Why is the English spelling system so complex?

English is an alphabetic system, but only partially. There are not enough letters to represent each sound; for instance there are 40 phonemes but only 26 letters. I believe there are about 80 universal phonemes. It is difficult to distinguish between phonemes that are not present in your native language. For example, there is no /r/ present in the Japanese language. You will often hear a Japanese student learning to speak English say “flied lice” instead of “fried rice”. In fact, studies show that infants can distinguish among all universal phonemes until a certain point in development, or, rather, once they have been immersed with their native language. Chomsky defines this as a “critical period” in which language acquisition occurs. This period usually ends between the ages of 4 and 12; this is why Spanish 1 & 2 were virtually impossible for me in high school.

Spellings vary according to a sound’s position in a word and are affected by other letters in a word. We spell judge instead of “juj” because we don’t end words with “j”; we spell guide with a “silent u” to ensure the right /g/ sound; we spell dinner with two n’s to ensure a short /i/ sound. Think about open vs. closed syllables. There are actually six types of syllables:

vowel consonant: mop

vowel consonant “silent e”: mope

vowel consonant vowel: hotel

vowel r-controlled: market

vowel vowel: the “ea” in bread & bead

consonant “le”: tinkle

These all cue the reader as to how to pronounce each word. For example, you wouldn’t say “hot-el”, you say “ho-tel”. I like to think about that terrible Mike Myers movie where he reminds his flight crew that they put the “em-PHA-sis on the wrong sy-LAB-le”.

There has been a movement to do away with our spelling system completely and adopt a more phonetic-based spelling system, similar to the Spanish spelling system in which each letter has one sound. However, spelling reflects meaning (e.g. nation / native; bomb/bombardier; sign/signature) and differentiates meaning (e.g. frays/phrase). (Personal note: I couldn’t believe there are actually people who would want to get rid of our spelling system and start from scratch. It makes me think of “its ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. What a waste of time! But then again some people still iron their sheets, so I guess there are many ways to waste time.)

Oral language changes over time more than spelling (e.g. we used to pronounce the “p” in words like psychology, the “g” in gnash and the “k” in knife.) Though the pronunciation changed, traces of the old version were preserved in the spelling. Spoken dialects differ more than spelling does (e.g. Mary/merry/marry and tin/ten- this one is a problem for Southern teachers when teaching short vowel sounds), which enables more people to communicate. In short, spelling reflects the history and meaning of words and not just their pronunciation (Wilde, 1992).