What connection is there between writing a check (cheque) and a drafty (draughty) room? Well, it’s a bit complicated, but the words are related. Let’s use the American spelling for draft and the British spelling for cheque so we don’t get too mixed up.
 
Draft comes to us from an Old English word dragan, meaning “to draw, pull or drag.” It can be used to describe a flow of air or beer. In the U.S., it means a flow of young men into the army.
 
The English spelling cheque was influenced by the French eschequier, or “exchequer.” It originally came from the chess term checkmate and indicated that money in the exchequer was stopped and not going anywhere. The money could only be dragged or drawn out of the bank by a “money draft” or a bank cheque.

The American spelling, check, which is at least six hundred years old, still retains some of its original meaning. After nearly a thousand years, the words draft and draught (which sound the same) still indicate the movement of air or beer. But the word cheque, which is not even two hundred years old, has reversed itself and now suggests money coming out of the bank, rather than money safely locked away.
 
The word check has so may meanings today that it is severely overworked. It is both a noun (we write checks to pay our bills) or a verb. You can check the brakes of your car or the weather or your email. And the doctor can check your health. And you can be checked in or checked out or checked over and even checked off. 
 
So why do the English call the game Americans call checkers draughts? Sorry, it has nothing to do with drafty drawing rooms. It’s played on a checkered board and comes from the original meaning of the word, “to pull, or drag.” You drag or draw the checkers across the checkered board.
 
And that’s also where drawing came from. The artist drags or draws his pencil across the paper.
 
I’ll now go and draw a draught of beer and check that none of my cheques have bounced. The editor of these blogs loves puns. Just to complicate things, I once told her I was sending her “a little czech.” She got the pun - and cashed it.
 

...Are Concerned, Spelling Seems Not to Matter
 
And now, as John Cleese used to say in the Monty Python sketches, for something completely different. English spelling of proper names seems to follow none of the rules we’ve been examining. Every tourist to London has visited Leicester Square, and almost every one of them has been surprised to hear it pronounced Lester Square. If you are traveling to England, you had better be prepared for names that just do not match their spellings.
 
Gloucester is Gloster. Worcester is Wooster (and so is Worcester Sauce). Bicester is Bister and Towcester is Toaster. And that’s just to start. If you’re visiting Beaminster or Leominster, remember to call them Bemster and Lemster. But if you pronounce Cirencester the way it is spelled you will be correct.
 
When you take a boat ride down the Thames (Tems) to Greenwich, remember to call it Grennitch. And of course Norwich is Norritch. If you should drive thru Slough (it  rhymes with cow) to Windsor Castle, call it Winzer Cahsle, please. (The upper class (clahss) English love to use the ah sound to whatever they can. It distinguishes them from the plebeians.)
 
Further out in the country, you may visit Tintwistle (Tinsel), Oswaldtwistle (Ozzul-twizzle) or perhaps the tiny village of  Great Barugh (Great Barf). You can also go to Torpenhow (Trepenna) and climb the hill. Since tor means “hill” and pen means “hill” and how means “hill,” you’ll be standing on Hillhillhill Hill.
 
In Wales, everything is a verbal trap! Llandudno (hlan-did-no), Pwllheli (Poo-heli), and Ponciau (Ponky) are just three samples. And Scotland is worse. You can visit Kirkcudbright (Ker-coo-bree) and Wemuss (Weems).
 
On your way back to London (Lundun in the south of England but Lunnen in the north), you may pass thru Prinknash (Prinnish). If you visit Cambridge University, remember that Magdalene College is pronounced Maudlin and Caius College is pronounced Keys.
 
Some English family names can also be trap. The most famous best examples are Cholmondeley Chumly) and St John (Sin-jin). But there are also Belvair (Beaver), Death (De-ath), Warwick (Worrick), Ewell (Yule), Beaulieu (Byoo-lee), Fowey (Foy), Ruthven (Rivven), and Meikleour (often pronounced McClure).
 
Finally, if you’ve studied literature, you may know that the “fair youth” of Shakespeare’s sonnets is Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton. Henry’s surname is easier to pronounce than spell: Risley.
 
Have a nice trip.

We all love to complain that English spelling is unnecessarily complicated. In some cases we are correct. But look more carefully, and you will find that our spelling is full of markers, or guides, that tell us just how the word is to be pronounced. These markers are needed because English vowels (unlike in most languages) can have a number of sounds, and we need to know what sound to make.
 
The best known marker is the silent E, which changes the sound of the vowel that precedes it. For example? mat - mate. sit – site. cut – cute.
 
Next is the following R, which usually changes the sound of the preceding vowel. Pronounce the following words: car, farm, charm, her, nerd, perk, shirt, birth, dirt, ford, cord, lord, curl, hurt, murmur, turf. The vowels in these words are special vowel sounds, neither short nor long, but somewhere in between. Similarly, the following L occasionally affects the preceding vowel, as in palm, half, calf.
 
Next is the CK, which tells us that the preceding vowel is short. Examples are tick, tack, deck, dock, and duck.
 
Those irritating double consonants are there to remind us that the preceding vowel is short. It’s hammer not hamer, slimming not sliming, better not beter, rotten not roten, and cutter not cuter.
 
Another pronunciation marker is TCH, which also warns us that the preceding vowel is short. Examples include catch, fetch, ditch, botch, and hutch.
 
Similarly, the DGE is another marker that warns us that the preceding vowel is short. Examples are edge, hedge, badge, ridge, dodge, and nudge.
 
The letter C is an especially important marker. When it precedes the soft vowels E, I and Y, the C will sound like S: cent, civil, cylinder. When it precedes the hard vowels A, O, and U, the C will sound like K: cat, cocoa, cucumber.
 
The G is very similar to the C. The vowel after the G allows us, for example, to distinguish between a giraffe and a gazelle. But it has exceptions, like get, finger, gear, girl, give, and begin, all of which are hard G’s followed by the soft vowels.
 
Another G issue is GU, which is to prevent the hard G from turning soft when it is followed by E or I. Is fugue pronounced FYOOG or FYOOJ? (The answer is FYOOG.) Other examples are guarantee, guest guess, guinea, guitar, beguile, and plague. The G in each of these words is a hard G. But note the word catalogue. This word is today often spelled catalog because the UE ending is not needed.
 
Yes, there are numerous unneeded letters in English spelling, but let us remember that some of those weird spellings are there to help us.

Most readers believe that English spelling needs reforming. There have been calls for spelling reform for at least four hundred years. Nearly everybody agrees that there are too many silent letters (the silent E in edge), too many double consonants (letter), and too many strange vowel sounds (queue), not to mention archaisms like ph (photograph) and gh (ghost).
 
So why have all the serious attempts at reform been almost complete failures? Overenthusiasm. The medicine is always worse than the illness, and all too often reform has been a case of “throwing out the baby with the bath water.”
 
Many of us have taken up to twenty years to perfect our knowledge of English, and we just don’t like to be told that we have to start all over again with a funny looking alphabet or with weird diacritical marks or with spellings that we have to pronounce slowly before we can guess at what word they are supposed to represent.
 
It wasn’t easy learning how to read and write. We are proud of our skills. We reject “dumming [dumbing] down” a beautiful language. Some people say that English is difficult, but Vladimir Nabokov, Roald Dahl, Jack Kerouac, and Joseph Conrad all had to learn English, and they are acclaimed for their writing. Millions of people worldwide have learned English as well as those famous authors (much to the embarrassment of most Anglophones, who rarely learn another language) and they, too, would not accept any drastic changes.
 
Any new suggestion of a radical reformation of English spelling will be ridiculed and rejected outright. Reform must appear to be logical and obviously needed. Changes in spelling must be hardly noticeable and not distracting. They must appear to the average person as a simple and necessary change that can be immediately accepted.
 
Actual spelling change is, however, happening all the time. Some examples are catalog, color, donut, fantasy, hiccup, jail, plow, program, theater, tho, draft, and yogurt.
 
Like it or not, the archaic through has become thru and we now have drive-thru banks and pharmacies as well as drive-thru restaurants. Probably every highway department on this continent also uses thru on road signs. ‘No Thru Road’.

That’s a gruesome title, but it helps me explain a spelling rule: when to use OI and when to use OY.
 
Although these diphthongs (a diphthong is two vowels pronounced together in one syllable) sound the same, they are not interchangeable. The OI is used in the middle of a word and must be followed by at least one consonant.  Examples are appoint, poison, and coin. The OY is used at the end of a word. Examples are employ, convoy, and joy.
 
Are there exceptions? In the OY group, we have loyal, royal, voyage, and oyster. The first three words come from the Old French: loial, roial, and voyage. The word oyster was originally spelled oister.
 
 Somewhere along the way, probably many centuries ago, the I in the French words was turned into a Y. Perhaps it was the decision of a scribe who refused to have three consecutive vowels in an English word. Today there are only two commonly used English words that have the consecutive vowels OIA. They are paranoia, a word invented in the 19th century, and Sequoia, the name of a Cherokee chief who invented the Cherokee alphabet and taught his tribe how to read and write their own language. This name (which was also given to the giant redwood trees) is also one of the few English words that contain all five vowels.
 
How about the OI group? There are no commonly used English words that end in OI and only two that start with OI. Oil comes from the Latin oleum (which means “oil”), and ointment comes from the word anoint.
 
The really strange words are choir and tortoise. Choir, which is pronounced kweye-er, is a combination of the Latin word chorus and the French word choeur (which means choir, chorus, and chancel in a church).’ Tortoise came to us from the Spanish word tortuga (turtle).
 
Finally, there is the suffix –oid, which means resembling or like. Examples are asteroid (like a star), spheroid (like a sphere), and android (resembling a human).

Change is constant, and what was correct yesterday may be incorrect tomorrow. Once upon a time, on was a fixed position. “The plate was on the table.” Once upon a time, onto was the destination of an action. “She put the plate onto the table.” Similarly, in was a fixed position. “The lady walked in the room” meant that the lady was already in the room when she decided to walk around. :Like onto, into was the destination of an action. “The lady walked into the room” meant that she walked into the room from outside it.
 
Today these distinctions are rapidly disappearing and on-onto and in-into are used indiscriminately. We read and hear sentences like these all the time. “He got in his car.” “They went in the hotel.” “He climbed on the horse.” “The passengers got on the plane.”
 
While I am in favor of shorter words and the simplification of English spelling, I don’t like these changes. I consider them to be lazy grammar. They’re inaccurate and sometimes confusing. Using these words incorrectly reflects badly on the speaker or the writer and does little to improve communication.
 
When I read “he jumped on his horse,” I have a mental picture of a man jumping up and down on the saddle on his horse’s back. (And what does the horse think about this jumping on his back?) When I hear “he got in his car,” I ask myself what did he get in his car? A sandwich? Typhoid fever? Mugged?
 
But the change has already started, and you may disagree with me. Perhaps you see no great problem and even think that the change is quite acceptable as long as there is no ambiguity. And perhaps you may be right.

The J is a newcomer to the English alphabet. It looks like an I with a curly tail, which is appropriate because it was originally just an I, and it was pronounced rather like the consonant Y (yes, you, yoyo.)  When you sing Halleluja or Alleluia or Halleluyah you give it a consonant Y sound.
 
Neither the Romans nor the Greeks had the J and it was not in either the Aramaic or the Hebrew alphabet. It appears to have appeared sometime in the 16th Century.
 
Today the J with its special sound is firmly established in the English language but, interestingly, it is never used as the final letter in English words. That is, if we don’t count the Arabic Hajj, the Persian Taj, and the Hindi Raj.
 
The problem with the J is that it shares the same sound as the G. The spelling rule is. “Whenever a single G is followed by A, O, or U, it has the hard sound. Examples are, gap, game, got, gossip, gum, gutter. Whenever a single G is followed by the letters E, Y, or I, it has the soft J sound. Examples are, general, geology, ginger, giant, energy, astrology, gypsy.‘
 
The vast majority of words containing the G obey this rule. Unfortunately there are nearly forty commonly used words that break the rule. Examples are, get, target, finger, gift, give, begin. There is no way around the problem so the English student, both domestic and foreign, just has to learn and memorize these exceptions.

With the Middle East so much in the news these days, it is interesting to see just how many English words came to us from Arabic.
 
If you have studied mathematics and science, you already know that many of those al words such as algebra, algorithm, alchemy, alcohol, and alkali are from Arabic. So are sine, zenith, nadir, zero, elixir, borax, and antimony.
 
When it comes to food and plants, we would be quite lost without sugar, syrup, albacore, alfalfa, apricot, artichoke, attar, candy, caraway, carob, coffee, lemon, lime, marzipan, orange, saffron, sherbet, sumac, tamarind, tarragon, and even spinach. All of these are words borrowed from or based on Arabic.
 
There are about two hundred English words that have Arabic roots. They range from the game of chess to types of cloth, including calico, cotton, mohair, muslin, satin, and even sequins. The variety of these borrowed words is surprising. They range from the names of famous stars (Betelgeuse and Deneb) to everyday items (mattress, magazine, sofa) to some animals (gerbil, gazelle, giraffe).
 
Few of these words came directly from the Arabic, however. Many of them hopscotched from place to place over the centuries until they arrived in France, whence they made their way to England. The French probably borrowed the words from Spain, which was part of the Arabic-speaking world for seven hundred years. The Arabs borrowed many words from the Persians (who speak Farsi) or India or China. This word transfer often took many years, sometimes centuries, and sometimes went as far back as the Greeks and Romans. For example, the Arabic word alchemy has Greek roots.
 
While some countries resist the invasions of foreign words in a loosing battle to keep their language “pure,” the English-speaking nations have always welcomed new words…as long as they’re useful. Today, we anglophones probably use two or three Arabic words every day.

Of course they do. And they even use the same word that we use.  “I eat my lunch” is Ik eet mijn lunch in Dutch. Why do I ask such a peculiar question? Because it illustrates a peculiar spelling rule. When do we end a word with TCH and when do we end a word with just CH?
 
The spelling rule (see chapter 21 of the Guide) states that if the CH is preceded by a short stressed vowel, it uses the TCH. (catch, ditch, Dutch). If the sound is preceded by a consonant or a long vowel, it must use the CH. (branch, each, lunch). It is a simple rule. Easy to learn and easy to understand and there are barely a dozen exceptions. For example, rich, much and detach.
 
The big question is why do we have this rule? Whether or not the word contains a T seems to make no difference to the sound of the word. The T does not make the preceding vowel short or long. Compare filch and fitch, wrench and wretch, or crunch and crutch. That T doesn’t seem to do anything to the vowel sound.
 
Would it make any difference if ketchup were spelled kechup? Or if kitchen were spelled kichen? Would it matter if butcher were spelled bucher? Not really.
 
Perhaps the rule appeared at a time when words that use the CH in various unusual ways were slipping into the English language. Words like chef, chute, chorus, choir, chaos, machine, school, stomach, echo, lichen. 
 
When and why this spelling rule appeared I do not know. What is much more interesting is the way the rule is fully accepted by scholars and students alike. There is general agreement that it is a logical rule and there are very few exceptions yet, when we look at it carefully, we see that there is no good reason for it to exist.

The odd title of this blog illustrates something that for most people is just another annoying spelling problem. Some words end in C, some words end in CK, and others end in K. But the variety of endings is not an anomaly. It’s a spelling rule.
 
Unlike many other languages, English has a variety of vowel sounds, so there have to be signals to guide the reader. One example is the silent E (hat, hate). Another is the double consonant (diner, dinner). The C, CK, K rule is a variation of the double consonant rule.
 
Only a tiny handful of  English word have a double K, and these are usually compounds like jackknife. There are many words with a double C, but the C’s usually have different sounds, as in accident, occidental, eccentric, and vaccine.
 
Then there are words that have a double C that is really not necessary. These include exotic imports like stucco, yucca, toccata, and tobacco, plus more common words like succor, occur, occupy, accuse, and accountable. Fortunately there are not many of these.
 
The rule for short, single syllable words is quite simple. After a short vowel, use CK (back). After a long vowel or a consonant, use K (bank). If the word has more than one syllable and ends in the K sound, we usually spell it with a C (public, maniac, domestic).
 
Mixed in with the long vowel words that end in the K sound (book, week, soak) are plenty of easily recognized exotic imports such as kayak, Sputnik, beatnik, kapok, and mukluk.