Spell it Out: The Story of English Spelling

277 Pages·2012·2.88 MB·English

by  David Crystal

Spell it out
Also by David Crystal
The Cambridge encyclopedia of language
The Cambridge encyclopedia of the English language
The stories of English
The fight for English
Think on my words: an introduction to Shakespeare’s language
Txting: the gr8 db8
By hook or by crook: a journey in search of English
A little book of language
Evolving English: one language, many voices
Begat: the King James Bible and the English language
Internet linguistics
Just a phrase I’m going through: my life in language
The story of English in 100 words
Spell it out:
the singular story of English spelling
David Crystal
First published in Great Britain in 2012 by
PROFILE BOOKS LTD
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Copyright © David Crystal, 2012
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ISBN 978 1 84668 567 5
eISBN 978 1 84765 822 7
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Contents
Introduction
1 The nature of the problem
Pooh and his friends on spelling
2 The beginning
3 The size of the problem
4 Building the alphabet
Letter origins
5 The basic weaknesses
Hope for us all
6 Keeping things long
More than letters
7 Keeping things short
Spelling as tragedy
8 The first exceptions
9 Seeing the link
Forensic spelling
10 Know your Latin and French
Spelling as reputation
11 New letters for old
12 Old letters in new words
Tarzan learns to read
13 Old sounds in new positions
Spelling as stratagem
14 New sounds in old places
15 More exceptions
Avoiding the vulgar
16 Showing the difference
Charles Dickens and his characters reflect upon spelling
17 Noting the similarity
Silent letters
18 New sounds in old letters
19 A printer’s practice
Mark Twain on spelling
20 The urge to reform
George Bernard Shaw on spelling
21 Remembering Latin
22 More etymologies
A word I always mispell
23 Famous spellings
24 Spelling ‘rules’
Mrs Malaprop on reading and spelling
25 The role of personalities
26 Another personality
27 Printers and publishers
Spelling wars
28 Changing practices
Roger McGough on spelling
29 The Internet
Lower case only
30 Showing identity
31 Unpredictability
Ogden Nash on names
32 Exotic vowels
Disenvowelling
33 Exotic consonants
The spread of education
34 Spelling noises
Unspellable noises
35 Abbreviating
36 Learning the system
George Crabbe on learning
37 The future of English spelling
A teaching appendix
I Avoiding isolation
II Towards a linguistics of spelling
Further reading
Illustration credits
Index of words
General index