Why is English spelling exceptionally irregular?

It is well known that English words derive mainly from old German and Norman French, and that its alphabet of 26 letters makes it impossible to represent its 43 ½ speech sounds with just one symbol. But that is not why many English spellings, such as ‘daughter’, ‘brought’ and ‘people’, are now irregular, while their German and French relatives have much better spellings (Tochter, brachte, peuple).

The pronunciations of all three languages have changed since 1066. But only in English have numerous spellings become highly unreliable guides to pronunciation (sound, southern, soup), and spellings for identical sounds have ended up exceptionally varied (blue, shoe, flew, through, to, you, two, too, gnu).

The consistency of English spelling was first seriously corrupted during the reinstatement of English as the official language of England in 15^th century. It suffered even more at the hands of foreign printers during the bible wars of the 16th century. Sadly, there has never been a serious, co-ordinated attempt to remedy the various accidental and deliberate corruptions of the alphabetic principle (of representing speech sounds in a regular manner) in English.

The English spelling system 

As explained by Masha Bell  March  2011

 

English has 43.5 sounds:  43 as shown in bold letters in the words below

     At,  rain,   air,   car,   sauce,      bed,   chip,   dog,      

     egg,  eel,   herb,     fish,   garden,   house,  

     ink,   pie,     jug,   kite,   lips,   man,   nose,   ring, 

     pot,   toe,   coin,   food,   wood,   order,   out,      

     pin,   rug,   sun,   shop,  tap,   this,   thing,     

     up,  cue,     van,   window,   yak,   zip,   television

and an unstressed, often barely audible, variously spelt half-vowel

which occurs mainly in endings and prefixes (fatten, abandon, grammar; decide, divide).

If English had a completely regular spelling system, as Finnish and Korean do,  it would have no more than 44 spellings, and learning to read and write English would be as easy as those two languages. Most alphabetic writing systems, however, do not have a completely one to one relationship between their sounds and spellings, with a few more spellings than sounds.

The European average is around 50. Learning to read and write English is exceptionally difficult because it has 185 spellings for 44 sounds.  

The basic English spelling system has 91 patterns, as shown in bold letters below:

80 main spellings, 8 for unstressed endings, 2 prefixes and the consonants doubling rule:

     Cat;   plate, play;   air;   car;   sauce, saw;   bed;

     c/at/ot/ut, crab/ clap,  kite/kept,  comic,  pick,  seek, risk;  pocket; 

     chat, catch;   

     dog;     end;   eel, funny;   herb;     fish;  garden;   house; 

     ink;   bite,  by;     jug,  bridge,  oblige;   

     lips;   man;  nose, ring;  

     pot,  want,  quarrel;   bone, toe;  old;  coin, toy;     

     food;   good;   order, wart, quarter, more;   out, now;  

     pin; quick; rug;       

     sun, face,  emergency;    

     shop, station, cautious, facial, musician;    

     tap, delicate;   this;   thing;    

     cup;   cube, cue;  

     van, have, river;  window;  

     fix;   yes;    zip, wise;   vision, treasure.

     8 unstressed endings (doable fatal, single, ordinary,

                                     flatten, presence, present, other),

     2 prefixes (decide,  invite)

      and  the consonant doubling rule for keeping stressed vowels short  

                    (bitter – biter).

It can be seen that one reason why English has more spellings than sounds  is because many sounds are spelt differently in different positions of words (e.g. plate/ play;  ship /station). The main reason for the great number of spellings, however, is that English also has a further 94 unpredictable alternative spellings (e.g. plate – wait, straight, eight, great).

 Only 11 of the 91 main English spellings have no exceptions:

 bed,  jug/ jog/ jab,  gorge,  ring,  single,  pin, musician,  this,  thing,  van, television.

80 English spelling patterns are undermined by one or more alternatives

 

Cat - plait meringue

plate - wait weight straight great vein reign table

           dahlia champagne fete

play - they weigh ballet cafe matinee

air - care bear aerial their there questionnaire

car – are + (Southern Engl. bath)

sauce - caught bought always tall crawl

saw - (UK also: or, four, more)

 

C/at/ot/ut - character, kangaroo, queue

crab/ clap - chrome

lilac - stomach, anorak

neck - cheque

Chat - picture

clutch – much

Dad – blonde

End - head any said Wednesday friend leisure leopard bury

her - turn bird learn word journey

Eel - eat even ceiling field police people me key ski debris quay

jolly - trolley movie corgi

Fish - photo stuff rough

Garden - ghastly guard

House – who

Ink - mystery pretty sieve women busy build

bite - might style mild kind eider height climb island indict sign

my - high pie rye buy I eye

Jelly, jig – gentle, ginger

fidget - digit

Kite/ kept - chemistry

seek - unique

risk - disc mosque

Lips - llama

Mum - dumb autumn

Nose - knot gone gnome mnemonic

On - cough sausage;    want – wont;    quarrel - quod

mole - bowl roll soul old mould boast most goes mauve

toe - go dough sew cocoa pharaoh oh depot

Oil – oyster    toy - buoy

food - rude shrewd move group fruit truth tomb manoeuvre

             blue do shoe through

good - would put woman courier

Order – board court

wart, quart – worn quorn

more - soar door four war swore abhor

Out – town;     now - plough

Quick - acquire choir

Rug - rhubarb write

Sun - centre scene

face - case

fancy - fantasy

Shop - chute sure moustache liquorice

ignition - mission pension suspicion fashion

ambitious - delicious luscious

facial - spatial

Tap, pet - pterodactyl two debt

delicate - democrat

Up - front some couple blood

cute - you newt neutral suit beauty Tuesday nuclear

cue - few view menu

have - spiv

river - chivvy

Window - which

fix - accept except exhibit

Yak - use

Zip – xylophone,      rose - froze

measure - azure

Endings and prefixes:

loveable - credible

vertical - novel anvil petrol

ordinary - machinery inventory century carpentry

fasten - abandon truncheon orphan goblin certain

absence - balance

absent - pleasant

father - author armour nectar centre injure quota

decide - divide

indulge - endure

Consonant doubling:

merry     – very - serrated

(regular – missing - surplus)

372          -   384      – 158)

 

The listing above gives just one example of the different ways in which each spelling pattern is undermined; and a few patterns have no other exceptions (e.g. ‘cat - plait meringue’), but some have very many. The ee-sound of ‘beef’, for example, is not spelt ee in at least 320 words (e.g. leaf, grief, even). Between them, all the different exceptions create a rote-learning list of at least 3700 common words. They are the reason why speakers of English take an average of 10 years to become proficient spellers. Some manage it in less time, but many also get totally defeated by this learning burden.

 

 

English spelling makes learning to read harder too

This is partly because children have to learn to pronounce 185 spellings, instead of just around 50. The greatest English reading difficulties, however, are caused by the 69 spellings which have more than one pronunciation, shown in the next table.  They make at least 2000 English words not completely decodable.