ORTHOGRAPHY

ORTHOGRAPHY

1. The Alphabet

   • There are approximately 40 phonemes and only 26 graphemes
     • The Anglo-Saxons used symbols to mark groupings of letters.
       • For example; p was for th
         • This is still used in the phonetic alphabet but disappeared with the Normans from the regular alphabet.

2. Pronunciation

   • Standard spelling was not available to most people until the 18th century
     • Before that, society spelled how they spoke. This is called Phonetic spelling.
       • 15th century the Great Vowel Shift altered the pronunciation of all words containing long vowels, but many spellings remained 'frozen'.
         • Many 'silent' letters were once pronounced

3. Writing and Printing

   • The early scribes in England were monks and nuns
     • Caxton introduced the printing press in 1476
       • He chose the East Midlands dialect which formed the bases of Standard English
         • Although Standardisation began with Caxton, some letters were still interchangeable.
           • For example;  y/i j/i u/v
           • INTERESTING FACT: Shakespeare spelled his own name in four or five different ways!!

4. Foreign influence

   • Words were borrowed from many different cultures
     • In the 15th and 16th centuries, European scholars became interested in the ideas of the ancient Greeks and Romans that so many new words came into English.

5. Dictionaries

   • Until the second half of the 18th century, people spelled as they spoke
     • A DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE (1755) by Dr. Samuel Johnson
       • Did you know that it took Dr. Johnson seven years to complete the two volumes of his dictionary?
       • Most modern dictionaries are based on the Oxford English Dictionary (1994)
         • Now, looking a word up in the dictionary to check the spelling is a valued skill

6. Rationalisation

   • In the 16th century Richard Mulcaster wrote one of the earliest books on spelling.
     • He suggested that words of one syllable should have the letter 'e' added to it.
       • For example;  Pin- Pine Pet- Pete Cod- Code Cut- Cute
       • Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw, amongst others argues for making the spelling system more logical