English spelling has been changing for over a thousand years and the spelling difficulties we have today is the result of many different things that have taken place over this time.
It was a tricky beginning for English spelling. Quite simply, the 23-letter Roman alphabet has never been enough — even Old English (spoken 450-1150) had about 35 sounds, and the number is now even bigger. But the English spelling was and still is based on the Roman alphabet.
More spelling problems came in when the French introduced new spelling rules — their own of course? and not always helpful. Using “c” instead of “s” for words like city was confusing because “c” also sounds “k” in words like cat.
And then printing arrived in the 15th century — and with it more mess (混乱). William Caxton (who set up the printing machines in the first place) liked Dutch spellings and so he introduced the “gh” in ghost and ghastly. Some printers were Europeans and they introduced favourite spellings too from their own languages. Such spelling rules were not helpful either!
One of the biggest problems for English spelling has always been changes in pronunciation. Printing helped to stablise (使……稳定……) the spelling of words, but then some sounds changed their shape? and others even disappeared altogether. Think of those silent letters in words such as walk, through, write, right, know — these were once pronounced.
Many silent letters appeared just because some famous busybodies wanted to make the language look more beautiful. This caused serious mess. Let’s take rhyme as an example. It came from the French word rime. But it was changed to rhyme to give it a nicer look. It was an interesting idea, but hardly helpful for someone trying to spell the word! The 16th and 17th centuries saw many extra letters introduced in this way.
All these events lead to the messy spelling system we have today. But you know, there are in fact over 80% of words spelled according to regular rules.
8. How many letters are there in the Roman alphabet?
9. Which word is most probably spelt according to the French rules?
A.Sit. | B.Cycle. | C.Calm. | D.Knee. |
10. What is paragraph 5 mainly about?
A.Sound changes. | B.Silent letters. |
C.Borrowed spelling rules. | D.Printing mistakes. |
11. What is the author’s purpose of writing the text?
A.To call for a much simpler spelling. |
B.To tell how to recognize foreign words. |
C.To explain why English spelling is so difficult. |
D.To show how to pronounce difficult words. |