 - Words with 'gh' sound skipped

Caught Taught Bought Sought

Light Right Tight Night

Plough Bough Though Through

Students of history have shown that use gh at beginning instead of g is due to historical accident

caused by Dutch influence on printed literature in earlier days of printing. Similarly words like night light

evolved with irregular phonemes of /nait/ and /lait/ but spellings were not revised to reflect changes.

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Let us now turn to present. We will now illustrate that even when spelling is not phonemic; normally it is

subject to rules. Let’s take doubling of consonants as case study. By spotting single or double consonant

following a vowel you can tell that which phoneme is long and which is short. Interplay of vowel length

in pronunciation and consonant doubling in the orthography is important in English spelling. Following

list of words includes consonant doubling.

Table 4 - Consonant Doubling (ing)

Short Long

Hit Hitting Heat Heating

Rid Ridding Read Reading

Chat Chatting Chart Charting

Above table shows if –ing is added to a monosyllabic word ending in a consonant the final

consonant of the base is doubled as with short words in table 4, however no doubling takes

place if base has long vowel as in long words in table 4.

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S e c t i o n : W o r k s C i t e d

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Works Cited

Free Dictionary Encyclopedia. (2010). Retrieved May 19, 2010, from The Free Dictionary by Farlex:

http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Alphabetic+writing+system

Phoneme. (2010, April 28). Retrieved May 19, 2010, from Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoneme

Wordnet Web. (2010). Retrieved May 19, 2010, from Princeton:

http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=orthography

CrimsenAngel. (2006). Lists of words ending gh with consonant sound f? Retrieved May 19, 2010, from

Yahoo Answers: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20060707085224AAX8GuB

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