Simon Horobin
DOES SPELLING MATTER?
270pp. Oxford University Press.
£20 (US $35). 978-0-19- 9665-28- 0
English spelling is notoriously difficult. As we are reminded in the introduction to Does Spelling Matter?, George Bernard Shaw once argued that it would be possible to spell the word fish as ghoti, by analogy. with the words “enough”, “women” and “motion”; and many people consider children who speak a language in which the correspondence between spelling and sound is more reliable (such as Spanish) to be at an advantage. That is one of the reasons that some --including the English Spelling Society-- would like English spelling to be reformed.
Simon Horobin, a professor of English Language and Literature at Oxford, is not one of them. And “rather than lamenting the inconsistencies and complexities of English spelling” he would like “to show how these developed and what they tell us about the fascinating history of our language”. He begins his account with the Old English period, when there were two writing systems in use (runes, a Germanic system, and the Latin alphabet, adopted as a result of the mission of St Augustine in AD 597) and develops his argument chronologically.
We learn that by the late Middle Ages, French words had been imported twice, first from the Norman dialect, giving us “warranty”, “wile” and “warden”, and then from fourteenth-century Central French, which bequeathed us “guarantee”, “guile” and “guardian”. Confusion abounded in this era. While “knee” lost its original sounding but not wording, “comb” in southern England forfeited its voiced “b” --yet a “b” was added to “crum”. An “h” was affixed by scribes who presumed that it had gone missing from “erbe” and “ost”. “Dette” and “doute” each acquired a redundant “b’ to reflect a Latin etymology, as “sisours” did a “c”. There would emerge in the nineteenth century the associated prohibition on split infinitives, the reasoning being that split infinitives are not possible in Latin. This Latin fixation was allied to the conceit that Britain was heir to Ancient Rome, and it’s why some British people remain resentful of the ubiquity of American English.
Horobin has some sympathy for those who say that the odd spelling mistake doesn’t matter --we all know what “definately” means-- but he does suggest that correct usage is bound up with good manners. That’s not to say that reform is the answer to illiteracy. As he makes clear in his lucid and fascinating study, to “simplify” English would remove us even further from the language of Shakespeare and Chaucer. Language reform would deprive children of access to their past.
Patrick West
TLS, May 24, 2013
DOES SPELLING MATTER?
270pp. Oxford University Press.
£20 (US $35). 978-0-19- 9665-28- 0
English spelling is notoriously difficult. As we are reminded in the introduction to Does Spelling Matter?, George Bernard Shaw once argued that it would be possible to spell the word fish as ghoti, by analogy. with the words “enough”, “women” and “motion”; and many people consider children who speak a language in which the correspondence between spelling and sound is more reliable (such as Spanish) to be at an advantage. That is one of the reasons that some --including the English Spelling Society-- would like English spelling to be reformed.
Simon Horobin, a professor of English Language and Literature at Oxford, is not one of them. And “rather than lamenting the inconsistencies and complexities of English spelling” he would like “to show how these developed and what they tell us about the fascinating history of our language”. He begins his account with the Old English period, when there were two writing systems in use (runes, a Germanic system, and the Latin alphabet, adopted as a result of the mission of St Augustine in AD 597) and develops his argument chronologically.
We learn that by the late Middle Ages, French words had been imported twice, first from the Norman dialect, giving us “warranty”, “wile” and “warden”, and then from fourteenth-century Central French, which bequeathed us “guarantee”, “guile” and “guardian”. Confusion abounded in this era. While “knee” lost its original sounding but not wording, “comb” in southern England forfeited its voiced “b” --yet a “b” was added to “crum”. An “h” was affixed by scribes who presumed that it had gone missing from “erbe” and “ost”. “Dette” and “doute” each acquired a redundant “b’ to reflect a Latin etymology, as “sisours” did a “c”. There would emerge in the nineteenth century the associated prohibition on split infinitives, the reasoning being that split infinitives are not possible in Latin. This Latin fixation was allied to the conceit that Britain was heir to Ancient Rome, and it’s why some British people remain resentful of the ubiquity of American English.
Horobin has some sympathy for those who say that the odd spelling mistake doesn’t matter --we all know what “definately” means-- but he does suggest that correct usage is bound up with good manners. That’s not to say that reform is the answer to illiteracy. As he makes clear in his lucid and fascinating study, to “simplify” English would remove us even further from the language of Shakespeare and Chaucer. Language reform would deprive children of access to their past.
Patrick West
TLS, May 24, 2013
