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Peter Avery and Susan Ehrlich

The English spelling system

Before discussing the sound system of English in any detail, it is necessary to make a distinction between the sounds of English and the spelling of English. The English spelling system often fails to represent the sounds of English in a straightforward manner. In other words, there is often no one-to-one correspondence between the sounds that we hear and the letters we see on a page. An examination of the English spelling system reveals many examples of this discrepancy between spelling and sounds, for example:

Different letters may represent the same sound Pronounce the words below:

All of these words contain the same vowel sound but it is represented by eight different spellings.

The same letter represents different sounds Pronounce the words below and notice that the letter a is pronounced as five different vowel sounds.

Now pronounce the next set of words and notice that the letter s is pronounced as three different sounds.

In the first word, ‘see’, the letter s is pronounced in its usual way. In the word ‘pleasure’, it is pronounced like the final sound in the word ‘beige’, and in the word ‘resign’, it is pronounced like the first sound in the word ‘zoo’.

Combinations of letters may represent one sound It is possible for a combination of letters to represent only one sound. If you pronounce the words below, you will notice that the gh, the ph, and the ea each represent only one sound even though the spelling represents this single sound as two letters.

Letters may represent no sounds It is also possible for no sound to be represented by a particular letter. Pronounce the words below and notice that the letters in italics are not pronounced at all.

Again, the lack of correpondence between sounds and spelling can be observed in these words containing ‘silent’ letters.

After this brief examination of the English spelling system, we can begin to understand what led George Bernard Shaw to suggest that the English spelling system could be used to spell the word ‘fish’ as ghoti– the gh as it sounds in a word like ‘rough’, the o as it sounds in a word like ‘women’, and the ti as it sounds in a word like ‘nation’. Shaw’s suggested spelling, at first glance, might seem quite ridiculous; however, it illustrates clearly the way in which a particular sound in English can be spelled in quite different ways.

Sound-spelling correspondences

The lack of sound-spelling correspondence illustrated in the previous examples should not be taken to mean that there are no sound-spelling regularities in English. In fact, many of the consonant letters display a consistent relationship to the sounds they represent. For example, letters such as b, m, and n only have one pronunciation, unless they are silent.

Other consonant letters are also consistent in their pronunciation but may appear in combination with another letter giving them a different pronunciation. For example, a letter such as p is normally pronounced in one way when it is alone but when it is combined with h, it is pronounced in a different way, that is, like the letter f.

The pronunciation of still other consonant letters can be predicted on the basis of their combination with vowel letters. For example, the letter c is pronounced like the letter s as in ‘sent’ when followed by the vowel letters i, e, or y, and like the letter k as in ‘kite’ when followed by the vowel letters a, o, or u, or when it occurs at the end of a word. Thus:

This predictable difference in the pronunciation of the letter c can also be observed in pairs of words that are related in meaning:

Notice that the English spelling system preserves the same spelling in these related words even though the pronunciation of the letter c changes.

The range of pronunciation of consonant letters is somewhat more predictable than the pronunciation of vowel letters. This is because there are many more vowel sounds in English than vowel letters in the Roman alphabet and because historical changes in the pronunciation of English have affected vowel sounds much more than consonant sounds. It is often the case that English spelling represents pronunciations that are now obsolete.

Traditionally, English vowel letters have been divided into two categories based on their pronunciation as either long or short vowels. When the vowel letters a, e, i, o, and u occur in words ending in a silent e letter, they are pronounced with their ‘long’ sound which is the sound heard when these letters are pronounced in isolation (e.g. when reciting the alphabet). When the same vowel letters occur in words without a silent e, they are pronounced with their ‘short’ sounds:

This is, then, one generalization that can be made regarding the sound-spelling correspondence of English vowels. This regularity can also be observed in pairs of words that are related in meaning:

Here we see that the unsuffixed form with the silent e has the ‘long’ sound, while the suffixed form without the silent e has the ‘short’ sound. Many people have observed that the English spelling system is advantageous in that spelling is consistent (even though the pronunciation may differ) among words related in meaning.

While there are many more vowel letter-sound correspondences that could be listed here, their large number (Prator and Robinett (1985) list 57 different vowel-letter combinations with predictable pronunciations) and many exceptions make their usefulness to ESL students somewhat questionable. However, once students have mastered enough spelling, they usually become quite proficient at guessing the pronunciation of an unknown word based solely on the spelling.

Spelling in other languages

Many languages, including English, use the Roman alphabet. Differences between the sound-spelling correspondences of such languages and of English can often be the source of mispronunciations. For example, the spelling systems of languages such as Spanish, Polish, and Hungarian are more straightforward than the English spelling system in representing sounds. That is, there is usually a one-to-one correspondence between sounds and spelling. Speakers of such languages may pronounce every letter of an English word, assuming incorrectly that the English spelling system is like the spelling system of their native language. In addition, these speakers may assign the sound values of their spelling system to the letters of English. This often results in what we term a spelling pronunciation.