Website Speech Tip FOR MONDAY, AUGUST 17, 2020

 Do you want to know about“th” and why  “b,” “p,” “t,”  and “s” have come into the spelling of particular English words and give them weird spelling?

Some words have these letters which either you do not pronounce or are in a series of letters that have a different pronunciation. How did this happen to these words? Borrowing from another language’s spelling is a major reason. In Renaissance times, it became popular to borrow Latin spellings for otherwise typical words.

The word doubt was borrowed from the French douter but was given new spelling based on the Latin dubitare.

This manner of spelling words is called Etymological Spelling.  This system of spelling relies on traditional spelling rules and not on typical English pronunciation rules or changes in pronunciation.  Other words etymologically spelled are indict(Latin indictare),  receipt (Latin recepta)  subtle (Latin subtilis).

Sometimes when the spelling was changed,  the pronunciation was changed.  For the “th” sound , “throne” used to be pronounced and spelled  trone.    Then Latin spelling was reintroduced with an “h” after the “t”, and the pronunciation changed. Also, bankrupt got its “p” from the Latin  rupta.

Etymological Spelling makes pronunciation difficult.  BUT for written English, it has the advantage of similar spelling of the root word for many words. Thus our mind or our subconscious can focus on and intuitively understand the  meanings of many related words.

For more, see our blog #179 for Wednesday August 12, 2020.

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