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The Spellings of Sounds

A quick review of Godfrey Dewey's (1971) Research¹

In an ideal phonemic writing system, one that follows the alphabetic principle, a sound can be spelled one and only one way.

When words are spelled the way they sound it is relatively easy to spell any word you can pronounce. In a phonemic writing system,such as Portuguese, the way a word is spelled is a guide to its pronunciations.

1. How many ways can a sound be spelled in TO?

2. How many ways can an English vowel be pronounced?

3. How Phonemic is English Spelling?

4. The vocalization of English

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English Spelling

How many ways can one spell the /p/ sound in English? As the chart below shows, it can be spelled 5 different ways, however, we are likely to encounter only 2 of these spellings among the 100,000 most frequently used words in the English language. On the average the consonants can be spelled 9 different ways. Consonants with 14 or more different spellings include sh, j, n, s, k, and t.

The average vowel can spelled a phenomenal 20.7 differentways, according to Dewey's research. The chart below illustrates 18 of the 28 ways that /u:/ can be spelled in TO (the traditional orthography). One phoneme has 28 grapheme correspondents. This suggests that vowels in TO (the traditional English writing system or orthography) are little more than place holders. In a fully phonemic notation, the same 41 sounds would be spelled 41 ways -- in other words, with one, and only one, spelling per sound.

In traditional English orthography(TO) the same sound is spelled an average of 14 different ways

The chart above illustrates 18 of the 29different ways that the /u:/ sound is spelled in TO. Cut Spelling reducesthe number from 18+ to 9. [o, oo, u, ue, u-e, ew, oe, o-e, ou].   CSmakes a few substitutions [y for igh] but not many. Phonemic systems suchas WES, NS, and NF reduce the number of different ways to spell a soundto 1. See Dewey, 1971, for a complete list of the different possible TOspellings for every sound.

Veblen wrote that English spelling satisfies all the requirements ofconspicuous waste. "It is archaic, cumbrous, and ineffective..failureto acquire it is easy of detection..." On having a spelling errorpointed out, Andrew Jackson once remarked, "It is a poor mind thatcannot think of more than one way to spell a word." Spelling is difficult,according to Harry Shaw (Harper: Spell It Right! p.4) because "the correct spelling ofmany words does not even approximate the sounds being represented."Laubach called English "The world's worstspelled language."

"Unless spelling undergoes reform, our spelling may proceed to the point where many words become ideographic as Chinese." [H. Shaw]. Webster thought it had already arrived at this point and that the alphabetic principle had been abandoned.

How many ways can a vowel letter be pronounced? As the secondchart shows, 7-9 different ways in TO. While this is true, usually the first three ways usually account for over 80% of the instances.

Real world writing systems aren't perfect but few are as bad as English. Pronunciations change over time and the orthographies of other languages have adjusted their spellings to reflect today's pronunciations. English has never made such an adjustment.

In England, around 1400 AD, there was a pronunciation change so great that it is referred to as "the great vowel shift." All language populations experience this kind of change and the writing system must be changed accordingly if it is to be any guide to pronunciation. Many English words may be written the same as they were in the time of Chaucer (1350). Today's spelling tends to match an earlier pronunciation.

Unlike most other languages that have undergone several spelling reforms, English, a confused amalgum of 3 spelling systems (AngloSaxon, Norman French, and Latin), has yet to have its first. Spellings that reflect the way a word was pronounced in the year,1300, are still with us.

41 English phonemes can be spelled 461 different ways

41 English Sound Categories
Sound (phoneme)  | Total number of spellings - 461 | Frequent spellings - 361

The /p/ sound can be spelled 5 ways and 2 are fairly common
The /ae/ sound in *ax can be spelled 13 ways and 4 are fairly common

2nd column: RF/SP = Relative Frequence: Number found in 100,000 running words.
Compare to the studies of Paul Hanna (1966) and others (Carney,1994)

How many wayscan a vowel be pronounced in TO?  41

The a can bepronounced 9 different ways. The chart shows the number of different waysthat the other vowels can be pronounced. The number of frequent pronunciationsis about one less than the number shown.

Th [a] can bi pronaunsd nyn difer'nt weiz. Thchart sho'z th numbr o different weiz that th uthr vaulz can bi pronaunsd.(NF)

How many ways can a vowel be spelt? 361

The typical vowel can be spelled around 20 different ways. The total number of ways was 342 in Dewey'sanalysis of abridged dictionary spellings. In terms of words that one would frequently encounter, the number of different spellings drops to 216.Other researchers have come up with slightly different numbers, Yule uses361. Coulmas uses over 1,000.

The 342 came from a dictionary with 17,000 words. The 216 came from an analysis of words found in 100,000 word of text whichwould involve considerably less than 17,000 different words.

How phonemic is English Spelling?

In the Gettysburg address, 39.7%of the words were spelled phonemically. To state this in another way, 60% of the words contain some irregularity. This means that 60% of the phonemically spelled words would contain a soundsign that would deviate from TO and introduce some "visual shock": eg, Lake / Laek / Leik

There is no way for a consistently spelled writing system to have anymore than a 40% overlap with TO. Even when the most frequent spelling patternis always used, 60% of the spellings will not corresond to the dictionary.

Some reform proposals have included some concessions to TO such as allowing 40 of the Anglo-Saxon function words to continue with their irregular spelling.40 sight words are certainly better than 20,000. Other attempts to increase the overlap between the reformed spelling and TO have resorted to positional spelling. That is, more than one way to spell the same sound.

As indicated in the table below: 47.5% of the syllables are phonemic.
In the address, 74.3% of the sound signs are correct. 74.3% of the phonemesare spelled phonemically.

What proportion of single sounds retain their TOgraphemes in New Spelling. Among the 100,000 most frequently used words,72.1% of items are spelled phonemicallyin accord with the New Spelling criterion when one allows that 8 to 42frequently used short function words to retain their TOspelling. (Words such as of, the, to, I me...)

More on the vocalization of English

In Paul R. Hannas (1966, 1971) study of 17,000 English dictionary wordsshowed that 84% were spelled according to a regular pattern (i.e., oneof 4-6 regular patterns) and that only 3% were totally unpredictable. Awidely sited figure is that English is about 75% regular. The count willbe different depending on the body of words studied. The dictionary willshow less irregularity than a study of the same number of words in print(newspapers, etc.). This is because there is considerable repetition intext and the irregularly spelled words are among the most frequently used.

References/Bibliography

Augst, Gerhard. (1986) New Trends in Graphemics and Orthography. Berlin, N.Y.: de Gruyter.

Carney, Edward. (1994) A Survey of English Spelling. London:Routledge

Crystal, David. (1987) The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Dewey, Godfrey. (1971) English Spelling: Roadblockto Reading. New York: Teachers College Press.

Eco, Umberto. (1995) The Search for the Perfect Language. London, Blackwell

Gray, William S. (1956) The Teaching of Reading and Writing: an international survey. Unesco.

Hanna, P.R., Hanna, J.S. Hodges, R.E. & Rudorf, E.H. (1966). PhonemeGrapheme Correspondences as Cues to Spelling Improvement, Doc.OE-32008, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Dept. of Health, Education, and Welfare.USGPO

Hanna, Paul (1992) Spelling: Structure and Strategies. Universitypress of American

Laubach, Frank C. (1960) Let's Reform Spelling - Why and How. NY: New Readers Press

Pitman, Sir James & Robert St. John. (1970) Alphabets and Reading. London: Pitman

Pitman, Sir James. (1965) Communication by Signs, New Scientist. 25 (433) pp 580-1. March, 1965

Scragg, D.G. (1974) A History of English Spelling. Manchester:Manchester University Press

Tauber, Abraham (ed.). (1963) Shaw: OnLanguage. NY: Philosophical Library, (1965) Peter Owen Ltd., London

Longer bibliography    vowel-chart    The Phoneme Inventory & Mapping Alt. Orthographies to IPA

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