Spellings, Sounds, and Silences (スペル、音、消える音)
以前のEnglish is Interestingの記事でも紹介しましたが、英語の歴史は大雑把500年ごとに3つの時期に分けることができます。約1500年前から1000年前までは「古英語」、1000年前から500年前までは「中英語」、そして約500年前から現在までは「現代英語」と呼ばれます。古英語時代、アングロサクソンの多くは読み書きはせず主に会話が中心でした。書く必要がある時は、音を全て文字で表していました。つまりright and writeの「gh」や「w」「e」は現代では発音されませんが、古英語や中英語では全て発音されていたのです。現代英語の綴りは、日本語のカタカナやひらがなのように英語の音と一致するわけではありません。
When we look at the history of Middle English changes into Modern English, one important sound change was that many vowel sounds changed. This is called The Great Vowel Shift. After the spellings became standard in books, many of the vowel sounds changed. Another change was the loss of some consonant sounds in late Middle English and early Modern English. For example, the d in handsome and handkerchief, the p in raspberry, and the t in chestnut were lost.
There are many other examples of consonant loss during this period. For example, the silent k sound before n, so that in words such as, knee, knife, and know, the k sound is not spoken anymore. The w sound was lost in words before r and after s, so that w is silent in words like, write, wrap, sword, and answer. L sounds after a or o and before f, v, m, or k, get dropped so that in words, calm, palm, salmon, half, calf, calves, folk, yolk, talk, and walk, the l is silent. Another sound that was lost was the b sound after m so that lamb, bomb, thumb, and dumb are spoken with the b silent.
The t sound was lost after s or f and before -en so that t is silent in listen, hasten, soften, and often. When many people did not read books hundreds of years ago, they did not notice these strange spellings. Children who do not read also do not notice. Some people who are literate, or know how to read, may want to sound smart or educated so that they put sounds that were lost back into words. This is sometimes done by language learners, young children, and even teachers. This is called hypercorrection or sometimes called spelling pronunciation. In this case, what people would say might sound like: lis-ten, sof-ten, or of-ten. This is not necessarily wrong because many people do this, or it may be part of a dialect difference, even native speakers may speak this way for poetic or musical reasons, or for some comic effect. Of course, very intelligent people like the people that read these blog posts know that spellings are often based on older pronunciations and that it is common for some sounds to be silent and that it is normal to say listen, soften, or often with the t sound silent.
As was mentioned in a previous blog post, many words in English come from other languages. The words column and autumn for example come from French. The spelling comes from French and the n sound in these words were never spoken in English. In contrast, from the Greek word mnemonic, the n sound is spoken and the m is silent. In other example words from Greek, such as pneumonia and psychology, the p sound was probably never spoken in English except by those who studied Greek.
As has been shown, the spelling system of English is complicated because of sound changes through history. If you know a little history then it makes English easier to understand.
