Analysis: Here's the reason why you've problems with words like 'equipment', 'occurrence' or 'accomodation'
There are some words which are very hard to spell. It could be 'strict' or 'superfluous' or 'medicine' or 'equipment' or 'occurrence' or that old chestnut 'accomodation'. Prof David Crystal is a linguist and author of Spell it Out, the singular Story of English Spelling. He's someone with the inside track on why some words cause us to pause when it comes to spelling and he joined the Ray D'Arcy Show recently to discuss the topic. (This piece includes excerpts from the conversation which have been edited for length and clarity - you can hear the discussion in full below).
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From RTÉ Radio 1's Ray D'Arcy Show, Prof David Crystal on why some words are so hard to spell
Crystal says it all starts with the history of almost any language, especially English. "When it started back in old Anglo-Saxon times a thousand years ago, it was pretty regular for every sound. There was a letter and you knew where you were. And 1066 and all that along come the French and they beat the English up. Then, their scribes started to change the spelling to make it more French-ified and that made it a bit more complicated. Each century brought a new layer of difficulty onto English spelling and so we end up with this sort of messy situation we have today."
Then, there's the situation that English is a global language. "The biggest thing of course is America versus Britain", says Crystal. "You know the problem here: how do you spell colour? Is it C-O-L-O-U-R or C-O-L-O-R? That all started in the 18th century and now is massive because of the influence of American English. A lot of those American spellings have now started to influence British spelling so the situation's got even more complicated."
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From RTÉ Radio 1's Today with Claire Byrne, why are there plans to change how words are spelled? WIth Stephen Linstead, member of the English Spelling Society and author of Traditional Spelling Revised, and Apple linguist Des Ryan
One solution to all of this would be phonetic spelling but, explains Crystal, that's easier said than done. "You have different accents from one part of the world to another. Now I'm speaking to you from Wales, but just over the border in England, there are lots of people who don't pronounce the R after a vowel as in Irish English and Welsh English and so on. So how do you spell words ending in letter R?
"There've been lots of proposals for spelling reform to try and standardise the situation. None have ever been successful because, just imagine, say somebody did waved a magic wand and everything became nice and regular in spelling, you wouldn't be able to read any of the books of the past. Once you've taken the trouble to learn to spell, then you're very reluctant to let it go."
Crystal then talks about how the spelling of some words came about. "One of the best ways of approaching spelling is to remember that every word has its own story. Every word has a history. If you take the trouble, you can follow up its history. Go to a big site like the Oxford English Dictionary or somewhere like that, and you'll realise why the word is as it is. In the case of words like 'commitment', it's all to do with the history of the word coming from the Latin language centuries ago and how there were two M that had to come forward or people would say you were spelling wrongly. Now, when people have a difficult word like this, do your best to try and think of a mnemonic, a little reminder as to how the word is."
Another reason why spellings differ so much is because the English language has borrowed left, right and centre from other languages
Another reason why spellings differ so much is because the English language has borrowed left, right and centre from other languages. "A thousand years ago, people were already borrowing words, but it was because English went around the world. Because people went around the world so much, every culture that they came into contact with brought hundreds, sometimes thousands of words into English. So much so that many of the words that we have now, we don't know where they came from. We took in not just the word, but we took in the spelling as well."
Indeed, some spellings have changed because of different handwriting. "Back in the Middle Ages, people wrote as they spoke so there was no guarantee that somebody writing in one monastery would write in the same way as another. That's one of the reasons of course why standard English spelling developed in the first place. It was no problem as long as these little villages and churches were on their own without talking to each other. But as soon as the country became a single nation, there needed to be a standard spelling and that's when, of course, things started to get difficult."
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The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
