The English language is notorious for difficult spelling and pronunciation, which can make learning the language quite hard.  Time and time again, frustrated students ask “why can’t you just write it as you say it?! Like Spanish!” Well, every native speaker has had problems with spelling and pronunciation at some point too.

When English was first formed by the Anglo-Saxons, spelling and pronunciation were really simple.  It was written as it was spoken.  However, the situation changed dramatically when the Normans invaded England in 1066.  Norman French became the official language, and only poor people continued to speak the old Anglo-Saxon English.

Gradually, Anglo-Saxon English was revived, but English kept many words from the Norman French. From Anglo-Saxon, English had very practical words, like ‘cow’, ‘husband’, ‘wife’, ‘house’ and ‘daughter’.  From the Normans, the language received words for more complicated ideas, such as ‘liberty’, ‘freedom’ and ‘justice’.  The irregularity of French spelling affected English spelling, as did the introduction of the printing press and publishing.

Famous writers like Geoffrey Chaucer tried to be consistent with spelling, but texts were sent to be printed at publishers in Holland, where people spoke very little English.  Spelling mistakes were often made and printed into books.  In addition to this, publishers could charge more money if the texts were longer.  To make texts longer, the publishers would often add extra letters to words.  ‘Had’ could sometimes be spelt ‘hadd’ or ‘hadde’.  Some of these errors have stayed in the language and become the correct spelling!  The ‘i’ in friend and the ‘u’ in build are good examples of this.

The language became even more varied in the 16^th and 17^th centuries, as many Greek and Latinate words entered the language.  The need for rules and consistent spelling led to language reform and the creation of dictionaries, which, ironically, is when some words became more complicated to spell or pronounce.  For example, ‘debt’ was originally spelt quite simply in English as ‘det’, ‘dett’ or ‘dette’. But, under the language reform, dictionary writers looked to the Latin and introduced a silent ‘b’.  However, even now about 15% of the words in the English dictionary have alternative spellings, e.g. ‘judgement’ or ‘judgment’, ‘flower-pot’ or ‘flowerpot’.  Spellings can differ across English speaking countries: we write ‘realise’ in the UK and ‘realize’ in the USA.

The good news!

1)      Learning English is like learning a bit of history too – there is a story behind every word!

2)      Linguistic experts believe that the internet will simplify spelling again!