English Communication: Fascinating Reasons for Those Unusual Spellings for Some English Words

You know that for as much as 70-75% of words in English, the pronunciation follows English language rules tied to the spelling of the word.

But what about the other words?  Why are they spelled the way they are spelled? Knowing the patterns will actually help you master the pronunciation and the spelling!

Here’s more of the reasons:

You know that people like to do things in easy ways.  Some people call that laziness.

People who investigate languages, linguists, call it “economy of effort”.  Speech sounds tend to change  to save effort for either the speaker (omitting sounds) or the listener (making sounds more distinct).

Influenced by Scandanavian and French languages, we eliminated troublesome bits of the complex Old English word inflections.  Thus a word like “hopian” got shortened to “hope.”  Over time, the “e” on the end stopped being said.

In more recent centuries, we simplified some sound combinations: “kn” became “n,” and “wr” became “r.”

We also stopped using – but still write – some sounds. The “kh” sound we spelled gh got changed to “f” as in laughter or just dropped, as in daughter.

That’s not all. Sometimes sounds change, and we don’t know why.  The most prominent example of this in English was the Great Vowel Shift.  From 1400s to about 1700, for reasons that are not clear, our long vowels all shifted pronunciation in our mouth. Before that time, “see” rhymed with “eh”; “boot” was pronounced like “boat”;  “out” sounded like “oot.”  Pronunciation changed, but spelling stayed the same.

Then there is the written English or English in print. Scribes and typesetters will also do things in the simplest way for them.  Scribes came from France and typesetters from the Netherlands and Belgium, where the first printing presses in Britain came from.  They did their written and printed English tasks to the habit they were used to.   The French scribes, with their Latin influence, took the word “cwen” and determined that what they heard was “queen.”  The Dutch typesetters felt that “gost” was missing something, so they added an “h” to make “ghost.”

Be sure to watch our English Speech Tips videos and Accent Reduction Tip videos  for more English pronunciation and accent reduction exercise.

Check out our new advanced weekly speech tip program, our new subscription called ClearTalk Weekly, www.subscription.cleartalkmastery.com

Rerun from Feb 24, 2016

Let Your Voice Ring Out During Presentations

Greater volume means everyone can hear all your speech sounds and can understand all your words.

Wonderful is that when your voice rings out, the volume is a trigger mechanism.  The rest of your body will follow, and you’ll gesture more, emphasize more, and hand movements and facial expression will show your emotion.  And you will feel self-confidence when you speak in front of a room.

Rerun from March 14, 2016

English Speaking Skills: Understanding Gets You to Pronunciation Mastery- Important Reasons for Some Strange Spellings

Here are two sets of words which give you a sample of words in English that do not follow the rules of pronunciation or spelling of English.

Corpse and corps

Horse and worse

About 70% of the words in English follow the rules for pronunciation (and spelling).  However, 30% do not.  How did that happen?

The story is fascinating. Here are some of the reasons that go all the way back to the beginning of English as a language.

English uses an alphabet which uses letters that come from Latin.  Unfortunately, English does not share exactly the same set of sounds as Latin.

The other sources of problems with English spellings comes from its invasions, thefts from other languages, sloth or laziness (people like to do things in the simplest way), caprice or chance, mistakes, pride and the simple fact that all things change.

Invasion and theft

First, the Romans invaded Britain in the 1^st Century AD and brought their Latin alphabet.

Then in the 7^th Century, The Angles and Saxons took over Britain, along with their language.

Beginning in the 9^th Century, Vikings occupied parts of England and brought their language (including “they,” replacing the Old English “hie”),

Then Norman French conquered in 1066 – and replaced much of the vocabulary with French, including words which over time became beef, pork, invade, tongue, and person.

The English pushed out the French (but kept their words).

A few centuries later, Britain began to acquire territories around the world – America, Australia, Africa, India.  With each new colony, Britain acquired words: hickory, budgerigar, zebra, bungalow.

The British did trade with everyone and took words as they traded.  We call that  “borrowing.”  When we “borrow” words, for some words we adopted the pronunciation but changed the spelling: galosh (from French galoche), strange (from French estrange).

For other words, we didn’t change the spelling, but we changed the pronunciation: ratio (originally like “ra-tsee-o” in Latin), sauna (the Finnish au is like “ow”), ski (in Norse, said more like ‘she”).  Or we kept the spelling and to a good extent, the original foreign language pronunciation: corps, ballet, pizza, tortilla.

Be sure to watch our English Speech Tips videos and Accent Reduction Tip videos  for more English pronunciation and accent reduction exercise.

Check out our new advanced weekly speech tip program, our new subscription called ClearTalk Weekly, www.subscription.cleartalkmastery.com

Rerun from Feb 17, 2016

All Speakers Think They Speak Louder than They Do

That’s because they are hearing themselves through the bone structure of their head as well as through their ears.

Rerun from March 7, 2016

Accent Reduction: One of Hottest Job Skills is Fluency in English and Another Language

Are you working to get accurate, fluent English?

Fluency in English and another language is one of the hottest job skills in the U.S.

As early as 2013, the U.S. Department of Labor noted that translators and interpreters  would be one of the 15 fastest growing occupations in the nation.  Growth rate of 42% in the ten years between 2010 and 2020 is expected.

Interpreters focus on spoken language, and translators focus on written language.

Which languages offer the highest salaries?  In government jobs, it’s middle eastern languages like Arabic, Farsi and Pashto (Afghani).  In private sector jobs, it’s Scandinavian and Asian languages that pay the most.

The Army, big city police departments, and State department cannot get enough workers with fluency in a foreign language. Neither can the top companies like the Fortune 500, hospitals, local courts, and schools.

Spanish is the second most common language in the United States, after English. Being bilingual in Spanish-English may make being hired more likely in regions with large numbers of Latino persons.

According to Dorothea Racette, a German-English translator and former president of the American Translators Association, most translators work as independent contractors.  Compensation for work varies a lot on language combination, years of experience, type of specialization, and country or region where customers are based.  Speed for 2,500 to 3,000 words a day are compensated $325 to $390 a day.

Interpreters typically get paid by hour, half-day or day, with a range of $300 to $1,000 per day.

Be sure to watch our English Speech Tips videos and Accent Reduction Tip videos  for more English pronunciation and accent reduction exercise.

Check out our new advanced weekly speech tip program, our new subscription called ClearTalk Weekly, www.subscription.cleartalkmastery.com

Rerun from Feb 10, 2016