Nevertheless, the importance of writing cannot be ignored. When writing was first invented, it often
involved the visible encoding (on papyrus, cave walls, tree bark etc.) of marks that represented words of the
spoken language. That is why an ideal writing system is phonemic. Looking at individual English words, we
can often see that the letters of the written word are meant to represent sounds of the spoken word. For
instance, we can see that the orthographic word spelt
leg is a representation of the spoken word with the
three
sounds represented by l, e and
g.
However, for a highly literate society speech and writing provide two closely related, and often
complementary systems. Writing and speech are parallel, partly overlapping systems that may serve
different functions. The language of auctioneer speech, and what one says to start off and to end a telephone
conversation, are good examples of the domain of the spoken language. It is quite likely that you have never
seen either written down. Conversely, there are types of language that are unlikely to be used in speech.
Examples include the language of legal contract, bibliographies at the back of books like this one, and lists
in registers of births and deaths.
Once literacy becomes firmly established, it is not always the case that every written word is a record in
some sense of the spoken word. Sometimes it is the written word that is primary and the spoken word that is
derivative. This is most obviously true of learned words and technical terms coined using roots and affixes
of Latin or Greek origin. It is quite likely that a technical word like
morphophonological (having to do with
the study of the relationship between morphology and phonology) which contains the elements
morpho-
phon-olog-ic-al
was used in writing before it was used in speech. Its pronunciation would have had to be
worked
out from its spelling, not the other way round. This process is not marginal. As we will see in
Chapter 10
, many words of French origin came into the spoken language via the written language.
The upshot of this discussion is that it would be naive to assume that writing always simply attempts to
mirror speech (cf. Knowles 1987:1–23). Indeed, it is easy to think of cases of SPELLING
PRONUNCIATION where pronunciation has changed in order to bring it into line with the spelling.
Consider the following, for example:
(i) Names whose spelling is not closely related to the pronunciation may be changed so that pronunciation
mirrors spelling. Thus, the Scottish name
Menzies which used to be /mI Is/ or /me Is/ is nowadays
often pronounced /menzIz/. When spelling and pronunciation diverge, spelling reform is not the only
option available: there is always the option of ‘reforming speech’ to make it fit spelling.
(ii) Increasingly,
the letters t and
d in
often and
Wednesday which used to be ‘silent’ are sounded.
(iii) The word-initial letter
h in many words, such as
hotel, humour and
herbs which are borrowed from
French (where the
h is normally not pronounced word-initially), is now sounded. Probably this is done
because dropping aitches at the beginning of a word is stigmatised in English.
(iv) Some words with the letter
a are pronounced with this vowel given the transparent value that it would
have in, say, Italian or Spanish. Thus, for example, the older pronunciation of
trauma as /tr:me/ is being
edged out by /trame/ which reflects more clearly the spelling. Similar changes have happened to
gala
and
data. Instead of, or alongside, /geIle/ and /deIte/ you will now often hear /ga:le/ and /da:te/ (cf.
Wells 1982:108–9).
(v) Acronyms, i.e. words like
VAT (Valued Added Tax) which are formed from the initial letters of existing
words, are an obvious case of going from spelling to pronunciation (see section (
9.7
)).
Before we get too despondent about the fact that in English spelling does not always quite fit the
pronunciation and jump on a radical spelling reform bandwagon, we should bear in mind the fact that the
100 SHOULD ENGLISH BE SPELT AS SHE IS SPOKE?
