Spelling vs. pronunciation ~ The Linguistics Zone

Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Spelling vs. pronunciation

A common complaint relating to the English language is that a lot of words are not spelled the way they are sound. Should all words be spelled like they are pronounced? I'm sure that in elementary school you once complained that spelling is too chaotic, and that the word school should be spelled skool, and through be made into thru.

The reason for this chaos is that in writing, a particular letter can have more than one sound associated with it, depending on the context (its surrounding letters for instance). A good example of this is the letter "C": it can represent either a [k] sound or an [s] sound. Furthermore, some sounds in English are not represented with a single letter, and we must use two letters to write them. The [sh] sound in shout is an example of this.

There are many arguments for keeping English spelling as it is. Reading comprehension will suffer if all words are spelled exactly as they are sounded. Many words change their pronunciation when inflected forms of the word are used. Consider what a mess it would be to read musical as muzikal and musician as muzishan. Also, there can be stress changes on different forms of the same word, like photograph and photographer.

English spelling, although many find it tricky, should be kept as it is. Proponents of "English spelling reform" have been somewhat successful, as we sometimes see signs that say "nite", "thru", and more rarely "foto".

104 comments:

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intresting, would not have thought about it that way myself.

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Very true. Most words aren't spelled like they sound.

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Anonymous said...

Definitely a great perspective on it, I've always thought pronunciation is the most important part of language.

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Saint George Townhomes said...

You're absolutely correct!

I do wonder sometimes about these pronunciation and spellings but your examples fit really well to that. I am sure 90-95% English is perfect thats why it has been the Universal Language even in this era so must be valid reasons behind it.

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Definitely a great perspective on it, I've always thought pronunciation is the most important part of language.

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Spelling pronunciations compete, often effectively, with the older traditional pronunciation.

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Spelling and pronouniciation both are different thingsHard Drive Recovery

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Yes Spelling and pronunciation are different but not that much. Sometimes similar looking words had totally different pronunciation.

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Spelling and pronunciation sometimes no way related to each other.

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SPELLING VS PRONUNCIATION IS SUCH A GOOD TOPIC TO DISCUSS. NICELY WRITTEN BY YOU.

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christy said...

"Yeah, spelling and pronunciation are both important, in
their own way. But I think they point is, no matter how you
spell or pronounce it, as long as you know the meaning and
essence of the word, that should do it."

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memo said...

spelling and linguistics can be fun! Even when they are used in an interdepartmental memo.

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It will be a great mess if they will change the spelling of all the words that includes phonetics. OMG, I can't imagine that.

Nikita said...

Correct English is not American rather British, and most of the times in British pronunciation words aren't that different from their spellings.

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Spelling and pronunciations vary a lot always because phonetics is what decides pronunciation,

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Some say "English is a funny language" and yes, pronunciation would always be tricky in some cases......and when it comes to people who have English as their second language, the confusion rises like anything.....nice post btw

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British English (British English, in short BE or BrE) is the name for the varieties of English, as in the British Isles (hence sometimes known colloquially as "Island English" called) spoke and under the name British Standard English is used as a written language use .

Frequently and in a more specific sense, this term the Received Pronunciation (RP) refers to is different from the standards referred to as regional dialects in Scotland, Wales and Ireland.

RP is an accent which is sometimes referred to but less and less, as the "Queen's English", "King's English" or "Oxford English ". A more recent term for the queen's English is "BBC English ". This emphasis is due to features of the debate in the southeast of England and was until a few years than that of English pronunciation variant, as recommended for educated speakers.

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