Spelling rationales – the challenge of writing English, Hebrew and French

 

Learning how to speak a language is intuitive. With a little bit of effort, courage and humility, it is possible to learn how to speak a language without formally studying it. Every child, regardless of intelligence, learns how to speak to one degree or another of skill. By contrast, writing a language is a great challenge for many people. I personally can attest to my complete insecurity regarding the correct spelling of words in English, Hebrew and French. Yet, I admit that the apparent randomness of a spelling system can reflect historical realities or grammar rules, whose challenges can be overcome with modern computer systems.

Let us begin with the most common language of communication (not necessarily first language), English. Both native and non-native speakers have a litany of complaints about inconsistent connections between letters and sounds. A few examples will suffice: through vs tough; know, low vs women; receive vs weigh; and time vs action. For the uninitiated, there is a higher chance to succeed in blackjack than in English spelling. Some people blame Samuel Johnson in 1755 or maybe Robert Cawdrey before him in 1604 for writing the first dictionaries and creating this chaos. Alas, they are not guilty. Distance creates diversity of pronunciation, even today, and, thus, a lack of predictability. In many parts of the world, listeners immediately can tell where a person grew up just by hearing certain sounds or words. In parts of pre-literacy England and to a certain extent today, people did pronounce those words exactly as they were written, especially the guttural sounds, kn and gh. In fact, in one older English manuscript,  the modern word girl is written ghurl, something that an Arabic speaker or a Scot would have no problem saying. Thus, English spelling is really phonetic but only for some people at some time in history. The rest of us have to memorize it somehow.

Time and distance have also affected Hebrew. In theory, every letter in an alphabet represents a different sound. In ancient Hebrew, each letter was pronounced in a manner distinct from each other. However, in modern Hebrew, many, if not most, Israelis do not generally pronounce the following letters in clearly distinct ways: alef א and ayin ע, an a sound; kuf ק and kof כּ, a k sound; sin שׂ and samech ס, an s sound; tof ת and tet ט, a t sound; het ח  and kof כ, a ch sound. True, eastern (mizhahi) Jews, especially Yemenites, have to a certain extent retained the historical pronunciation differences but people generally do not annunciate the distinctions between the letters. As a result, as an immigrant that arrived in Israel as an adult and never studied the language at school, I am uncertain. Which is happiness and which is wealth, אושר [osher] or עושר [o’sher]?. Did I confuse every and voice in כל קול [kol kol]? Did I write that I need time עת or a pen אט, both pronounced [et]? Which is form and which is grab, טפוס [tofes] or תופס [tofes]? The actual key is to know the root of the word, which indicates the correct letter to be used. While it does increase the odds of a correct guess, not every Israeli, not to mention immigrants, feels absolute certainty when writing Hebrew.

As for French, it seems to me that framers of the language chose ease of speaking over simplicity of writing, plausibly using Latin rules of grammar as the excuse. To explain, it is possible to represent the long a sound, as in the a in the word late in English, in 13 different ways (forgive me if I missed a few). The following words all end in a long a: donner, donnez, donné, donnée, donnés, données, donnais, donnait, donnaient, donnerai, les, abeilles, et and forêt. For non-French speakers, the meanings are to give, you give, given (n), given (f), given (pl), given (f. pl), you gave, he gave, they gave, I will give, the, bees, and and forest, respectively. That is one impressive haul of uses for one sound. The price for such efficiency is, of course, the difficulty in knowing how to write the correct form. Since the establishment of universal schooling in France in 1882, generations of French children have had to work hard to master the rules of grammar required to know when the correct tense endings, when to add the silent e and s to the past participle and which letters are the end of a specific noun. The results, then and now, are far from perfect. Actually, I find French spelling relatively easy because I understand these rules. I find it convenient that they are based on grammar, not history.

Those of us that doubt our spelling, rightly or wrongly, and double-check all words can feel a little bit relieved. Like some exes said, it is not you; it is the language. Spelling has its own logic, one that is unconcerned about mere mortals, whether they are native or non-native speakers. Fortunately, word processing, applications and AI have made it quite convenient to identify and fix any embarrassing errors. These tools do not eliminate the need to actually know the language as you still must choose the right word when two words with different meanings sound the same but are spelled differently, e.g., too vs two in English, but at least, we don’t have to look idiots when we write. We don’t have to feel like idiots either since, while there is a rationale to spelling rules in fact, it is one that often makes no sense to us.