Why is the English language so strange and inconsistent? Blame the printing press.

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When I first started learning the Irish language, I was quickly blown away by its simplicity and logic. Which sounds strange, because you frequently come across words like “chomharthaochta” and “admhlacha”. But while these spellings may seem jarring or overwhelming, at least the words are defined by consistent rules. Once you have learned the different letter combinations, you will find that they always sound the same.

The same cannot be said of the English language, however, which often looks like a bunch of arbitrary rules. It is a difficult and confusing language, but also malleable. Grammar and pronunciations vary depending on location, as they are adaptable by design.

Aeon has a new article that traces the history of spelling conventions and pronunciation in English. It’s full of fascinating goodies that also ask essential questions about the basic goals of language and literacy.

During the first hundreds of years of English using the Latin alphabet, its spelling was quite consistent and phonetic. Monks and missionaries, from around 600 CE, translated Latin religious texts into local languages, not necessarily so that they could be read by the general population, but so that they could at least read them aloud. Most of the people were illiterate. Vernacular translations were written to be pronounced, and the spelling was intended to come as close as possible to the pronunciation.

But what really struck me was something that grew out of this idea that spelling was just meant to be accessible and pronounceable. As the author explains, this led to a cross-cultural phone game once printing was invented and technological innovation ended up accidentally cementing the inconsistent spellings we have all become accustomed to:

Printing companies developed frequent word spelling habits, often based on what made the type of tuning more effective. In a manuscript, hadde can be replaced by had; grateful with grateful. Regarding spelling, the main objective was not to faithfully represent the author’s spelling, nor to defend a standard idea of ​​”correct” English, it was to produce texts that people could read and, more importantly, they would buy. Habits and tips have become norms, as typographers have learned their craft by teaching other typographers. They often moved around as fellow workers, which meant dispersing their own habits or resuming those of the printing houses in which they worked.

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When an English speaker sat down to write something in the late Middle Ages, how he wrote it could depend on where he lived and the dialect pronunciation of vowels. It would also depend on what they had read and incorporated into their spelling habits. When a printer set the type of this writing, it had its own pronunciation and spelling preferences. When a piece of writing was put into print and distributed to other cities, it was received by people of different literacy levels, which would influence how it was incorporated into their habits. In other words, there was huge variation at each of these stages on the path to reading. When a text was typed and distributed, it had the effect of propagating the habit it represented, but its propagation depended on the extent of its circulation and its location. What specific aspects of the habit would remain and which would fall? The answer could be some or none. The result, in the end, is a very irregular habit.

Paradoxically, this actually supported the argument that the language should be accessible to the illiterate masses. People read faster when they are familiar with the words; purely phonetic spellings can actually be discordant, if they sound too strange. If you wanted to sell books you had to make them readable, and if people have an easier time reading words they are familiar with, then it makes sense to bow to that in order to maintain your sales, which leads to the standardization of inconsistent language.

The more texts there were, the more reading and the greater the sensitivity to what seemed right. Once this sense develops, it can be a powerful enforcer for standards. These standards in the literacy of today’s English speakers are so entrenched that simple adjustments are very jarring. Si ai trai you repreezent mai akshuel pronownseeayshun in raiteeng, yu kan the reed, but it is difikelt and disterbeeng tu du soh. It just seems wrong, and that sense of error interrupts the flow of reading. The smoothness of reading depends on how quickly you visually identify words, and the speed of identification increases with exposure. The more you see a word, the faster you recognize it, even if its spelling does not match the sound.

Looks like I’m quoting a lot from the article (for which I apologize to the author). But there is so much, so much, so much more in the link, about 3,400 words, that it is all worth reading.

Typos, tricks and printing errors [Arika Okrent / Aeon]

Image: public domain via NeedPix

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