Learn English Spelling Rules - English Tips Blog

Hwa Hwaet?

5/2/2018

Have you ever heard somebody pronouncing certain words with a slight H sound at the beginning? For example, some people say hwy for why, hwere for were, or hwen for when. I’m guessing you thought the speaker possessed a silly affectation, or perhaps a speech impediment.

I remember when I was a small boy, I had an aunt who spoke that way. She told my brothers and me that was the correct way to speak. But she didn’t explain why, and so we just ignored her. As I study the English language, however, I found her assertion partly correct.

The ancient Saxons had quite a few words that began with HW and they pronounced the H: hwit (white), hwisprian (whisper), hwoel (wheel), and hwaete (wheat). The Norman (French) invaders led by William the Conqueror in the 11th century found the Saxon pronunciation too harsh, however, and they also had difficulty pronouncing such words. So while they dropped the H sound and put the emphasis on the W, they still retained the Saxon spelling. Eventually, the scribes reversed the HW in their writings, and HW became the WH we still know today: why, where, when.

But the stubborn Saxons did not let the Normans have it all their own way. Today, when the WH is followed by a vowel the W dominates and the H is almost silent: what, when, white, why. But there is a big exception. When the WH is followed by O, the H dominates and the W is silent: who, whose, whole, whore, wholly. The only exceptions to this rule are three modern, made-up words. In whoop, whopper, whoosh, we speak as if the words begin with W and there’s no H.

What is most interesting about this WH business is that for nine centuries a tiny handful of people have still been placing the H before the W in their pronunciation of these words just the way people did before the Norman invasion. If you asked them, they would probably not know why, except that once upon a time it was the correct pronunciation. Now that’s what I call really stubborn.

Not Your Dear Old Auntie

4/25/2018

The English language has three prefixes that sound rather like your favorite auntie but have nothing to do with the dear lady. They are anti, ante, and anto.

Anti comes from the Greek and means “against or opposed to.” It can also sometimes mean “preventing, reversing, or the opposite,” usually with a negative meaning. Many words use the prefix anti, including antiaircraft, antibacterial, antigravity, anticlimax, antiwar, and antihero.

Ante comes from the Latin and means “before or preceding,” for example, antechamber, antecedent, and antebellum. Not many words use ante. So where did the gambling phrase “ante up” come from? Well, if you want to play, you have to put your money in the pot before the game starts.

A few other words begin with ante or anti in which they are not used as prefixes. For example, antelope, antenna, antique, and antic. When we dig deeper, we find that antique does come from the Latin ante, meaning “before,” here before current times. Also, the word antic comes from anticus, meaning “very old and grotesque.”

Only one time do we separate any of these prefixes from their root words. This exception is A.M., or ante meridian, i.e., morning or before noon when the sun is at its meridian or highest point in the sky.

How about that prefix anto? That’s a very lonely prefix. The only commonly used word that uses anto is antonym, a word that means “the opposite.” Common antonyms are fat/thin and good/bad. Anto originally came into English from the Greek anti.

As for auntie, that word comes from the Latin word amita and the French tante. I had eleven aunts.

Lost Letters

4/18/2018

Over the centuries, the English alphabet has lost a few letters and gained a few. Among the lost are the thorn (Þ), the yogh (Ʒ), and the eth (ð). These come from the Old English runic alphabet called Futhark. The French invaders of the 11th century did not like non-Latin letters and the typesetters for the new printing presses of the 15th century didn’t have those letters in their fonts, so they substituted other letters.

The last letter to disappear was the long S (ſ), which looks too much like the F and confused readers. Anybody reading a manuscript written before the middle of the 18th century will recognize the long S. Noah Webster used it in his preface to his 1806 dictionary.

However, two of these antique letters should have been retained. The modern digraph TH has two sounds, the hard th heard in breath, and the soft th heard in breathe. We must use two letters (T and H) to make the sounds, yet, much to the confusion of little children and adults learning English, those same two letters make different sounds.

The thorn (Þ) had the hard th sound we hear in modern words like thing, think, and thigh. The runic eth (ð) appears to have had the soft th sound we hear in they and that. A separate letter for each of the th sounds seems more logical than using two letters to make two different sounds.

Consider also the Greek theta (Θ). This single letter has the sound of th, and while every scholar knew that it existed, rarely, if ever, did they use it. If the theta had been brought into English for the th sound, it might or might not have improved our reading and spelling. But we’ll never know because as England rapidly became part of Western Europe, the English alphabet aligned itself to match the alphabet used on the continent, and all those runic letters disappeared.

On the one hand, we may feel sad to see them go, because they might find them useful. But on the other hand, where would we put them on our qwerty key boards?

Rules and Rulers

4/11/2018

Some people, including many teachers and linguists, have serious doubts about whether or not English spelling actually has any rules at all. This is patently illogical. About 1.5 billion people across the globe speak English. Sixty-seven nations use English as their official language. Another twenty-seven use English as an official second language. English is the language used in almost all forms of international communication. Considering the importance of the language and the huge numbers of people who speak and read it, there must be a generally accepted way to spell English words.

We do in fact have a generally accepted way to spell English words: it’s called spelling rules. As literacy increased over the years, the rules developed, too. When the printing press was invented in Germany in the mid-15th century, few of the typesetters spoke English. When William Caxton introduced the printing press to England in 1476, the typesetters abandoned some of the ancient English letters, such as the thorn, the eth and the wynn and standardized the English alphabet as much as they could.

People tend to want conformity, and this was slowly applied to spelling. If a word was spelled a certain way, then a similar word should also be spelled that way. Unfortunately, during the Middle Ages and Renaissance, the English language was acquiring an extraordinary number of new words from a wide variety of sources, so the spelling of the new words was not always systematic. But the printers and the writers did their best.

The problem was that there were no guidelines. No king ever mandated a spelling system and no university ever formed an academy to regulate spelling. In 1635, the French created the Académie française to rule their language, and in 1713 Spain created its own academy. But not the English. The problem was left to the dictionary writers, and they often disagreed with each other about spelling.

Nevertheless, spelling rules gradually appeared. Today almost every commonly used word is subject to spelling rules that have been around for over a hundred years. Yes, exceptions to many of the rules exist, but when we look closely, we find the exceptions are very few. And some rules have no exceptions at all. For example - Except for names, and words translated from foreign alphabets such as Chinese or Arabic, can you think of any word where the Q stands alone?

Ben Franklin Was Wrong

4/4/2018

When they met near the end of the 18th century, both Noah Webster and Benjamin Franklin had ideas for improving the English language. Webster believed spelling needed to be simplified. Franklin believed the entire alphabet needed revision and improvement. He even invented new letters and eliminated old ones. But Noah Webster was not convinced.

One of the letters Franklin would have eliminated was the letter C. He firmly believed that where it produces the K sound, the world should spell K, cucumber/kukumber and where it produces the S sound it should be spelled S, cigar/sigar. To Franklin, this seemed entirely logical, but Webster thought such changes entirely unnecessary because English spelling rules took care of the problems.

The spelling rule is quite simple and is quickly learned and accepted by even the youngest students. When the C precedes the letters A, O, or U, it has the K sound (cat, cot, cut). When the letter C precedes the E or the I, it has the S sound (cedar, cider). When the C is followed by a consonant or is the last letter in a word, it always has the K sound., crumb, climb, panic, havoc. Almost no exceptions to this rule exist.

Interestingly, Spanish is very similar. Compare camino, cochino, and cuchara with centavo, and cielo. Also compare ciudad with cuidado. Spanish very rarely uses the letter K except in loan words such as kilo and kiosko.

The letter C is commonly used in English. Eliminating it would have played havoc with the digraphs and blends. I have often wondered how Franklin would have spelled church.

The Twins U and V

3/28/2018

The letters U and V are almost twins. Since Roman times (and perhaps earlier) the letter V was used for both U and V. Perhaps carvers found a simple V easier than a curved U to whittle into marble or to write with a scratchy pen on rough paper. Whatever the reason, the letters were interchanged that way for many centuries.

So how did the ancients pronounce the V? Or didn’t they pronounce the V sound at all? They certainly had both the U and the V sounds. Take, for example the Latin words via, vestis, vacare, vocare, and vulgare. The initial V sound is quite clear. But what about ultra, umbra, uti, and unctuarium. The V sound couldn't be used in these words. They have to be spoken with the U sound.

There must have been a quite simple spelling rule little Romans learned in school. When the letter V appears immediately before a consonant, it has the U sound. For example: Julius, magnus, and lumen. But when the V appears immediately before a vowel, it keeps the V sound: gravis, civis, and vivere.

Of course, a few exceptions existed. Remember the Romans borrowed many words from the Greeks and even borrowed from other lands they conquered. What I find fascinating is that we tend to do the same borrowing in English.

Almost every time we use a V, it's followed by a vowel; almost every time we use a U, it is followed by a consonant. Except, of course, when a word ends in U, in which case we almost always add a silent E: true, blue, glue, flue, et cetera. We do the same thing with the V: give, have, solve.

About the 15th century some scribes began the slow process of differentiate between the two letters. The two didn't finally part until the 18th century. But Did they finally part? Quite a few public buildings and monuments still use a v in place of a u and consider that expensive jewelry and watch company Bvlgari.

The Lost Word

3/21/2018

The English language is missing a word, and it’s a vital word. How can a language that boasts over half a million words be so careless as to forget to have a plural you? Yes, you.

Almost every major language has a plural you. German uses half a dozen ways to say you plural, including sie, ihr, and euch. In France and French-speaking Quebec, Canada, we tourists can say vous. In Italy, we use voi. In Spain, we politely use usted and ustedes, which come from the archaic vuestra merced. Since the U and the V were once interchangeable, the modern contraction is written Ud or Vds. While vosotros and vos are quite common in Spain, they are rarely used in Latin America. Wherever they go, tourists should not use the singular tu except when talking to children or very close friends.

So what happened to the plural you in English? Blame it on the decline of thee, thou, and ye. As English speakers began to use these words less often, thou became the singular, and Shakespeare wrote, “Where art thou, Romeo?” And the word ye became the plural form: “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may.”

As thou soon lost its popularity in the south of England (although it remains in use in many regional dialects throughout England), at about the same time, ye changed to you.

With the disappearance of thou and ye, we got stuck with you as both singular and plural, Some regional dialects in the U.S. have invented a word to fill the gap. In the South, you all (or y’all), is popular, and we very occasionally hear y’alls. You guys and (in England) you lot are also widely used. Youse and yous are also fairly common in a number of places. Although these plurals are considered slang, or worse, they do make sense. Y’all is quite logical, and yous actually follows the rule whereby we make a plural by simply adding an S to a word. Problem solved.

Are you going to nosh your grub?

3/7/2018

What do you call the food you eat? Most people just call it food, which is logical, but many other people call it grub. Or sometimes nosh. The informal word grub, meaning food, has been around for over three hundred years. But English speaking people very rarely eat grubs, so a lot of us must have wondered about the connection between those unappetising worm-like insect larvae and the food people eat. Actually, though grubs will never be as popular as popcorn, most of them are quite tasty and loaded with nutrition.

Most insect larvae—grubs—can be found in the earth quite close to the surface. When our ancestors dug up the soil and removed rocks and roots to plant their seeds, they introduced the expression “grubbing up” from the old Germanic grubian, meaning “to dig up.” The diggers also got quite dirty, or grubby, from the grubbing. So how does this lead to food? One theory is that the slang word grub comes from watching the swarms of birds that followed the plough and picked up the juicy grubs. Another theory is that our distant ancestors actually collected the grubs for food

As for the word nosh, this is a Yiddish word that comes from the old Germanic word nascen, meaning “to nibble.” It only became popular in the 1950s and will probably soon die out, leaving the ancient word grub to act as a noun, a verb, an adjective, and curiously connected to our food.

What We Write On

2/28/2018

Our “paperless” society actually consumes an enormous amount of paper. Most of it is made from wood pulp, but the better quality paper often contains fibers of cotton or linen. Paper wasn’t always cheap and disposable like it is now. The word paper comes from the Greek word papyrus, which refers to the Egyptian method of pounding papyrus reeds into a flat sheet. The result of the pounding was a crude type of paper that took a great deal of time and labor to produce. Also, that fragile material would split and disintegrate easily.

The Chinese discovered that if they pounded wood pulp along with old rags and hemp, then boiled the mixture, the result was more stable and could be folded or rolled up without damage. This processed paper became popular and used for many purposes, including hats and wrapping paper. Marco Polo records his surprise at finding rich Chinese using toilet paper.

Meanwhile, in medieval Europe, parchment and vellum were the preferred materials. Both parchment and vellum are made from the skins of animals, but vellum, made from young calves, was considered the finer material. Real parchment, carefully manufactured, can last for thousands of years. The Magna Carta, for example, was written on sheepskin parchment and signed by King John in 1215. Eight hundred years later, four copies still remain in excellent condition.

Like papyrus and Chinese paper, parchment making was a long, labor-intensive process, and the final product was expensive. So the scribes who used the parchment learned how to recycle it. Since the ink was usually made from vegetable dyes, they found it possible to scrape it off. The scribes would carefully scrape away the old writing, leaving the surface clean and ready for new writing. We know this because today we have x-ray machines that can pick up traces of the old writing.

So today when you write a note on a piece of scrap paper or throw away an old receipt, try to remember the days when paper was an extremely valuable item…almost as valuable as the words written on it.

An Annual Problem

2/21/2018

We all know that annual means once a year, so biannual should mean what? Every second year? Or twice a year? How about semiannual or even biennial? Yes, you have a right to be confused.

First let’s look at the word annual. It comes from the Latin word annus. Please spell that Latin word very carefully with two Ns. And always give it the short A sound you hear in ant.

Bi is also Latin and means two. Remember, we're bipeds who ride bicycles and use binoculars. So Biannual means twice a year, or every six months if you like.

Semi is another Latin based word and it means a half. Think of a semi circle. So semiannual also means twice a year. Bi or Semi, these prefixes are very similar but semi can also mean just partly or not completely. For example, semiconscious, semidarkness, semidetached, semifinal, and even a large semi-trailer truck.

So what’s a biennial? That's something that happens every two years.

Is a bimonthly magazine published twice a month or every second month? Actually it could be either. When you pay your year’s subscription you could get 6 copies or 24 copies. Now that’s what you call ambiguity.

These Latin based words can be confusing so save yourself some trouble and use “twice a year” or “every other year.” Those two phrases are made up of Old English words, not Latin words.

Botanists have slightly different interpretations of these words when explaining the life cycle of plants.