Phoneticians as Reformers 02

Phoneticians of 19th century

Phonetics is the study of speech sounds and how they are produced, but phoneticians in the 19th century worked in a little different way from what they do today. In those days there were phoneticians who proposed or developed new system of writing to faithfully represent how the words were pronounced.

English spelling has many irregularities. A very famous example displaying the irregularity is the clever respelling of "fish" as "ghoti" ( 'gh' as in 'enough', 'o' as in 'women', and 'ti' as in 'nation').

Why so many irregularities? Here are some of many reasons.
-Words came into English from foreign languages retaining their original spelling but the pronunciation adapted to English.
-There was the Great Vowel Shift that changed the pronunciation of Middle English long vowels but the spelling staying as is.
-There were words which the spelling were reformed to reflect Greek or Latin etymology.

Phoneticians thought 26 letters in the alphabet were just not enough to phonetically describe the English words accurately -- too many irregularities, no standardized spelling or pronunciation. This issue was one of the motivations for Bernard Shaw to write "Pygmalion" (Phoneticians as Reformers 01).

Here are what phoneticians of the 19th century did to tackle the issue of the inconsistency of spelling and pronunciation:
-Regularizing: applying existing spelling rules more consistently. Some were proposed by an American English-language spelling reformer Noah Webster, and resulted in the difference in American and British spelling.
-Standardizing: Using the English alphabet and adding new diagraph (eg. <th> →/ð/, <ng>→/ŋ/), new spelling was proposed. This was proposed by Issac Pitman, who also invented shorthand system that is widely used in Britain.
-Renewing: replacing all alphabet with newly invented symbols. Bernard Shaw invented the Shavian alphabet. It had 48 letters all looking nothing like the Latin alphabet, and were "phonemic" as possible.

Against the effort of the reformers of the 19th century, English still retains its irregularities in spelling and inconsistency of spelling and pronunciation, and diverse Englishes flourish in different parts of the world.

Wouldn't it be Loverly

The title of the song in my previous article (Abso-bloomin-lutely) was "Wouldn't it be Loverly". Some of you might have thought that the word "Loverly" is misspelled, but it isn't.

The word loverly is not in most dictionaries. The only one I found the definition in was Merriam Webster (American English Dictionary) :  resembling or befitting a lover.

I could not find definition in any English English dictionaries.

Eliza imagines about her ideal comfortable life:

Someone's head resting on my knee

Warm and tender as he can be

Who takes good care of me

Aow wouldn't it be loverly?

The word loverly in this context could mean as the above definition. However, this story is set in 1912 London (although it was written by an American lyricist, he was strictly instructed to write the song lyrics following the original story written by Bernard Shaw), and the word would mean the same as "lovely".

Then why is it spelled with an "r"?

Eliza speaks Cockney, accent of the working class, so the word lovely would sound like loverly when she says it, so the spelling is phonetically faithful to her speech.

Ain't it loverly?

Yes, English can be weird

English is difficult to pronounce.

Sometimes "notorious" for its gap between the spelling and the pronunciation.
It surely stands out, if compared, for example, to Spanish, where we are almost able to pronounce words just as we follow sounds of Roman alphabets.

The photo below clearly shows the crux of the issue.


  
IT IS weird. (also weird, as the sentence makes perfect sense!)

The sound of "th" / "ou" / "gh" varies, and also there are some mute letters.

It is surprising to see the same spelling having various ways of pronouncing!

Albert C. Baugh and Thomas Cable point out that "the chaotic character of its spelling and the frequent lack of correlation between spelling and pronunciation" are one of the "liabilities" unique in the English Language. They go on to note:

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In English the vowel sound in believe, receive, leave, machine, be, see, is in each case represented by a different spelling. Conversely, the symbol a in father, hate, hat, and many other words has nearly a score of values. The situation is even more confusing in our treatment of the consonants. We have a dozen spellings for the sound of sh: shoe, sugar, issue, nation, suspicion, ocean, nauseous, conscious, chaperon, schist, fuchsia, pshaw. This is an extreme case, but there are many others only less disturbing, and it serves to show how far we are at times from approaching the ideal of simplicity and consistency. (14)
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We are trained to articulates words just as told.
Taking a step back and think, English spelling is really bizzare and tricky, making us almost feel like giving up mastering it.

However, there is a story to tell.

Works Cited:
Baugh, Albert C. and Thomas Cable. A History of the English Language. 5th ed. London: Routledge, 2002.