Lecture 14

ModE Spelling

NE Spelling

ME Spelling

OE Spelling

Historical Background of Modern English Spelling

Lecture 13

· based on phonetic principle;

· employed Latin characters;

· one letter = one sound;

Exceptions: ζ, f, s, ð (1 letter = 2 or more sounds).

· based on conventional principle;

· more ambiguous and less stable (printing was not introduced yet and the manuscripts contained numerous variants of spelling – practically each scribe had its own way to spell the words);

· digraphs (2 letters = 1 sound) appear + 1 letter = several sounds, several letters/combinations of letters = 1 sound (these were the deviations from phonetic principle):

1 letter = several sounds	several letters/combinations of letters = 1 sound
letter	sounds	letters	sound
o	[o], [u], [o:], [ǿ]	g, dg, j	[dζ]
c	[s], [k]	k, c, q	[k]
g	[g], [dζ]
u	[u], [v]

· based on conventional principle was preserved;

· new digraphs appeared (indicated borrowings from other languages) – ph, ps, ch;

· spelling became fixed.

There reasons for such stabilisation were as follows:

· Introduction of Printing (1475) (see Lecture 9) à one obligatory standard!

· Normalisation of the language (17^th – 18^th c.) (see Lecture 9)à one obligatory standard!

Modern English spelling reflects pronunciation of the 14^th – 15^th c.

See also Table 12 on p. 216-218 in “История английского языка” by Т.А. Расторгуева.

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