Why is weird spelt

Asthma first showed up as asma or asmyes. But words associated with science and medicine were particularly susceptible to the urge to connect to the classics, so people started writing asthma instead of asma, diarrhea instead of diaria, phlegm instead of fleme…ok, I'll stop.

From the very beginning, when this word came into English in the s, there were two spelling variants and two pronunciations. Coronel came through French and colonel through Italian. Colonel preserved the look of the related word "column," but coronel brought a nice, regal "crown" to mind though it wasn't actually etymologically related. So it went back and forth until we settled into the 'l' spelling with the 'r' pronunciation. Yay compromise? Another wave of French words came into English starting around They came from the high life, fashion, courtly manners, cuisine, and the arts.

These words have kept their French spellings, and we get as close as we can to their pronunciations. It's better than "horse dovers," in any case. That's how you spell it, and say it, in Italian. It's just one of the many words we've snatched up from whatever languages we've bumped up against in modern times.

In Old English the past tense of can did not have an l in it, but should and would as past tenses of shall and will did. The l was stuck into could in the 15th century on analogy with the other two.

When English borrowed soverain from French it had no g. The word reign , however, coming from Latin regnare , did have a g in it, and it very easily made its way into sovereign. She lives in Chicago.

BY Arika Okrent. Scissors We used to spell scissors sissors or sizars. A few European vernacular languages had some sort of rudimentary writing system prior to this, but for the most part they had no written form. For the first few hundred years of English using the Latin alphabet, its spelling was pretty consistent and phonetic.

Monks and missionaries, beginning around CE translated Latin religious texts into local languages — not necessarily so they could be read by the general population, but so they could at least read aloud to them. Most people were illiterate.

The vernacular translations were written to be pronounced, and the spelling was intended to get as close to the pronunciation as possible. In those cases, they might use an accent mark, or put two letters together, or borrow another symbol.

They later settled on the two-letter combination th. For the most part, they used the Latin alphabet as they knew it, but stretched it by using the letters in new ways when other sounds were required.

We still use that sound, with the th spelling, in English today. English was at home in the kitchen, the workshop, the marketplace, but less sure of itself in other registers. Writing was a specialised skill handled by dedicated scribes.

They were trained by other scribes, who in turn passed on their spelling conventions. Different monasteries might have had different styles or habits for representing English sounds, and there were dialects and variations in pronunciation in the spoken language as well — but a written standard and eventually a whole literature emerged.

That tradition was broken after the Norman invasion in For the next years or so, with a few exceptions, written English disappeared entirely. French was the language of the conquerors, and became the language of the state and all its official activities. Latin remained the language of the Church and education.

English was the spoken language of daily life for most people, but the social class that had previously maintained and developed the written standard for English — landholders, religious leaders, government officials — had all been replaced.

English began its return as a written language in the 14th century. Over generations, it had crept back in among the nobility, as well as the clergy, although French and Latin were still the languages of educated and official pursuits. By then, English had changed. A few centuries of language evolution had led to different pronunciations.

And Old English writing habits had been lost. As English started to make its written comeback, these people found themselves not only trying to figure out how to spell English words but also reaching for English ways to say educated, official things. English was completely at home in the kitchen, the workshop, and the marketplace, but less sure of itself in other registers. Grabbing the nearest convenient French word was often the solution.

Things such court proceedings, government decrees, property ownership documents and schooling relied heavily on French vocabulary to fill in the gaps where English was out of practice.

Words such as govern , judge , office , punish , money , contract , number , action , student and many others became part of the vocabulary of English official life — and then of everyone, as most people had some sort of interaction with officialdom.

In the next few hundred years after the conquest, it evolved into Middle English — still Germanic, but less thoroughly so, as grammatical endings disappeared and French vocabulary flowed in. Middle English looks much more like the English we know.

By the time written English started coming back, around , there was no general standard for spelling. People , taken from French peuple , might be spelled peple , pepill , poeple or poepul. All the vernaculars of Europe were on early, wobbly footing with respect to developing a consistent standard as they moved toward their own written tradition and away from Latin as the only choice.

Then came the printing press. M oveable type was invented in Europe by Johannes Gutenberg c It involved making letters from metal alloys and setting them in a print tray-bed, inking them, and then pressing paper over the top to make an imprint — saving hours compared with laborious manual transcription.

The earliest works printed with this new technique were in Latin, but printers soon spotted the potential market for books in vernacular languages, and began making them in great numbers. English got off to an early start: an enterprising merchant named William Caxton set up the first English press in This followed the success of an English translation he had printed while working in Bruges.

There were no style guides, no copyeditors, no dictionaries to consult. Moveable type was a wonderful invention: once the type had been set, you could print off as many copies as you wanted. You can even get your first words checked for free! Upload a document today and make sure your work is always error free. Post A New Comment.

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