The Disparity Between Spelling And The Standardization Of The English Language

Disparity between the spheres of spoken and written English has existed since the language’s standardization. Spelling has infamously and unreliably advised what it considers “correct” elocution, which leaves pronunciation to unwittingly fall into a relatively inferior position. The English tongue performs at the command of spelling, following the confusing structures of various lexeme permutations. This disassociation between the spelling and the pronunciation of modern words historically began during the Early Modern English period, a result of technological advances, changing national attitudes, and transformations in linguistic variation, occurrences which contributed to the general standardization of the English language.

Between the

Its “orthography [was] independent of any spoken dialects,” and was consequently formal and reflected a “uniformity of style and language […] which established itself as a national written norm for official English” (Upward & Davidson 81). This resulted in an emerging standard which was reinforced by the printing press. “Introduced to England by William Caxton as early as 1476” (Crystal, The Stories of English), this technological innovation “brought a degree of order to English orthography, compared with the diversity found in scribal manuscripts” (Crystal, Spell It Out 136). Caxton printed numerous documents which covered a wide variety of topics, eventually publishing over one hundred texts (Bragg 97). Yet his work “had no coherent spelling policy” (Crystal, The Stories of English), indicating that while printing allowed quick, similarly produced material to diffuse amongst the general public, English spelling remained ramshackle and inconsistent. For Caxton and his contemporaries, spelling was a tool that could be manipulated in order to achieve a specific purpose (Crystal, The Stories of English), ensuring an extensive amount of printed variation, as spelling was dictated by regional

Pronunciation was an exercise in anarchy, as regional dialects were so varied in England that a “Geordie could baffle a resident of Tunbridge Wells a mere three hundred miles away” (Bragg 91). The Great Vowel Shift, covering a period of over 200 years, was a change in long vowel pronunciation which strengthened inconsistency between spelling and elocution. While not affecting all English dialects to equal extents, vowels that were “held in the mouth for a comparatively long time, like the long ee in meet, rather than the short e in met” (Bragg 96) were now pronounced more towards the front of the mouth. Dame, whose former vowel pronunciation was similar to that in ma’am, now sounded like a long version of dam (Crystal, Spell It Out 130). There were seven vowels that were affected by this shift from Middle to Modern English pronunciation. /a/ became /er/ as in name or mate; /ε/ and /e/ became /i/ such as tea or see; /i/ became /aı/ as in time or bite; /ᴐ/ became /əu/ such as bone; /o/ became /u/ as in boot; and /u/ became /au/ such as out or house (Upward & Davidson 177). By the end of the Great Vowel Shift, centuries of printing had largely established written uniformity, and thus modern orthography does not reflect this newer pronunciation system (Bragg 96). There are some exceptions, as the practice of adding