The Mysteries of English Spelling
1 Read these sentences aloud:/What is the height of the ceiling? It’s eight meters.
What do the words height, ceiling, and eight /have in common? All these words include the letters ei,/but the letters are pronounced differently. The same spelling is not always pronounced/in the same way. Conversely,/some words are spelled differently/but are pronounced the same,/such as eight and ate. These examples show/that English spelling can be a challenge/for learners of the language.
2 There are two main reasons/why English spelling is irregular. First,/English words come from many different languages,/such as Greek, Latin, and French. Most of these languages use the same Roman alphabet,/but they had different sounds/and different rules of spelling. When their words became part of the English language,/their spellings remained/as they were. One example is the word/from Italian, spaghetti. In this word,/the sound [ɡ] is spelled gh,/and the sound [t] is spelled tt. Another example is the letter g,/which is pronounced in different ways. In the word anger ,/which has a Scandinavian origin,/the g is a “hard g.” However,/in the word danger,/which has a French origin,/the letter g is a “soft g.” English spelling patterns/show the history/of the language. English is a mixture/of many different languages/and developed/over a period of hundreds of years.
3 Second,/the gap between printing technology and language change/created irregular spelling. In the 15th century,/mass printing of documents/became possible. Because of this,/the spellings of words became fixed,/and they were recognized by people. However,/while the spellings remained the same,/the pronunciations of some words/continued to change over time. For example,/the word know /used to be pronounced as [knóu],/but the sound [k] gradually became silent. Only the spelling was preserved.
4 Today,/English is still changing. Along with the development of social media,/we often see a text message/that reads “Thanx 4 ur help”/instead of “Thanks for your help.” It is interesting to predict/how the spelling or pronunciation of English/will change in the future.
1 Read these sentences aloud:/What is the height of the ceiling? It’s eight meters.
What do the words height, ceiling, and eight /have in common? All these words include the letters ei,/but the letters are pronounced differently. The same spelling is not always pronounced/in the same way. Conversely,/some words are spelled differently/but are pronounced the same,/such as eight and ate. These examples show/that English spelling can be a challenge/for learners of the language.
2 There are two main reasons/why English spelling is irregular. First,/English words come from many different languages,/such as Greek, Latin, and French. Most of these languages use the same Roman alphabet,/but they had different sounds/and different rules of spelling. When their words became part of the English language,/their spellings remained/as they were. One example is the word/from Italian, spaghetti. In this word,/the sound [ɡ] is spelled gh,/and the sound [t] is spelled tt. Another example is the letter g,/which is pronounced in different ways. In the word anger ,/which has a Scandinavian origin,/the g is a “hard g.” However,/in the word danger,/which has a French origin,/the letter g is a “soft g.” English spelling patterns/show the history/of the language. English is a mixture/of many different languages/and developed/over a period of hundreds of years.
3 Second,/the gap between printing technology and language change/created irregular spelling. In the 15th century,/mass printing of documents/became possible. Because of this,/the spellings of words became fixed,/and they were recognized by people. However,/while the spellings remained the same,/the pronunciations of some words/continued to change over time. For example,/the word know /used to be pronounced as [knóu],/but the sound [k] gradually became silent. Only the spelling was preserved.
4 Today,/English is still changing. Along with the development of social media,/we often see a text message/that reads “Thanx 4 ur help”/instead of “Thanks for your help.” It is interesting to predict/how the spelling or pronunciation of English/will change in the future.