“English Vowel Digraphs and Their History”
Steven Mahon
Linguistics
LIN 4970
With help from Dr. Jules D. Gliesche
20th December 2011
With our Western, post-Renaissance emphasis on historical preservation, one of the primary battles when attempting to tackle the fickle topic of spelling reform is of that between a strict phonetic system and preserving the historical system being discussed.
There are endless pros and cons for both sides, and this thesis is not meant to decide on one over the other. In fact, most people are not even aware of how the term
“historical system” can even be applied accurately in English. How did our system come about and why? Author Vivian Cook gives a brief rundown of the nature of
English orthography. He claims that Modern English spelling is actually comprised of three different systems (Cook, 69). He defines these as the original Old English or
„basic‟ system, the French/Latinate or „Romance‟ system, and the “foreign” system kept for recent borrowings from “exotic” languages (Cook, 72). Cook also notes that this third system could possibly be considered more of a “waste bin” for words which have not yet been fully assimilated into English since there are no set orthographic rules for this set, but rather the “leftover” rules which cannot be accounted for by English or
Romance phonology/orthography. The first system is comprised mainly of words inherited from Proto-Germanic which existed in English prior to the Norman Invasion of
1066 such as „for‟, „man‟, „go‟ and „say.‟ In Modern English, this system is arguably the most phonetic out of the three with many words (such as the examples) having one-to- one sound-spelling correspondences. The above examples are all basic content and function words. The second system is comprised mostly of words borrowed from
Norman French and Latin after the Norman Invasion of 1066 and before the modern spelling system was standardized such as „gem‟, „appeal‟, „strange‟ and „science.‟ This influx of words came as a result of the language of the elite in England being switched
1 to French. Many cultural and technical terms in Modern English came as a result of this mass borrowing since people at that time were also educated in French. This system often tries to follow the original Latin spellings. Since English in the Middle Ages was not a highly-regarded language, the idea was that by retaining the original French and
Latin spellings one could Latinize English and thus make it more attractive and educated to the Romance-speaking elite (Barber, 51-3). The third and final system is a grab-bag of assorted borrowings from various non-French and non-Latin languages such as „cello‟, „Iraq‟, „dhobi‟ and „khaki.‟ These words were often borrowed after the standardization of English spelling and as aforementioned are on the „borderline‟ between the original language and being totally assimilated into English. They tend to retain at least some of the characteristics of the spelling system from which they were borrowed and usually have an „exotic‟ look to them, marking them clearly as loanwords.
Now the question must be posed: which systems are necessary to keep and which ones can be done away with? Often times a spelling convention is used for different reasons across different systems. An example of this would be consonant doubling. In the Germanic system (call by Carney the “Basic” system), consonant doubling is mostly used as a method to show a) that the syllable containing the double consonants is stressed and b) that the preceding vowel is short (ie. „puzzle‟, „button‟ and
„glassy‟) (Carney, 113-4). However, in the Romance system, consonant doubling is often used to show where a prefix from Latin was assimilated to the following consonant
(ie. „obclude‟ from Latin ob + clude and „assent‟ from Latin ad +sent) (Carney, 119).
Most of these Latin affixes have long lost their use in Modern English. Their only purpose is to serve as a reminder that in Latin they did in fact have a purpose. In the
2 opinion of the author, in order to accurately appropriate the term “historical” to specific spelling conventions in English, only spellings that ever had a distinctive use in English will be considered “historical.” Spelling conventions that represent defunct practices from other languages that have never had a practical use in English at any point in its lengthy history will not be considered historical. This decision will help provide a basis for distinguishing actual phonological changes that occurred during the development of
English orthography and what was implemented by scholars during the Renaissance as a way to Latinize English (Barber, 51-3). A thorough and in-depth discussion of some of the traditional dialects of Modern English can shed some light onto the current salience of some of these spellings. Examining certain phonological distinctions maintained in these dialects that have long since been lost in the standard language will allow one to take a glimpse into past spoken Englishes so as to provide proof and a historical basis for why Modern English orthography developed in the manner that it did.
This thesis will focus solely on the orthography of English vowels, specifically that of digraphs. The author deems that this topic is the one of most importance due to the vast possibilities available for a single sound. Describing Standard Modern English phonology is a topic that has been beaten to death by linguists. However, even though
English has had a rigid, standardized orthography for almost half a millennium, due to the wide variation in the spelling system (particularly for vowels) it is rather difficult to pinpoint what the „standard‟ phonological representations for each grapheme are. In fact, defining what the native graphemes for Modern English are also quite the task.
Here I will use Edward Carney‟s A Survey of English Spelling as my source for determining the basic vowel representations (whether single letters, digraphs or even
3 trigraphs) for Standard Modern English. These graphemes are not isolated to specific lexical items (such as
„should‟) and can often be found in new word coinings or in loan words entering English.
The following vowel graphemes will be considered individually in this thesis:
Next, a brief history of English orthography will be outlined to provide the reader with some historical background for this thesis. This will make the correlation between sound and spelling much clearer when the graphemic analysis begins. The first known written records of English are from the Old English, or Anglo-Saxon period. This period lasted from about the fifth century AD till the Norman invasion of 1066 (Cook, 153-4).
Old English had a simple, rather stereotypical Germanic vowel system consisting of seven short and long monophthongs and two short and long diphthongs (Horobin &
Smith,). The monophthongs are as follows: /a(:)/, /æ(:)/, /e(:)/, /i(:)/, /o(:)/, /u(:)/, and
/y(:)/. The diphthongs are also as follows: /æə(:)/ and /eə(:)/. The monophthongs were each spelled with their respective IPA symbols in Old English (no orthographic indication of vowel length was yet developed) and the diphthongs were spelled
4 umlaut, or i-fronting of back, rounded vowels in stressed syllables before front vowels
(Pyles, 115). This would undoubtedly be the cause of /æ/, /y/ and the diphthongs entering the system.
The Middle English vowel system of around year 1400 has a slightly rearranged seven-monophthong system while increasing the number of diphthongs to five (Horobin
& Smith, 48). The short vowels are likely to have been as follows: /ɪ/, /ε/, /a/, /ↄ/, and
/ʊ/. The long vowels were probably: /i:/, /e:/, /ε:/, /a:/, /ↄ:/, /o:/, and /u:/. Unlike Old
English, Middle English appears to have had a qualitative as well as a quantitative difference between long and short vowels. The short vowels were mostly spelled respectively and the long vowels were mostly spelled . Middle English developed a system of digraphs and vowel doubling to show long vowels. It should also be noted that there was not a distinction in spelling between the two sets of long, mid vowels in Middle English: /ε:/ vs. /e:/ and /ↄ:/ vs /o:/.
These were not differentiated until the Early Modern English period where the second letter of each digraph in the orthography was replaced with an , thus providing „boat‟ vs. „boot‟ when both were spelled as boot in Middle English and „meat‟ vs „meet‟ when both were spelled as meet in Middle English (Pyles, 148). The Middle English of
Chaucer also had about five diphthongs, namely: /aɪ/, /ↄɪ/, /aʊ/, /ↄʊ/, and /ɪʊ/ (Horobin &
Smith, 49). These were appropriately spelled
5
/ε:/ in most dialects) while the new diphthongs were created from vocalizations of following consonants (such as /j/, /w/ and fricative allophones of /g/) and borrowings from French (Horobin & Smith, 49). Lastly, there is also a vowel, described as /y:/, which is not mentioned by Horobin and Smith. In the Oxford English Dictionary, it is spelled as a single in open syllables and is derived from French and Latin loanwords commonly borrowed from French (ie. vertu „virtue‟, rule „rule‟ and rude „rude‟)
(OED, 1 of ). In Barber it is listed as having the diphthong /ɪʊ/ (Barber, 112). The
French tradition of spelling /u:/ as
English and adopted as the norm. Although it is not 100% certain what phonological value this sound had (if it was even distinct at all in Middle English), it can be easily identified by the spellings in Modern English as in „crucifix‟, „tune‟ and „due‟ where they represent /ju:/ or /u:/.
As previously mentioned, Old English and Middle English had relatively regular sound to spelling correspondences. Modern English, on the other hand, is a completely different story. In order to accurately describe Modern English phonology and its relation to modern spelling conventions, a thorough description of each grapheme will be done including the evolution of each of the sounds represented by the graphemes and the status of these phonological representations in the Modern English dialects of today.
In nearly every elementary school classroom, children are taught about short vowels, long vowels and the silent
6 respectively) (Cook, 65). An orthographic convention which has developed in English to distinguish “long” vowels from “short” vowels in closed syllables is the silent
Simply put, by adding a silent
Rule Box 6 in Cook (p. 65):
Short/Checked Long/Free
/ɪ/ „rip‟ /aɪ/ „ripe‟
/ʌ/ „plum‟ /(j)u:/ „plume‟
Note the possible variation in the last long/free vowel above. After certain consonants it always appears as /u:/ and after others as /ju:/. After consonants such as
/t/, /d/ and /l/ it varies between British and American English, British English Received
Pronunciation retaining the historical /ju:/ pronunciation while American English uses the newer /u:/ (Wells, 247). Some dialects, however, use a more archaic /ɪʊ/-type vowel after all possible English consonants for “long” and this will be discussed in further detail in the
In most other languages in the world, the concept of short and long vowels relates to the literal meanings of the words: some vowels are phonologically short, while others are long. As one can see from the table above, only two of the “long” vowels are actually phonologically long. The other three (or sometimes two, since “long” after
7 certain consonants is /u:/) are actually diphthongs. In languages like German, Finnish and Persian, the long and short vowels are related, whether by a physical length distinction or by a tense/lax distinction. The English “long”/”short” pairings are not phonologically related at all. How then, did Modern English develop such a peculiar vowel system? The answer lies within the Great Vowel Shift.
The Great Vowel Shift was a phonological chain shift of Middle English long vowels whereby the Middle English long high vowels became diphthongs and the other long vowels followed them to fill in the gaps in the sound system (Barber, 105-9). This is ultimately the reason why the Modern English vowel system is quite unlike that of any other language in the world, including its close relatives. The following chart in Figure 1, taken from user Kjoonlee of Wikipedia, shows a visual map of the phonological changes of the Great Vowel Shift and places them on a timeline from the year 1400:
Figure 1
8
As one can see, the short vowels have remained relatively unchanged whereas the long vowel and diphthong system has undergone a complete transformation. A further look at the digraph system of Modern English as well the phonological variations in some of its dialects will help better explain the effects of the Great Vowel Shift on the
Englishes of today.
The first digraph up is one that is actually relatively rare in Modern English.
Carney has its regular sound correspondence as /i:/ in Greek and other Classical loanwords (Carney, 283). Some examples of this are „aeon‟, „archaeology‟ and
„encyclopaedia.‟ It should be noted that many of these examples reflect the British spelling tendencies and have often been simplified to a single
(ie. „eon‟ and „encyclopedia‟). Carney considers word-final stressed
„brae‟ and „sundae‟ to fall under the
Because and
Smith, 63). That being said, the most common phoneme represented by
Modern English is, by far, /eɪ/ (ie. „day‟, „say‟, „paid‟, „maiden‟) (Carney, 283-5). As said previously,
/ε:/ coming from Middle English /a:/ as a result of the Great Vowel Shift. This /ε:/ then
9 shifted to /e:/ in later Early Modern English before arriving at the Modern English /eɪ/ of today (Barber, 108 & 114). Although Horobin and Smith describe this vowel as /aɪ/ in
Middle English, the actual phoneme varies in between authors. Another common representation is /æɪ/ or /æi/ which seems to have been more likely around the year
1500 or so (Barber, 114). The reason for this is that
As stated earlier, in most dialects of Modern English
Interestingly enough, in younger people in these areas who do not maintain this distinction, the merged vowel is not the [e: ~ eə]-type vowel, but rather the [æɪ]-type vowel (Wells, 337). Wells does not give an explanation for why this may be. This preservation of
Wales. In these dialects, long words have a long monophthong [e:] (as in
10
[pe:n] for „pane‟) and
(Wells, 384). In contrast to the East Anglian dialects, however, in the Welsh English dialects where these sounds have merged, they are both pronounced as the monophthong [e:], not the diphthong [εɪ]. Wells notes that this distinction may very well not necessarily be that of a historical preservation, but rather that of a spelling pronunciation from when that area of Wales spoke English as a second language.
However, he does add that this is not certain. Either way, it is definitely apparent that
As stated previously for and
& Smith, 49). This sound developed into /ↄ:/ in the Early Modern English period, replacing the gap left by the shift of Middle English /ↄ:/ to /o:/ as a result of the Great
Vowel Shift (Barber, 106-7). In Received Pronunciation, the „standard‟ British English accent, the sound is still /ↄ:/ (Wells, 144-5). In Australian English, this sound is approaching /o:/ (Wells, 595-8). In American English, however, this sound is currently undergoing a merger throughout the country with short
11
America and since most countries outside of the United States do in fact keep the sounds distinct, the
The
English dialects depend upon the sound value each of these source vowels in the various Old English dialects, which can be summed up by the following table, taken from Figure 4.7 on page 56 of the Horobin and Smith:
West Saxon Old Anglian Old Kentish
æ¹: (from Proto-Germanic æ:) æ: e: e:
æ²: (from pre-Old English ɑ:) æ: æ: e:
Thus, the resulting Middle English sound values can be summed up by the following table, taken from Figure 4.8 on page 56 of the Horobin & Smith:
Southwest England Midlands/North England Southeast England
æ¹: /ε:/ /e:/ /e:/
12
æ²: /ε:/ /ε:/ /e:/
As one can see, the results of /æ:/ in Middle English perfectly line up with their respective dialectal values from Old English. Modern English in fact takes its lexicon from multiple Middle English dialects so it can be impossible to tell which Modern
English word had which vowel in Middle English. It thus becomes apparent (as mentioned in the description of Middle English phonology above) that there were two contrasting long
The initial effects of the Great Vowel Shift caused these vowels to become /e:/ and /i:/ respectively (Barber, 106-7). These phonemes were not actually distinguished in writing until the Early Modern English period when the
Modern English dialects this sound has merged with the aforementioned /e:/ into /i:/
(Barber, 107). In a small group of words, however, this merger did not occur (these words retaining the original /e:/ which later became /eɪ/, ie. „break‟, „steak‟, „great‟) and in yet others the vowel was shortened early on to /ε/ but the spelling wasn‟t changed (ie
„dead‟, „deaf‟, „thread‟, etc.) (Barber, 108 & 123). The
Some dialects of British English still maintain this distinction in spoken colloquial speech. In Northern England, for example, this distinction is traditionally preserved in the dialect of the area with varying realizations for the two phonemes. In the middle
North [mi:t] for „meet‟ and [mɪət] for „meat‟ is found (Wells, 357). In parts of North
13
Yorkshire, residents have [məɪt] for „meet‟ and [mɪət] for „meat.‟ In Staffordshire, one can find [mεɪt] for „meet‟ and [mi:t] for „meat.‟ This distinction can also be found in parts of Ireland. Here, in older and rural, working-class speech words spelled
(both having [ste:l]) and „meat‟ rhymes with „mate‟ as opposed to „meet‟ ([me:t] vs.
[mi:t]). Wells also includes some words on his list of the more common words retaining this distinction that are not spelled with
„Jesus‟ (Wells, 425). „Quay‟ seems most likely to be an incidental lexical item. It is not known if other words spelled with
105 & 107). The same goes with words that have a single
One of the more common vowel combinations in Modern English, except in recent loanwords
Tracing back to Old English, this sound was originally a long /e:/-type vowel, retaining much of its same quality and length through the Middle English period, then through the effects of the Great Vowel Shift becoming the /i:/ in the Modern English of today
14
(Barber, 106). As discussed in the section on
Modern English period the digraph
Deciphering the history of the digraph
British English but also states that /eɪ/ would make an equally good “standard” pronunciation (Carney, 314). One does not seem to take precedence over the other. A further look into the history of the usage of this digraph for these phonemes may shed some light on its importance.
„neither‟, „weird‟ and more consistently in words ending in –cei- such as „receive‟,
„conceive‟, „deceive‟ and also their respective nouns in words like „deceit‟ and „receipt.‟
This last group exemplifies the saying in English: “I before E except after C”, although the previously mentioned words would seem to break this. Carney lists this on page
313-4 as the main exception rule to the above “standard” of /aɪ/ for
15
Norman French. In Norman and Anglo-French dialects, these words contained a diphthong which is typically reconstructed as /ei/. This same diphthong developed into an /oi/ sound in Standard French and later became the diphthong /wa/ in Modern
French (von Jagemann, 71-2). This can be seen in the cognate pair receive-reçois (first person singular of the verb recevoir) and deceive-déçois (first person singular of the verb decevoir). However, there was no /ei/-type vowel in Middle English. It appears that, based on alternate spellings from the time period after their borrowing into English, at least some of these words were assimilated to the Middle English long /ε:/ sound.
Barber lists
As discussed in the section on
„either‟ also into the category of words which had long /ε:/ in Middle English. For now, it would appear that the
The
Middle English. As discussed above, because of the use of
(Barber, 114). One can wonder whether there is a possibility that /eɪ/ was indeed a phoneme separate from /aɪ/ in Middle English. However, there are many words which one would have expected to have fallen into this category but do not (ie „array‟ from
Norman French arreie and „laid‟ from Old English legde, note the spelling change in the
16 first vowel between the source languages and Modern English) (von Jagemann, 72 and
Pyles, 110). This would explain the overlap of use between and
Nevertheless, the use of
„rein‟ have homophones of the type „vain‟ and „rain‟ respectively, could support this.
Without the differentiation of the first vowel character „rain‟/‟rein‟ and „vain‟/‟vein‟ would be indistinguishable in sound and spelling. Thus, it has become apparent the
As done for
Middle English periods the two diphthongs had completely merged into /ɪʊ/, thus the rest of their history is shared between them (Horobin & Smith, 67). Today, this diphthong has developed into a /ju:/ vowel (Barber, 112-3). For the most part, after /ɹ/,
/tʃ/, and /dʒ/, this vowel has become a simple /u:/. Thus, words like „choose‟/„chews‟ and „through‟/‟through‟ are homophones, both being /tʃu:z/ and /θɹu:/, respectively. In
American English, this smoothing also occurs after /s/, /t/, /d/ and /l/. Some examples of this are „dew‟ and „do‟ both being pronounced /du:/ and „lute‟ and „loot‟ both being
17 pronounced as /lu:t/. However, this diphthongal smoothing is not found in all dialects.
In fact, a rather common phenomenon in Welsh English is to retain the /ju:/ vs. /u:/ distinction after all consonants, including /ɹ/, /tʃ/ and /dʒ/ (Wells, 385-6). In these dialects, speakers use the original /ɪu/-type vowel in these words with the stress on the first part of the diphthong as opposed to the off glide-like quality of the /ju:/ diphthong.
Wells notes that the quality of this peculiar diphthong likely came from Welsh; it is a regularly-encountered diphthong in the language. It is normally spelled
The distribution of words into this category is quite regular: Modern English words with
/ju:/ or /u:/ and spelled with a single ,
Wells notes it is extremely rare today (Wells, 359).
Due to the possible non-overlap between
18 exotic words and sporadic lexical items such as „eye‟ and „geyser‟ (where they are both pronounced as /aɪ/).
As discussed in the above section on
Smith, 49). It has already been noted that there does not seem to have been a phonetic distinction between the
Whether or not there ever was a distinction at all in the Middle English period will be left for further research. There is, however, no evidence of a distinction left in any Modern
English that has been discovered thus far. Words which contained an
English, be spelled with
(Carney, 330). When unstressed and word-finally, it occurs mostly as an alternative to word final
/i:/, as in „brief‟, „thief‟ and „pier‟ (Carney, 331).
When representing /aɪ/,
Vowel Shift of the Middle English long monophthong /i:/ (Barber, 105-6). Often times in
Middle English a double vowel was used to indicate the long counterpart of a vowel.
However, due to the similarity in writing of minims (small strokes like those in lowercase
19 i‟s, m‟s and n‟s) a double
English spelling. Although there is no evidence for this,
Jagemann, 75-6). Peculiarly, Modern English retained the Anglo-Norman simple vowel sound while still using the Standard French spelling. Needless to say it just seems to be used as a variant of double
/aɪ/ but not for its other sounds.
20
This digraph, for the most part, has the value of the diphthong /oʊ/, such as in
Modern English „boat‟, „coat‟ and „foal‟ (Carney, 341-2). Much of the history of the
English period both of these long vowels were written either as a single
146-7). The more open of the two monophthongs, /ↄ:/, had descended from the Old
English low back vowel /ɑ:/ while the higher of the two descended from Old English long
/o:/. As with
Today, the
(the capital C being any consonant). As with all of the
Middle English period (Pyles, 150-1). Thus, we have two main sources of Modern
English /oʊ/: Middle English long /ↄ:/ (from Old English /ɑ:/) and Middle English short /ↄ/ in open syllables. In most Modern English dialects these sounds are identical.
However, in some of the traditional dialects of the Northern Midlands of England, this is not the case. The modern reflex of Middle English long /ↄ:/ in these dialects is /ʊə/ while the reflex of short /ↄ/ subjected to lengthening is /ɒɪ/ (Trudgill, 74). Words like
21
„bone‟, „loaf‟ and „road‟ belong in this first group while words such as „coal‟, „coat‟ and
„foal‟ belong to this second group. Wells also mentions that certain Standard English
/oʊ/-words might have a [ↄɪ]-type vowel in these regions (again, including „coat‟ and
„coal‟ so this likely correlates with Trudgill‟s /ɒɪ/ group) but he does not give an historical explanation for why this is so (Wells, 358). This distinction, unlike many of the others mentioned previously, is actually not distinguished in the written orthography of today.
Words like „bone‟, which had a /ɑ:/-type long vowel in Old English, are spelled
The digraph
Modern English. Barber lists it in parentheses as a rare spelling in late Middle English
(Barber, 105). Like
Received Pronunciation British English) (Carney, 352-3). However, it is almost always found word-finally in words which presumably did not have the diphthong /ↄʊ/
22 example of word-final
Perhaps because
As with a few other examples above,
French loanwords where it has /wɑ:/ (as in „patois‟, „coiffure‟ and „boudoir‟) (Carney, 342
& 349-50). It is one of the few vowel sounds in Modern English which has changed little from the Middle English period. Its sound then was most likely /ↄɪ/ as well (Horobin &
Smith, 49). As mentioned above, there was probably another diphthong in Middle
English which
Smith, 67). By the time of Chaucer the two had already merged in many dialects of
English. There is still debate as to which words contained which sound, but many words seem to have used the two diphthongs interchangeably. Regardless, the two
23 sounds have long been merged in the English of today. There is no evidence whatsoever of any Modern English dialects retaining a distinction between these two sounds. Since they have always been spelled exactly the same, a phonological distinction would not matter much in a discussion about orthography anyway.
One of the most common digraphs in Modern English,
It was not found in Old English, but was quite common in Middle English orthography.
In Middle English in particular,
French and it was smoothed into an /u/ vowel in the Norman dialect (von Jagemann, 83-
4). As in
Middle English seems a bit asymmetric with the use of
48). However, a written double
24 make the writing more legible. A digraph such as
There is also the possibility of confusion with the labiovelar approximate
Modern English /aʊ/ diphthong which can be found in „thou‟, „foul‟ and „pouch‟ (Barber,
105-6).
The
English (this sound is usually transcribed as /əʊ/ in British English). Some example words are „soul‟, „though‟ and „poultry.‟ This spelling is directly descended from the
Middle English diphthong /ↄʊ/ (Horobin & Smith, 49). Although it merged with the result of the Middle English long vowel /ↄ:/ in the Early Modern English period (typically spelled
Because of the divide between representing /aʊ/ and /oʊ/, a further examination of
English period. In Modern English, the /aʊ/ sound is much more common. In fact, the
/oʊ/ usage tends to be restricted to before certain consonants, most notable of which is
25
/l/. Save for possibly a few recent loanwords,
(Carney, 348).
The digraph
English tendency not to allow to appear at the end of words („thou‟ being a notable exception to this). However, unlike
This is not set in stone either (exceptions to the exception being „show‟, „know‟ and
26
„crow‟). Again, it is futile at this point to determine which sound has historical precedence with this spelling especially since both can be distinctive in various dialects of the British Isles. Either way,
The
American English) (Wells, 206-7). Some examples of this are „due‟, „hue‟, „blue‟ and
„cue.‟
Even though the spelling
„virtue.‟ The Oxford English Dictionary lists this sound as being pronounced /y:/ but
Horobin & Smith make no mention of the phoneme at all, not even referencing it in their diddle on
Page 1 of ). Von Jagemann mentions that the Norman French sound was probably a u umlaut but does not say how this was adopted into Middle English (von Jagemann,
86). Barber also lists the
27
112). Regardless, by Modern English it had merged with both the /eʊ/ and /ɪʊ/ phonemes of
There is no evidence found by this author dictating that any living dialect of
English maintains a phonological distinction between the spelling and the
„due‟ and „dew.‟ There is a possible distinction in the Welsh English dialect mentioned above under
„blew‟ [blɪu], but this is rather as a result of a slow lexical diffusion as opposed to an actual historical distinction (Wells, 386).
The last digraph that will be examined in this thesis is that of
„juice‟, „suit‟, „recruit‟, „cruise‟ and „bruise‟ where all of them have /u:/ or /ju:/, depending upon the dialect (except before /d/ and /n/ where they are always pronounced as separate vowels ie. „fluid‟ and „ruin‟) (Carney, 371). Notice that all of these end with either a /t/ sound or an /s/ or /z/ sound. There are also anomalies like „build‟, „guide‟ and
„guild‟, but the first example is rather a freak exception (much like that of „friend‟) and the
in the latter two is actually a marker to indicate that the
28
A closer look at the etymological entries of the above words in the Oxford English
Dictionary does not shed any light as to the origins of this peculiar spelling. They mostly came from French but did not all have the same vowel phoneme in that language (see
OED dictionary entries). An interesting case is presented in „bruise‟, however. It contained a long, front, rounded /y:/ vowel in Old English: brýsan. The natural descendant of this sound in Modern English is the /aɪ/ diphthong as a result of /y:/ unrounded into /i:/ in Middle English and then undergoing the Great Vowel Shift.
However, /y:/ was not unrounded in all Middle English dialects. In southwestern
England the vowel continued to be rounded and was often spelled after French usage (see
Conclusion
What hasn‟t already been said about English orthography? Many attempts, such as NuSpel or Cut Spelling attempt to rectify the irregularities and inconsistencies of
English spelling. However, none of these systems make any attempt to distinguish between dialectal differences within English itself. One does not normally think of
English as being multi-dialectal like one would German or Italian but within the British
Isles, the homeland of the English language, one can find a multitude of different
29 traditional dialects that many people still use as their daily communicative varieties with family members, relatives and close friends. These traditional dialects provide a useful glimpse into the history of the English language and the development of English orthography and phonology.
As it can be seen from the preceding analyses, English orthography has had quite an interesting and varied history for it to get to its current state today. A lot of the seemingly idiosyncratic spelling conventions in Modern English often derive from actual phonological distinctions present in earlier periods of English history. However, even taking this into account, a few of the regular digraphs found in Modern English do not have a particular historical purpose in English as it specifically relates to English itself.
These, as deemed by the author, would be
Modern English do not retain the majority of the phonological distinctions discussed.
However, the important point being made is that having sorted out the historical English spellings versus the non-historical English spellings, much can be understood about the evolution of our language and what we can expect of it in the future.
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