Spell it out: the singular story of English spelling, by David Crystal (Profile Books). Reviewed
by Gordon McLauchlan.
David Crystal is a linguist who can -- and with
extraordinary frequency does -- write about the English language with a
populist touch, translating complex issues into easily readable texts. Nothing
is beyond his scholarly reach. He has written books and articles on the history
of English, on Shakespeare’s language and on the King James Bible; and also on the effects of modern technology: Txting: the gr8 db8, and Internet Linguistics.
Spell it out is a
response to a growing rebellion against the eccentric inconsistencies of
English spelling as it expands rapidly into an international language, and to an
enthusiasm (which comes and goes) for phonetic spelling. George Bernard Shaw,
who wrote his plays in shorthand for a typist (usually his wife) to transcribe,
left a lot of money in his will to promote phonetic spelling. Enthusiasm ebbed
then but seems to be flowing again.
Describing
‘the nature of the problem’, Crystal writes: “What can we do to make the task
of learning to spell easier? My answer is in a word: EXPLAIN it. I believe the
first step in solving the problem is to see why the problem exists. If we
understand why English spelling is apparently in such a mess, we remove part of
the barrier.”
He continues
with the development of the alphabet and the history of each letter, including when
and how it arrived in English. Then he explains how Anglo-Saxon evolved into
Old English and then into Middle English, and how thousands of words came into
English from French and Latin after the 1066 Norman invasion. Norse and Dutch
had also made their present felt.
How alien
words were spelt as they were inserted into written English depended on a
number of factors, including the whims of scribes, and the eccentricities of
printers. William Caxton, as Crystal puts it, “printed what he saw in the
various manuscripts. As long as a word was recognisable, it would do.” He and other printers sometimes added extra
letters to words to fill out a line of type.
Unsuccessful
attempts were made to standardise spelling in the 17th century and a
penchant for “rules” arose at times over the centuries. The trouble has always
been, as Crystal freely acknowledges, not the rules but the aberrations.
But all this
leads to his insistence that understanding his “system” will help understand
spelling.
This book is
instructive and entertaining and the writing, ahem, Crystal-clear, but will it
help even educated writers with their spelling? The answer, I fear, is not
without steady application and serious study, which the author sets up in at
the end of this book with “A Teaching Appendix”, a useful introduction to the
“system”.
Using
linguistics to learn spelling is a constructive approach but requires hard work
and application. It may still be easier, if not as interesting, to memorise
long spelling lists; or to just read … and read; because with notable
exceptions (F Scott Fitzgerald was one) constant readers should absorb enough
language to become good spellers reflexively.
Crystal
starts every chapter engagingly with a quote and illustration of some sort. For
example, this from Shaw’s preface to Pygmalion:
“The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their
children to speak it. They spell it so abominably that no man can teach himself
what it sounds like. It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth
without making some other Englishman hate or despise him.”
Some
of these chapter launchers reflect Crystal’s sense of fun. One of them quotes a passage from Edgar Rice
Burroughs’ 1914 book, Tarzan of the Apes,
explaining how the lonely man of the jungle (who used the overhead for
travel rather than the underground), whose only lingual experience was
exchanging grunts with a friendly chimp, taught himself to read English with
just a text to look at and no one to help him. It is amusingly plausible.
Footnote:
Gordon McLauchlan is an Auckland-based writer & commentator and a regular reviewer on this blog.
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