English Spelling- Time for Change? Essay

Introduction

The study of the word English is said to be a derivation from the 12^th century Old English englisc from Engle. English is mostly said to be an Indo- European language belonging to the West Germanic branch. It is the official language of Britain, United States and most of the common wealth speaking countries. English is said to have developed in England during the Anglo- Saxon era. Existence of English was mainly fueled by cultural, economic, political and scientific aspects which were realized from America and United Kingdom in the 20^th and 19^th century respectively. It originated from various dialects that were brought by the Anglo-Saxons. The Viking invaders are also though to have had a significant influence on the English language. Their language is commonly referred to as Old Norse language.

Old English later on managed to develop into Middle English. As a matter of fact it borrowed heavily from the Norman- French spelling and vocabulary conventions. Over the years, English has drastically emerged as a leading language used in diverse fields like communication and business. It has also been widely accepted by many organizations and learning institutions. Moreover, other languages have also had a profound influence on the English language because it now borrows heavily from them. In the process it is also coining in new words. On the other hand most of these English words have been developed and constructed from the roots of the Latin’s and Greeks

For most employers, it’s becoming mandatory that one has to have a working knowledge of English to be employed. As a result, we now have more than one billion English speakers, although a majority of these can only communicate in Basic English.

Thanks to the massive growth of the English language, we have had had a reduction in native linguistic diversity across the globe. Its huge influence continues and will play an important role in language attrition. There exists a wide presence of complex and fluid dynamics of language change. English has a huge potential impact on the vast size and spread of communities that use it and its natural internal variety. Today, English does not only belong to native English speakers but is also a language that embraces different kinds of cultures globally.

There are various constructed varieties of English. Basic English has been simplified for international use. In an effort to enhance the spread of spoken and written English, we have had numerous authors publish their books and manuals over the years. This has enabled native English speakers and those to whom English is a second language to improve on their communication skills in the language. A majority of the schools have also adopted Basic English. In existence we also have manually coded English. We have in place various systems whose development has been influential enhancing the English language. This is especially the case with the use of signs in communication, such as hand signals. The main aim of this is to cater for deaf education.

Some versions of the English language rely on restricted vocabulary. They include Airspeak, Policespeak as well as Seaspeak. They were mostly developed to aid in international cooperation and communication with special attention to specific areas. Specific English is simplified English with a vocabulary of only 1500 words. English is said to be a very compact language. This is because the words that are used don’t have endings in nouns, verbs and adjectives. It is evident that there is no declension and conjugation in this language which has made it easy for a learner to form simple grammatically correct sentences (Thelwall, 2004, p.3).

The major advantage of English is that most words have several meanings. This is advantageous to learners as they are presented with an opportunity to convey different meanings of the same words in different contexts. For beginners this might end up causing confusion as they will not be in a good position to use the words correctly. English contains a lot of homophones, which are words that have the same pronunciation but end up being spelled differently. This language can also serve to entertain people in a way by which it is used time again and again. Spelling is governed by rules that should be adhered to at all times.There seems to exist a relationship between text frequency and lexical frequency.

Discussion

English spelling had a particular and often practical view. A framework was needed to lay down good pronunciation ethics. The spelling literature was mostly based on disagreements that were fuelled by controversies of prejudice. The present spelling is mostly a concoction of oddities that do not have any order and cohesion. English spelling is unplanned for and as a matter of fact it has ended up having highly inconsistent and geographically fluid mistakes. It lacks a coherent system which has unpredictable deviations mostly from the spelling of other languages. To the natives it has proved to be an obstacle towards the acquisition of more literacy as they can not come up with the right words needed to aid them in learning. It is in this context that the conventions towards spelling are ill suited for the languages growth.

The state of the spelling was not in a position to conceal the true spelling of the words as they were supposed to be. Though with some imperfections, the writing system had its own important virtues. The writing system was mostly characterized by explicit description. There are no rules for traditional English spelling and good curricula should be established so that these rules can be well learned. Loan words that were acquired from particular languages had their own spelling conventions. Many words did not have a vowel to shorten them at all. Spellers were supposed to distinguish the spelling of the word as they were. Spelling mostly relates to sound. The English writing system has a lot of misuse of vowels and consonants (Carney, 1994, p.14).

The same word has a different spelling that has in the long run will reflected different pronunciations. Because of these discrepancies there has arisen confusion about true words in contention. Claims about spellings are usually accompanied by an assertion that the two names will be pronounced differently. Common spelling of names has been witnessed both in literary and non literary ways. In the process there is no significant difference between spelling patterns where some certain factors like handwritten and printed are supposed to be taken into account. It can be said that in modern times there is no proper evidence that when we have variant spellings they will reflect a consistent pronunciation difference.

There is some considerable evidence that the two easily interchangeable in some certain instances. When the two are interchangeable there is distortion as one will not be able to get the true picture as it was supposed to be. Distortion is very bad as it can be costly as far as understanding of words is concerned. Discrepancies have always been seen in spelling and pronunciation. This is mostly prevalent where writing of manuscripts is involved. Differences here mostly end up being portrayed. There is more uniformity in spelling and pronunciation only in cases where we have high literacy levels. But in incidences where the literacy levels are low you will find that these leads to a vey big misunderstanding. True words as they, are supposed to be well represented mostly in literally and non- literally work.

Handwritten and printed work is a very an essential factor. Printed texts tend to be closer and uniform than handwritten ones. This is because of the evident discrepancies in the spelling and pronunciation of words. There exists a high breakdown of literally references. Problems that arise because of discrepancies in spelling and pronunciation have had an impact on the way literary references are broken down. Most of these mistakes might not be seen easily as they are not easily recognizable unless one is keen on the way they spell and pronounce words and names.

We are supposed to put into consideration the nature of the documents that we write about and know all their aspects (Gay, et al, 2008, p.213). Legal documents like contacts need proper and careful attention. In most cases people have made poor referring and writing forgetting that some of these documents are legally binding. Problems that arise because of this have mostly had a vey bad impact on both parties involved. This has always led to most deals being cancelled. The same words can have variant spellings that almost end up being pronounced differently. Variations in spelling might exist in life without our knowledge as we might not be aware of the different meanings represented.

Regardless of our continuous perception about contemporary spelling rules, it is clear that spellings do not represent a regular intonation. No rhyme and reason is evident in the distribution of various spellings and pronunciations. There is no indication that spellings will ultimately represent our expected pronunciations. In this case syllables end up being pronounced identically and lead to improper unprecedented distortions in that particular situation. There are alternate spellings for a single pronunciation, though varied in different aspects. There are lopsided margins that come about as a result of discrepancies in spelling and pronunciation.

It is aid that the spelling was first developed in the 7^th century. Only the monks are the ones who continued writing English together with the lower classes. There was need to rediscover the English writing. Early writers had attempted to give it a consistent spelling system but their efforts were undermined as educated people had only written French and Latin before. At that time they were using French spellings that are nowadays used by many people. Later on the spelling was highly tempered with by foreign printers’ who made errors. They were paid in lines and in the process inserted their own words to make the sentence longer and more beautiful. Apparently several editions had different spellings. The English spelling system became more and more chaotic as most parents bought the bible to teach their children but they could not notice the mistakes (Guyer, 1993, p.5).

Sometimes later, Latin and Greek words were incorporated into the English system and in the process caused very many changes to the languages. All these influences later on transformed English spelling to be an incoherent jungle. This is evident in the total change that came about different from the initial English. Funny enough those are the same spellings that we are still using. Things were made even worst by the upper class that came up with their own pronunciations. The current system has a lot of irregularities that are borrowed from the initial mistakes. There were numerous unsystematic changes in the way spellings of both short and long sounds were done. Because of these the spellings have been highly unpredictable ever since. As a result of these many unsystematic changes, all the other spellings became highly unpredictable.

Irregularities have always been found because more words have been used in spelling rather than in the sound. There exist many idiosyncrasies in spelling that have made learning English harder. Presently we have 26 letters in the English dialect and in the process there is no one to correspond between letters and sounds. This is evident mostly on words whose pronunciation is predictable from the way they are spelt.

Most of the irregularities are caused by the use of different graphemes for some sounds and also use of identical graphemes for spelling different sounds. English does not make any attempt to anglicize spellings of the most recent loanwords but it is instead preserving foreign spellings. Commercial advertisers have also tried to differentiate their products from others by introducing new and simplified spellings. In other extreme cases there has Romanization of languages through the use of Latin alphabets and this has made matters to be worse.

Conclusion

The regular spelling system of old English was swept away by Norman Conquest. As it later emerged English had most of its words from French and as such it has not been able to change. We have a complex and often arbitrary quality of how English is spelt and pronounced. Because of these factor English has not been able to change. There are also high cases of dyslexia in English speaking nations where there is a difficulty in decoding, reading comprehension and others which have contributed to English being stagnated.

Essentially we need some spelling reforms. People argue that making the spelling to follow the pronunciation would lead to lose of the spelling similarities. To add on these no respelling by pronunciation will always be consistent with the different accents. Improvements are supposed to be made in spelling but they have not always materialized. It is now clear that most of the adults read words and phrases as wholes rather than phonetic components.

There is a perception that replacing the existing printing materials is too expensive and thus this has hindered changes towards the existing spelling system. There is rigidity from the natives to change the language more so the way it is spelt as they see this as an assault to their culture and heritage. It is perceived that fundamentally, since all the adult speakers have battled to achieve fluency and competence in spelling, non-standard spellings have always been seen to be far from the required standards.

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Reference List

1. Carney, E., 1994. A Survey of English Spelling. London: New Fetter. Print.
2. Gay, R. I. Moya, J. A. Ignacio, J. G. & Hernandez, A., 2008.New trends in English teacher education: Linguistics, Literature and Culture. Mancha: Universidad de Castilla.
3. Guyer, B. P., 1993.Spelling Improvements for college students who are dyslexic. New York: Springer. Print.
4. Thelwall, M., 2004.Text Characteristics of English language university Websites. Wolverhampton: Wulfruna. Print.