In which the reader explores the principles and history of spelling in English and looks at the other half of the lexicons & pathways map.
‘… English spelling is more abstract in its principles than a grapheme-phoneme correspondence system …’
(Stubbs 1980 p. 43)
Hope! There are, allegedly, ‘principles’ underlying English spelling or, in the jargon, the English orthographic system. Perhaps English spelling should not cause so much excitement or despair? Maybe the language is not just a haphazard collection of irrational and infuriating irregularities? Are we wrong to express cynical amusement, or wounded rage, at the so-called ‘vagaries of English spelling’? Should we stop maligning our language? Michael Stubbs’ book Language and Literacy is the perfect antidote to such linguistic negativity, such orthographic abuse, and I recommend it. Much of what I am about to say comes by way of it.
Some background: The spelling of English is systematic and principled. Indeed it is. Stubbs uses the famous (and famously silly) notion from George Bernard Shaw who claimed that it would be possible, in English, to spell ‘fish’ as ‘ghoti’ - from, for example, enouGH, wOmen and naTIon. (Shaw was promoting a phonically regularised spelling system which did not catch on. He made the fundamental error of assuming that text was, could be or should be a representation of sounds on paper.) So incensed is Stubbs by this slanderous nonsense that he puts it on the front cover of my edition of his lovely book. As he vigorously points out, ‘ghoti’ is an absolutely illegal spelling of ‘fish’ (or, indeed, anything else) in English. Furthermore it is instantly recognisable as illegal. English orthography clearly dictates where and how particular letter patterns may be used to do particular things, and where they may not. It does this very consistently. English spelling is not random, as ‘ghoti’ was used to suggest. You cannot pick any letter pattern you come across and deposit it anywhere else you like. English orthography functions according to clear orthographic and historical principles. ‘Ghoti’ is instantly recogniseable to everyone literate in English as non-English, as an absolutely ‘illegal’ construction, precisely because it does not follow these principles. It is immediately recognised as not an English word, never mind one spelling ‘fish’. ‘Ghoti’ may be fun, but it is also fatuous.
The spelling of English is systematic. It also contains much non-phonic detail which is useful to its users. Fluent readers have learned to ‘read’ this system and it helps. English orthography provides the fluent reader with a great deal of extra information, over and above the mere sounds of the language. This additional information relates to word and morpheme meanings, word relations and linguistic history. The reason English spelling has gained such a reputation for arbitrary complexity is that it is not, it must immediately be admitted, a system which is particularly helpful to the very early learner.
English spelling is not a system which merely relates letters to sounds. You cannot invariably and exactly read the sounds of English from its written form. Letters do not absolutely consistently correspond to sounds. In jargonese, it is not a pure grapheme-phoneme correspondence system, it is not a wholly phonically transparent system. (Not many languages are. English, being a more cosmopolitan language than most, is less transparent than many. It still retains a high degree of transparency, nonetheless. All is by no means phonically lost.) English does not relate letters or letter patterns simply or directly to sounds at all times; it does not always represent sound absolutely precisely and consistently in orthographic characters (although, by the same token, it mostly does do exactly that). English spelling is better regarded as morpho-phonemic rather than grapho-phonemic. In other words it is more likely consistently to relate sounds to the morphemes of the language than to letters or letter patterns. (A morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit of language. Small, est, mean, ing and ful are all morphemes, for example.) All morphemes carry their own freight of meaning; and this is why they tend to be spelled consistently, irrespective of sound. Fluent readers read this morpho-phonemic consistency and use it. It is misleading to think of English spelling in term only of letters or letter patterns and the sounds they might indicate. We should remember that text is meaning written down, not sound written down. We must begin to think in terms of words and morphemes, the meaningful blocks of language, rather than letters or letter patterns. As we have seen, in earlier chapters, we do not have to identify every letter of every word, but may use larger units - morphemes and even whole words - and we are seeking meaning rather than identifying letters or seeing sounds. Our orthographic system does exactly this.