[3] English's orthography includes norms for spelling, hyphenation, capitalisation, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation.
This is partly due to the large number of words that have been loaned from a large number of other languages throughout the history of English, without successful attempts at complete spelling reforms,[5] and partly due to accidents of history, such as some of the earliest mass-produced English publications being typeset by highly trained, multilingual printing compositors, who occasionally used a spelling pattern more typical for another language.
[5] Letters in English orthography positioned at one location within a specific word usually represent a particular phoneme.
Examples include the ⟨l⟩ in talk, half, calf, etc., the ⟨w⟩ in two and sword, ⟨gh⟩ as mentioned above in numerous words such as though, daughter, night, brought, and the commonly encountered silent ⟨e⟩ (discussed further below).
Some researchers, such as Brengelman (1970), have suggested that, in addition to this marking of word origin, these spellings indicate a more formal level of style or register in a given text, although Rollings (2004) finds this point to be exaggerated as there would be many exceptions where a word with one of these spellings, such as ⟨ph⟩ for /f/ (like telephone), could occur in an informal text.
Spelling may also be useful to distinguish in written language between homophones (words with the same pronunciation but different meanings), and thus resolve potential ambiguities that would arise otherwise.
Another example involves the vowel differences (with accompanying stress pattern changes) in several related words.
The abstract representation of words as indicated by the orthography can be considered advantageous since it makes etymological relationships more apparent to English readers.
For example, café and pâté both have a pronounced final ⟨e⟩, which would otherwise be silent under the normal English pronunciation rules.
Further examples of words sometimes retaining diacritics when used in English are: ångström—partly because its symbol is ⟨Å⟩—appliqué, attaché, blasé, bric-à-brac, Brötchen,[b] cliché, crème, crêpe, façade, fiancé(e), flambé, jalapeño, naïve, naïveté, né(e), papier-mâché, passé, piñata, protégé, résumé, risqué, and voilà.
Italics, with appropriate accents, are generally applied to foreign terms that are uncommonly used in or have not been assimilated into English: for example, adiós, belles-lettres, crème brûlée, pièce de résistance, raison d'être, and vis-à-vis.
Instead, modern orthography generally prefers no mark (cooperate) or a hyphen (co-operate) for a hiatus between two morphemes in a compound word.
In poetry and performance arts, accent marks are occasionally used to indicate typically unstressed syllables that should be stressed when read for dramatic or prosodic effect.
In certain older texts (typically British), the use of the ligatures ⟨æ⟩ and ⟨œ⟩ is common in words such as archæology, diarrhœa, and encyclopædia, all of Latin or Greek origin.
Partly because English has never had any official regulating authority for spelling, such as the Spanish Real Academia Española, the French Académie française, the German Council for German Orthography, the Danish Sprognævn, and the Thai Royal Society, English spelling is considered irregular and complex compared to that of other languages.
Although French, Danish, and Thai, among other languages, present a similar degree of difficulty when encoding (writing), English is more difficult when decoding (reading), as there are clearly many more possible pronunciations of a group of letters.
For example, in French, /u/ (as in "true", but short), can be spelled ⟨ou, ous, out, oux⟩ (ou, nous, tout, choux), but the pronunciation of each of those sequences is always the same.
However, in English, while /uː/ can be spelled in up to 24 different ways, including ⟨oo, u, ui, ue, o, oe, ou, ough⟩ (spook, truth, suit, blues, to, shoe, group, through) (see Sound-to-spelling correspondences below), all of these spellings have other pronunciations as well (e.g., foot, us, build, bluest, so, toe, grout, plough, sew) Thus, in unfamiliar words and proper nouns, the pronunciation of some sequences, ⟨ough⟩ being the prime example, is unpredictable even for educated native speakers.
However, Noah Webster promoted more phonetic spellings in the United States, such as flavor for British flavour, fiber for fibre, defense for defence, analyze for analyse, catalog for catalogue, and so forth.
Its irregularities are caused mainly by the use of many different spellings for some of its sounds, such as /uː/, /iː/ and /oʊ/ (too, true, shoe, flew, through; sleeve, leave, even, seize, siege; stole, coal, bowl, roll, old, mould), and the use of identical sequences for spelling different sounds (over, oven, move).
[citation needed] There was also a period when the spelling of a small number of words was altered to make them conform to their perceived etymological origins.
⟨p⟩ in ptarmigan has no etymological justification whatsoever, only seeking to show Greek origin despite being a Gaelic word.
For example, Isabelle and Isabel sound the same but are spelled differently; these versions are from France and Spain respectively.
[16] As an example of the irregular nature of English spelling, ⟨ou⟩ can be pronounced at least nine different ways: /aʊ/ in out, /oʊ/ in soul, /uː/ in soup, /ʌ/ in touch, /ʊ/ in could, /ɔː/ in four, /ɜː/ in journal, /ɒ/ in cough, and /ə/ in famous (See Spelling-to-sound correspondences).
First, gradual changes in pronunciation, such as the Great Vowel Shift, account for a tremendous number of irregularities.
These changes for the most part did not detract from the rule-governed nature of the spelling system; but, in some cases, they introduced confusing inconsistencies, like the well-known example of the many pronunciations of ⟨ough⟩ (tough, through, though, cough, plough, etc.).
However, the arrival of the modern printing press in 1476 froze the current system, rather than providing the impetus for a realignment of spelling with pronunciation.
[4][20] The addition and deletion of a silent e at the ends of words was also sometimes used to make the right-hand margin line up more neatly.
In The Mill on the Floss (1860), English novelist George Eliot satirised the attitude of the English rural gentry of the 1820s towards orthography: Mr. Tulliver did not willingly write a letter, and found the relation between spoken and written language, briefly known as spelling, one of the most puzzling things in this puzzling world.
/oʊ/ shew/ɛf/ lieutenant (RP)/jɜː/ milieu (RP)/iːˈjuː/ reuse/iːʌ/ reutters/ʌ/ pileup /ə/ whereupon/ɔɪ/ Freudian /juː/ argued guide, guise, beguile The following table shows for each sound the various spelling patterns used to denote it, starting with the prototypical pattern(s) followed by others in alphabetical order.