The Wonders of English Spelling - minding the gap between writing and speaking
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- Опубліковано 11 чер 2024
- English spelling can seem weird, but it makes a lot more sense if you understand how English pronunciation has changed since the writing system was created. This is a fun look at how the way English speakers speak has changed over the last 550 years. I also debunk myths about how 'most other languages have systematic spelling.
Thanks to @waltertross3581 for proofreading the captions, though any remaining errors are all mine.
00:00 Two main problems
00:31 Speaking and Signing came before writing
00:50 The spelling was great in 1490
01:15 WH - voiceless fricative
01:35 Whine wine merger
02:31 KN GN MN MB
02:47 Tudor parenting
04:17 WR
05:24 Why so much change in 17C?
05:54 GH
06:17 Velar fricative
07:45 OUGH
08:33 The Great Vowel Shift
11:47 More vowel changes
12:07 EE and OO
12:26 Silent E
13:11 Printing and standardisation
13:35 Caxton's English
14:03 The most difficult spelling system?
14:22 Irish spelling
14:34 Thai final -t
14:50 Tibetan
Charles III - By Mark Tantrum - gg.govt.nz/image-galleries/78..., CC BY 4.0, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...
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Dog bite - Image by a href="pixabay.com/users/glittermist..."Anna/a from a href="pixabay.com//?..."Pixabay/a
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Loving the new content Dave. Thanks for all your research and preparation effort to educate us. Now I can pretend to speak old by pronouncing more letters. Really enjoy the little explanations of where sounds come from in the mouth parts.
Cool, thanks
Your public service announcement is not only a delight but it's the first and only time I've ever seen, heard and understood a description that makes sense to me of how the GVS actually happened, quite brilliant Mr Huxtable, thank you.
Wow. It's so great to hear that. Thank you so much for letting me know.
They don't have spelling contests in Japan, but prime time TV often has shows where celebs (idols) try and either understand what a kanji means, or are given a reading, and asked to write the kanji. To much hilarity!
Their system has a thing called 'furigana' - the correct pronunciation written in tiny hiragana characters above the kanji character - and most Japanese need them for unusual and rare kanji. I have Japanese friends who say they absolutely depend on furigana for reading anything but the most basic texts!
'Most people' didn't have access to TV - just a few right?
Nah, great video really, really educating.
Well now you need to give us an overview of the insane Thai / Tibetan writing systems! Thanks Dave, great stuff as always
Thank you. Glad you liked it.
Thai has tone marks but the tone marks aren't enough to know which of the 5 tones because the consonants also have three "classes" which only after being combined with the nature of syllable with the vowel can you know what that is, but the system is an abugida which means that the indication of the vowel can occur above below left right or a combination thereof to determine what the vowel is.
But as for the initial consonants you'll only get so many as 7 that make the same sound and some aren't used anymore so really you'll find the Thai script quite easy.
14:19 I disagree. I think Irish spelling is indeed as scary as it looks. Part of the problem is the rule that slender consonants may not be next to broad vowels, nor vice versa, and that this rule operates both ways. If a consonant is next to a vowel of the wrong sort, a vowel of the right sort is put in between. This would be fine if the rule operated in only one way, but it operates both ways. This means that if you have, say , that doesn't tell you whether you say the , the being there only to keep the following consonant broad, or whether you say the , the being there only to keep the preceding consonant slender. That, and the unfamiliar sounds of , and .
With regards the chronic vowel problem as a northerner living in Bath, I remember a comedy drama from the 1990’a when a northern father is talking to a fellow southern parent who speaks RP as their respective daughters get in to Oxbridge, “Aye she has always been right fond of bookes”. “Sorry?”. “Ah, bucks”. “Oh you mean books?”
yes! english is not the only language where spelling doesn't match with pronunciation. and "phonetic languages" can mean very different things:
- like finnish: one sound, one letter
- like german: one sound, consistent letters or digraphs in different places
- like french: you can speak most of the words you read and be correct
French is definitely at the OK for reading - hard to write end of the spectrum. I’d say all languages are phonetic, except sign languages, and writing systems are to a greater or lesser extent.
@@DaveHuxtableLanguages oh right i meant phonetic writing systems, my bad
/aɪ ˈkʌm frəm ɪndəʊˈniːzɪə. ɑː ˈfɔːml ˈlæŋgwɪdʒ ɪz ˈstændəd ɪndəʊˈniːzɪən. ɪt s ðɪ ˈiːzɪɪst ˈlæŋgwɪdʒ ɪn ðə ˈwɜːld. ɪts ˈspelɪŋ rɪprɪˈzents ɪts prənʌnsɪˈeɪʃn, wʌn ˈspiːtʃ ˈsaʊnd biːɪŋ ˈrɪtn wɪð wʌn ˈletə./
@@DaveHuxtableLanguages Please learn Hungarian :)
Loved the old film reel bit!
Thank you!
Vastly entertaining and educational. I cannot imagine the time it takes to research each episode. You deserve a prominent place in h-whichever afterlife you believe in!
Thank you! Any of the pleasant afterlives will do, as long as there are no harps.
Excellent. I have sent a link to my Tudor parents.
Awesome, thank you!
It's interesting since Standard English spellings often make more sense in dialects than in the standard language.
In Yorkshire dialect from round my end there are several spellings which work far better for it than for standard English:
- "a" after /w/ doesn't make an "o" sound like the standard so "warm" rhymes with "arm", "wand" with "band" and "what" with "cat".
- There's no confusion with "oo" before a "k" being pronounced short as in "book" or long as I'm "spook" since that it's always long.
- there's no confusion as to whether "u" makes a /ʊ/ or a /ʌ/ sound since the PUT-STRUT split never occured.
- There's a point in keeping a difference between "ow" and "oa" since in dialect the former makes an /ɒʊ̯/ sound and the latter an /uə/ sound.
Fascinating! Thanks for taking the time to share your knowledge.
@@DaveHuxtableLanguages ony time! If ever you do a Yorkshire dialect video similar to the Scots video I'd be happy to help as a Yorkshire dialect soc member, I can contact other members to pitch in too, particularly the North and East Ridings' dialect.
@@Fenditokesdialect That would be fantastic. Many thanks!
Thanks for the great video Dave! I loved the segment about the Great Vowel Shift, I think this is the first time I've actually understood what happened :)
Glad it was helpful! It certainly helped me understand it once I started working on the animation.
I laughed out loud at the great vowel shift 😂
Old English kind of sounds like a weird mix of Welsh and Dutch
😎
Some consider Middle English to be derived from a weird mixture between old Welsh and old Dutch.
Interesting. Modern English sounds like Gaelic swedish.
Sort of predictable, right? Dutch would be a very useful language, I think. I guess in the UK, Welsh would be, too!
@@79klkw About 250,000 people speak Welsh compared to about 70 million people. So not even 1%. There are more Urdu speakers.
I feel this topic is endlessly vindicating as my primary school teachers always used to tell me I was stupid for not getting ough
The endless harm that bad teachers can do!
New to your fascinating channel but this particular video hit upon exactly a curiosity I was discussing the the car only the other day - why is it boot, with a long O but book with a short one (except in Scouse)? Or coot, hoot, loot, moot etc but not foot? Fool and Tool are both long, why not Foot? The short O with a K ending seems consistent : cook, hook, look, nook, rook, took etc.
I do hope this is a question not already covered but if it is I'd love a link, lots of videos still to watch!
American from the northern part of the country here (Pennsylvania). The WH pronunciation was still being taught when I was a kid in the late 60s. We just ignored it. I still occasionally hear it used by older folks in news broadcasts, especially in words like where and when.
Keep these videos coming!
I will!
Great work. Thank you so much.
Thank you Dave - learning so much - absolutely fascinating...
Very welcome
0:22 I'd say the main point of a writing system is to enable people to convey ideas --- the same as the main point of a spoken language. You might be able to do that even if you don't know how to say a word because you've only seen it written, just as you might be able to convey ideas by speech, using words you don't know how to spell.
I’m sure we could make some improvements. There was a big movement in America in the nineteenth century for language reform. There are common elements that would suit the ex-Colonies as well as us Brits, such as tough going to tuf, and cough going to cof. But then the Daily Wail would complain about losing our heritage, provoking mobs with burning pitch forks and torches to march on parliament, or like a Facebook page. As regards your statement that most people in the middle ages did not have TV, I had a chat with Jacob Rees Mogg, and he confirmed that to be true.
It would be seen as a communist plot in the red states.
I always like to point out that Welsh and Irish are (mostly) spelled phonetically, largely because most English speakers think the orthography of Celtic languages is insane. In a stroke of Irish genius, Irish orthography is the one spelling system that is not only phonetic, but also preserves the etymological roots. You're right in that it only really works one way.
The problem with all those asterisky words is that we have no idea how they would have spelled them, if indeed they are real words at all. The big difference in the 1400 - 1700 period was the spread of printing and in particular dictionaries, which is paradoxical.
Welsh spelling is pretty phonetic in both directions. Pronunciation can be worked out for Irish, but the rules are pretty complex.
Irish is spelt phonetically, you just have to know the rules. There are rules unlike in Béarla which only has exceptions.
@@peteymax Much as I love the Irish language, the spelling is far from phonetic. There had to be a one-to-one correspondence between letters and sounds. Irish has lots of letters which represent the same sound as each other, and lots of sounds which can be represented by different letters. As I said in the video, I’d you heard a word pronounced you wouldn’t know how to spell it.
@@DaveHuxtableLanguages Fair, I’m just so used to it I see the patterns. Again, with languages it’s all about familiarity.
Wow. Brilliant as ever. The segment about changing the system before teatime reminds me of Harry Enfield's Cholmendley Warner 1940s speak. When did English people in the South stop rolling their Rs?
The exception to this late great Dot Cotton (brilliantly played by the excellent June Brown, rip).
If only school would teach English this way.
Fantastic video!
Thank you very much!
Super content
The Thai writing system is kind of an enigma, where you have to use tone markers, which do not define the tones itself. Only in combination with the consonant class the tone marker is used you can find out which tone you actually need to pronounce. The writing system is from the 13th century, with some minor modifications since.
Día dhuit Dáithí, I was in Gijón this summer and the locals actually don’t say Gijón (Hee-hon), they say Xixón (shzgee-shzon). I was in Ámsterdam last week and was surprised to learn that what I’d been saying my whole life was wrong: it’s not Van-gok, it’s van-Hock! Sometimes I think I know nada. Sláinte a chara.
An Gaeilge has rules and Irish spelling is predictable. No language is weird or unpredictable, it’s all about familiarity. I grew up with Niamh’s, Aoifes, Aoibheanns, Ruaidhrís and Peadars from places like Cobh and Dún Laoghaire. I love your videos, grma a chara
Grma a Pheadar.
My favourite TV show is Irish speaking "Ros na Run". I used to sit up when they wanted to speak to Maire but shouted "Mhaire", pronounced (sorry don't know proper phonetic spelling "War A" then they'd say hi to "Bernie", who became "Vernie"!
@@maryleenhagger8145 That’s hilarious, I hope you have learnt some Irish! Máire said as Mháire (War-a) or Bernie as Bhernie (Verny) is a way of addressing someone and it can be an endearment like “dear Marie” in English. I love the Conamara accent of Connacht Irish which is what is mainly spoken on that series. Sláinte.
@@peteymax Go raibh maith agat. I have been learning for a few years now. My Dad was some Kerry but I grew up in England so only learnt recently.
@@maryleenhagger8145 Go h-iontach a Mháire. Go n-éirí an bóthar leat. You’ll have to visit the Kerry Gaeltacht and show off! Slán tamall
Tadaaa! New subscriber!
Welcome!
I still distinguish between "w" and "wh". I live in the intermountain west of the US. However, I have noticed that those young whippersnappers around me have lost the distinction between "w" and "wh".
With regards to 'wh', could you explain why some words have the 'w' as silent rather than the 'h', e.g, 'who' and 'whole'?
I wondered if it might be to do with the following 'o', but then that would apply to 'whorl'...
Fantastic, as usual. I love that you're familiar with tsampa and butter tea. You might want to shy away from yak butter tea, though, given that 'yak' is - okay, only in Tibetan - the male of the species.
Thanks for the tip! I went to Tibet in 1987, but didn’t know about yaks and yakettes.
I made the mistake in Tibet of identifying the skull of a dzo (cow/yak crossbreed) as a yak - my ten-year-old Tibetan companion was horrified at my idiocy. A female yak is a 'nak' in Tibetan., as I'm sure you know. Proper language trivia that I've never heard explained: the numbers one to ten in Tibetan are astonishingly close to their Japanese counterparts.
@@andyoxus Tibetan is a Sino-Tibetan language and the numerals are similar to Old Chinese. Japanese borrowed one of its sets of numerals from Old Chinese so voila.
2:11 "George the Sickth"
One thing I've never understood: how do you know how people pronounced words several centuries ago? After all, recording equipment and the international phonetic alphabet wasn't invented until the 1800's. Was there an archaic way people described how sounds were formed back then?
Good question. It involves quite a bit of detective work. Methods include looking at rhymes, spelling mistakes etc. There were also books and letters describing pronunciation - sometimes written to criticise ‘mistakes’, sometimes to help foreign learners. They didn’t have IPA, but they could write descriptions of sounds of compare them to other languages.
@@DaveHuxtableLanguages I see, that makes a lot of sense. Would be interesting to see some examples, if only for reference.
Let's say it with phonemic writing: I thuruli enjoied dis vidio Deiv!
Glad to hir it!
I work with Americans, and have to say that their way of saying SCHEDULE and ROUTE actually kinda make sense... Why do we say Schedule and then School?
Fascinating videos, thank you 😁👍
But apparently they pronounce "Route 66" the British way for some reason.
I would like to know if schedule sounds like skedgual, saidueall, shedual?
@@drinno8900 In which country?
For languages whose spelling systems are much more regular than English, like, German, did they never have a post-moveable type pronunciation shift, or did they change the spelling to account for any shifts? Or is there some other reason?
excellent as usual! Can the typos in the subtitles still be fixed, though?
I hadn’t noticed. I’ll check those out. Many thanks.
@@DaveHuxtableLanguages here you go (plus very minor ones):
1:21 swap /w/ and /ʍ/
2:23 their -> there
5:26 ngoni?
6:04 /x/ missing
6:07 like, laugh -> like high, laugh
6:18 bach -> Bach
7:09 Once -> once
8:36 It's -> is
12:28 stressed -> destressed
15:03 to check out -> too. Check out
@@waltertross3581Wow. So kind of you to take the trouble to do this! I’ll update the video later today.
@@DaveHuxtableLanguages
also 14:37 "the sound term" should be "the sound /t/"
The Normans certainly didn't sound like Parisians either ! I imagine they'd sound more like the French we hear spoken in Canada.
Parisians didn't sound like Parisians either. You're right that Canadian French has conserved some earlier features. French spelling was a much better indication. of pronunciation back then.
The German ach-sound and the Spanish j-sound are pronounced further back than [k] and [g]. They are uvular or pharyngal rather than velar. Agree?
Definitely not pharyngeal but I agree that in some cases they might be uvular in some varieties of Iberian Spanish and some varieties of German.
How I got to this subje and this account? God knows. Do I enjoy it? Hell yeah. Will my wife have a headache from a new wave of pointless “did you know?” questions? Surely
Glad you did!
I ought to think about the dough that can make my hands rough. Then again, coming from North America, I don't know how lough is pronounced. Is it low or laugh?
It’s /lɒx/ like Scots loch.
How did one and two go from oan and twoh to wun and too? When did this happen?
People started saying some wōn for ōn and woak for oak in the West of England in the 14th century. the /w/, though initially nonstandard, had become the norm by the 18th century. In alone, atone and only, the older pronunciations without /w/ are preserved, while once shows the same /w/.
Two started out as twā. The /w/ progressively influenced the following vowel sending it further and further back until it got to /twu:/ when the /w/ was dropped.
Looks like the "gh" sound is making a small comeback - maybe for the next two weeks or so. I've heard quite a lot of people on UA-cam using the "ugh!" ... thing ... (interjection?) ... with a proper "gh".
(Because of the influence of Afrikaans, in South Africa there are several borrowed words with the sound, represented by just a "g". It's a handy sound, so I hope it returns to English one day. Then people the world over will be able to take up the old Khoisan word, "gogga" - which has quite a lot of "ugh" sounds in it. It's the proper word for what's now called an "insect". When we left Africa - in about 732, maybe? - we started to mess things up, so we lost some of the proper words for things. It would be a good step in the direction of correcting this to return to using the word "gogga" for a "gogga").
Hmm ... I heard a dental click consonant used in English the other day, too. I forget the context, though.
Fascinating! I shall do my part to bring back gogga.
tsk tsk
@@DaveHuxtableLanguages Ag, man, lekker. The goggas need ever bit of help they can get to get back their proper name. :D
And once that's done, probably the next thing English would need is to regain the name ietermagog (although I might be guessing the origins of that one wrong).
(And it might be more important to first convince people that they have no medicinal value.)
@@timflatus That's the one! The same "tsk" as the one in the "c" in _cula iculo_ (sing a song) - as sung in the old Miriam Makeba song - the lullaby.
And now I think of it, I've heard English speakers use a "x-click" to "gee up" a horse. I don't know how widely used that is. Interesting if is is widely used, since that would give English two out of three Zulu click consonants - albeit in very restricted contexts.
The /wr/ combination at the beginning of a word is interesting. I don't think there is any language in the world that combines a labiovelar approximant with an alveolar approximant/flap/trill.
I think we always have to be careful with ‘no language in the world’ statements. That said, I don’t know of any current languages that have that sound combination but I only know about a very small sample of the languages of the world.
@@DaveHuxtableLanguagesIt would be interesting to find out if there is a language with that combination of sounds.
Brilliant - but I don't know how to pronounce that word any more.
Thank you! A good question. Brilliant was borrowed from French brillant in the 17th century but I don’t know how it was pronounced in French at the time. At a guess, I’d say the modern English pronunciation is a good indication, hence the added in the spelling.
Does this mean names like Laughlin and Lochlan are actually related? As in mutations over time?
Yes, Laughlin is the English spelling of the Irish Lochlan.
I enjoyed 'cool whip' in Family Guy :)
A lot of this sounds like Geordie!
Even for those of us who are good at spelling, English spelling is just crazy, filled with exceptions and oddities, both from our native English words and from foreign words borrowed and not re-spelled. And then there are the US vs. UK spelling differences. We ALL need spelling reform that would make English closer to how it is spoken, pronounced, and let go of some of the weird exceptions and historical retentions or mistakes that got frozen in. American, British, Australian, Canadian, many others...we need something sensible, shorter, easier.
I can’t see reform happening though. The US and UK are very resistant to change. UK still has miles and pints, the US has Fahrenheit and full imperial measures and no $1 coins!
@@DaveHuxtableLanguages We do have dollar coins. We've had them for many decades. We just don't use them. (For a while they were used by the ticket machines for some public transit systems and in post office vending machines for buying stamps, but those uses have been mostly eliminated.)
@@tim1724 Yes, my point was really that people refused to use them.
@@DaveHuxtableLanguages We need to take a longer view. In countries where spelling is regularly updated, changes are very small, but occur perhaps twice per century, so nobody minds them. Perhaps the solution would be to introduce about twice as many changes per update, so that the writing catches up with pronunciation -- eventually. The real issue is that there is no national authority in any English-speaking country that I know of, with power to introduce these changes. The other, more serious issue, is that pronunciation differs by country and region, so there would no longer be one standard.
How could we simplify it and rationalise it? Seems to me the current situation is too irrational and impractical.
It would be difficult to reform - so many countries would have to agree.
Yes. When people say they would like to reform the spelling, they mean "spell words the way I pronounce them." So my proposal is to spell words the way we say them here in New York. Agreed?
take the obscure words and spell them sliiiiiightly differently. if no more obscure words, take slightly more common words. repeat until sufficiently reformed.
Yeh we shud spew fings de wey we tawk. Den evrywun wud unnerstan wot weer seyin innit?
@@timflatus Igzakly!
:)
I propose a spelling reform.
Delete silent letters when applicable:
knife → nife
ghost → gost
guard → gard
answer → anser
pterodactyl → terodactyl
rhyme → ryme
thyme → tyme
though → tho
through → thru
league → leag
fatigue → fateeg
vague → vage
unique → uneek
torque → tork
height → hight
diarrh(o)ea → diarea
feign → fein
sign: not applicable
The shoud make a g sound (almost always) and the j shoud make a j sound (almost always).
gem → jem
change → chanje
gauge → gaje
age → aje
judge → juj
baggage → baggij
language → langwij
The k sound shoud (almost always) be represented with the k letter (except for x and q when pronounced like kw).
clock → klok
access → akcess
character → karakter
conquer → konker
conquest → konquest (qu is pronounced like kw, so it stays)
mosquito → moskeeto
technique → tekneek
plaque → plak
racquet → raket
psychology → sykolojy
Chanje some letters:
women → wimin
people → peeple
subtle → suttle
castle → kassle
key → kee
cough → kuf
laugh → lauf
liquefy → liquify
physics → fysiks
indict → indite
beneficial → benefitial
colonel → koronel
sergeant → sarjant
soldier → soljer
Delete silent gh (when applikable):
high, light, right, straight: not applikable
freight → freit
daughter → dauter
bring - braut - braut
seek - saut - saut
katch - kaut - kaut
teach - taut - taut
think - thaut - thaut
fight - faut - faut
buy - baut - baut
This list is not exaustive. Other chanjes might be required.
Deklaration of human rights:
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and konscience and shoud akt towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Deklaration, without distinktion of any kind, such as race, kolor, sex, langwij, relijon, politikal or other opinion, national or social orijin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinktion shall be made on the basis of the politikal, jurisdiktional or international status of the kountry or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of soverinty.
George the Sikth?
A new spelling for an old sound ? Maaate.
😎
You could have at least lookéd up her Name - it’s P.B.S. Lassie
...Hwæt?
ƿe gardena, in ġeardagum...
I see why people struggle to speak English properly. The written language really doesn't translate to spoken language. I live in Bulgaria and it's quite funny hearing people pronouncing words the way they're spelt. They sound ridiculous but they just don't understand silent letters and how English should be spoken.
Do you want a piecey of chessey with that?
I will true to reach that, but it's hig.
Yes, it’s tough for people who are used to more systematic writing systems.
@@DaveHuxtableLanguages yeah it certainly seems so. I also think being native English makes other languages harder to learn because we get used to our unique pronunciation of letters or combinations of letters. I know Cyrillic and can speak a good amount of Bulgarian but it's hard to pronounce a written word correctly, or write a spoken word correctly because I see/hear in English.
Even native English speakers struggle with it
French spelling is even worse ! With so many silent letters; and several ways to write the same sound, it is excruciatingly difficult to know how to spell a word simply by hearing it.
Oh, au, aux, eau, eaux, os, haut, hauts, aulx!
/aɪ ˈlaɪk jə ˈklɑːs. jə ˈgɪv əs ˈvæljʊəbl ˈnɒlɪdʒ ðət wiː ˈkɑːnt ˈget frəm ˈregjʊlər ˈtiːtʃəz əv ˈɪŋglɪʃ. ˈkiːp ɒn ˈmeɪkɪŋ əs ˈsmɑːt ɪn ˈlɜːnɪŋ ˈɪŋglɪʃ./