English is probably the worst of all modern languages in terms of inconsistent spelling. In many languages words are simply written the way they sound. In Italian and Spanish it’s considered so simple there isn’t even a word for “spelling.” But in English, a sound can be represented all sorts of ways. The vowel sound in the word “fish” is represented by an “i.” But it’s the same sound as the vowel sound in “pretty,” and that’s an “e.” The first vowel in “women” has the same sound, but it’s an “o.” Likewise the first vowel in “business” — same sound, different letter (“u” in case you didn’t notice). And it gets worse. “Myth” has the same sound, but it’s a “y.” “Sieve” has the same sound but this time it’s TWO letters. There are plenty more examples, and that’s just one single sound.
In fact, speaking of the word “fish”, a famous example is that you could spell it “ghoti” and the pronunciation wouldn’t change — the “gh” from “enough,” the “o” from “women,” and the “ti” from “motion.”
All this spelling nonsense comes from the multiple sources of English. It started as a Germanic language, and back in those days (wby which I mean about 500 years ago), spelling wasn’t really a problem; words were written the way they sounded, when they were written at all. Some old Germanic words today, of course, present spelling issues — “kneel,” for example — but that spelling originally represented the actual sound of the word; the “k” used to be spoken. Same thing with “sword;” it’s an old Germanic word and originally you’d clearly hear the “w.” But over time pronunciations have changed, and English spelling — which is now much more normalized than it used to be, thanks to printing — hasn’t changed correspondingly.
Another reason English spelling is a mess is because it received two huge injections of Latin and Greek words. The first big change was thanks to the Normans, who invaded (from France), brought their language with them, and the languages eventually melded. There was another big adoption of Latin and Greek during the Renaissance, driven more by fashion and snobbiness than swords and lances. These mass adoptions produced the interesting factoid that while Spanish may not have a word for spelling, English has two: “spelling” (Germanic) and “orthography” (Greek).
Yet another factor in English spelling is that in addition to mass adoptions of words from other languages, English constantly “borrows” words here and there. “Bungalow,” for example, is an adopted Hindi word. “Ketchup” was originally Chinese. “Graffiti” comes from Italian. And so on. Many of these borrowed words either retain some of the spelling from their source languages (if the languages use the same alphabet), or they may be fairly idiosyncratic because they represent an attempt to render sounds in English that may not be familiar or common. This is an ongoing problem even in modern usage. The capital of China is currently spelled “Beijing,” but used to be spelled “Peking.” Same word, different attempts to render the sounds. We probably still don’t have it quite right.
Software is already having some effects on English spelling — and I’m not talking just about brand names with gratuitously weird spelling like “flickr.” That’s because of two things; software can automatically change your spelling to what it thinks is correct. But the other effect is not as obvious. Whenever you misspell a word, the software keeps track of that, too. It’s constantly building its list of common misspellings, and when you select the replacement it recommends, that’s recorded too, and usually reported back the the home office — “ah, one more person meant ‘harass’ when they entered ‘harrass’.”
Given all this software that’s now “assisting” us with spelling, it’s open to question whether English spelling will evolve any further. Are we just stuck with the current idiotic state of English spelling, but we’ll conform to its complexities better because our computers decide? Or will that help change to a different form and start to slowly make more sense?
It’s too soon to say for sure, but I’m not sure software has generally made most things simpler or more sensible. I blame the dezynurz.
