The English language needs some spelling revision so it makes more sense and is more consistent, Monash University linguistics professor Kate Burridge says.
Photo: supplied
She tells Nine to Noon's Lynn Freeman that 'correct' spelling is a relatively recent invention for the English language.
"Sort of 17th century it started to settle down, and 1700s it was still a little bit flexible - a lot of personal variation."
That's just one of many causes of the current "mess" of inconsistent spelling rules, she says, with for instance the French introducing their own conventions when they took over the English monastic scriptoriums.
"When they decide for example to spell words like 'city' with a c - we'd used the 'c' orginally for the hard 'c' sound as in 'cat' so that introduced an anomaly - and there were others like that, so 'qu' for 'queen' when we had 'cw'.
"A lot of people think with the arrival of printing came fixed spelling, but actually printers used the flexibility of English spelling too: if you wanted a longer line you'd put a 'y' instead of an 'i' or you'd put an 'e' at the end of a word because those 'e's weren't pronounced anyway.
"A number of those spellings stuck as well."
There's also the problem that the Latin alphabet is limited when compared with the number of sounds in English.
"It never was enough for the number of sounds that we had in English - the number of vowels and consonants - and we've just continued to acquire more over the years so we've got about 44 distinctive sounds at the moment."
There were also later intentional attempts to dress up the language.
"They decided that one way of tidying up the spelling but also make English look a bit more respectable - a bit more like Latin and Greek - was to give them these fancy re-spellings.
"There was a lot of tinkering that went on at that time, so that's when words like 'debt' got a 'b' ... go back far enough and it is a Latin word but that sort of etymological question shouldn't really enter into it, it just creates this kind of chaos. When we borrowed 'debt' it came in with a very sensible look which was 'dette' from French.
"There were all sorts of things that went on - 'could' … got an 'L' because why not make 'could' look like 'would' even though 'could' was originally the past of 'can' so there never was an 'l' in could, but you know I suppose that's some sort of reasoning behind it but it didn't really help."
William Caxton, who is also thought to be the first person to introduce a printing press in England, was also a fan of Dutch spellings.
"Some of those ridiculous 'gh's in 'ghastly' and 'ghost'," Prof Burridge says.
William Caxton showing specimens of his printing to King Edward IV and his Queen. Photo: Public Domain
She says the major differences between British and American English were introduced because of two dictionary giants - British lexicographer Samuel Johnson and his American rival Noah Webster.
Portrait of Samuel Johnson by Joshua Reynolds Photo: Public Domain
"Noah Webster frankly was really a better spelling reformer, I mean I love Samuel Johnson's dictionary don't get me wrong.
"He actually introduced a number of very sensible spellings, he was one who did drop the 'u' in words like 'doctor', 'author' had an 'our' at the end of them … but he was not consistent - so 'exterior' did drop the 'u' but 'interior' didn't.
"Noah Webster was a very sensible spelling reformer and very consistent so he dropped the 'u' across the board … it's certainly the case that Noah Webster also wanted to make American English look different, make it stand out."
She says the inconsistencies should be ironed out.
"Drop the 'u across the board because it does make for inconsistency doesn't it when 'honour' has the 'u' but 'honorable' doesn't?
"It was more to reflect the etymology, so the 'our' words were supposed to be French and the 'or' words were Latin - although sometimes it's hard to figure out which is which and what do you do with the English words that are in neither French nor Latin?
"Or 'ise' versus 'ize', we have this inconsistency as well.
"It wasn't really sensible from the start to have those competing forms, it would be easier to iron it out and people would get used to it."
She says she would never suggest wholesale changes, however.
"You start spelling tongue 'tung' and bread 'bred' as Noah Webster suggested - you can only go so far with spelling reform and people get very angry."
"Noah Webster," painted by Samuel Finley Breese Morse. Photo: Public Domain
