In
Damascus Museum you have to lean down to peer through a small glass window to
see its most interesting exhibit, a
small clay tablet about six by two centimetres with the world’s earliest
alphabet. Only discovered in 1928, it was found in Ugarit. I’ve stood on this
small coastal hill in Syria, now somewhat far from the sea, razed and burnt by
the Sea Peoples in 1200 BC, and as clay is unharmed by heat, this act of
destruction preserved the tablets. They show us detailed records in a writing
system that proved so superior to the previous systems, that it quickly became
the Phoenician, Greek then Latin alphabets, literally providing the foundation
for Western culture.
This was a turning point for learning, as to
learn to read and write was reduced from several thousand to a couple of dozen
symbols. The Greek breakthrough was to take the idea of an alphabet from the
Phoenicians but invent one of their own, with signs for every sound. The word
‘alphabet’ comes from the first two letters of the Greek alphabet Alpha and
Beta. An alphabet simplifies and turbo charges writing, reading and therefore
learning.
Why upper and lower case?
At one point all phonetic alphabets were in
upper case (or one case). As brushes and pens started to be used, and writing
became more cursive, the letters following the first letter in words tended to run
together and get smaller and lower case evolved. So it was the physical
technology of the brush and pen that led to upper and lower cases. It improves
the speed of writing and legibility in reading. In general, lower case letters
are not found in European languages prior to 1300. In fact, there were no fixed
rules for capitalisation prior to the early 18th century, before
this letters could be written larger and distinctly at the start of sentences
and on nouns. In English, capital letters indicate proper names, abbreviations,
personal pronoun ‘I’ and the start of sentences. In German all nouns are
capitalised. Arabic and Hebrew still have only one ‘case’ and therefore no
capital letters, whereas Latin, Cyrillic and Greek alphabets have two cases.
The actual terms ‘upper case’ and ‘lower
case’ are named after the ‘cases’ in which printers’ moveable type were held. In
an interesting twist, CAPITAL LETTERS have come to indicate ‘shouting’ when
used in emails and txting.
Alphabets and learning
An alphabet accelerates literacy and learning.
It not only makes writing and reading easier, it makes learning how to write and read easier. Some languages are more
difficult to learn than others as they have more irregular spellings and
complex grammar.
So despite the obvious advantages of an
alphabet for learning, there’s huge differences across languages on the degree
to which the letters represent actual sounds. Finnish, Turkish, Serbo-Croat and
Bulgarian have nearly one to one correspondence between letters and words,
making spelling easy to learn. English, however, is highly irregular and has lots
of mismatches with silent letters, double letters and so on, as it went through
a historic vowel shift and has many loan words from other languages. This is
brilliantly explored in Crystal (2012). English is therefore more difficult to
learn. This may account for some differences in literacy in international
comparative tests. This is not all bad news as this irregularity gives English
breadth over a wide range of dialects and has a simpler grammar with no gender
differences.
Interestingly, research suggests that
children learn literacy as much as 3 times faster in countries where phonetic
letters match sounds. It has been shown that a reformed phonemic English
alphabet can achieve similar results. Some have achieved even faster improvement
rates, up to five times faster. Astoundingly, English spelling is about 20%
predictable until you memorise dictionary words. With truly phonetic alphabets
it becomes nearly 100% predictable. Writing also becomes tighter and faster to
produce. At a stroke one eliminates the misery of memorisation and being
branded as stupid for being poor at spelling.
Alphabet reform
There have been two different approaches to
the pedagogic problem of spelling; 1) reform spelling; 2) reform the entire
alphabet.
Andrew
Carnegie tried to reform spelling, with simplifications and got some support
from President Roosevelt. Examples include: "bizness"
for business, "enuf" for enough, "fether' for feather, "mesure'
for measure etc. Mark Twain doubted that spelling reform could work and
preferred to recast our “drunken old alphabet” and its “rotten spelling”.
American English has benefitted from some of this simplification, and Noah
Webster in the early 19th century had a little success with the first edition of his American Dictionary of the English Language, published in 1828.
But in English, neither serious spelling nor alphabet reform took off.
Over a century earlier Benjamin Franklin
recognised that irregular spelling made English difficult to learn but went for
alphabet reform and, in 1768, proposed A
Scheme for a new Alphabet and a Reformed Mode of Spelling to simplify
the alphabet and its use in spelling. The new alphabet was published in 1779.
He eliminated c, j, q, w, x, and y, which he
saw as superfluous but added six new letters for sounds he though were not
represented. But theory is one thing, embedded practice another and it never
took off. He himself lost interest in the project.
Mark Twain and George Bernard Shaw wanted complete
alphabet reform and Shaw proposed a 48 letter alphabet that matched the actual
sounds of English, 36 brand new letters and 12 combinations. This was radical
as he was not interested in just improving spelling but changing the whole
alphabet.
Turkey did reform its alphabet in the 20th
century in response to western oriented Turkish nationalism. In fact, the new
alphabet was more suited to Turkish as Arabic, which had been used for over a
thousand years is consonant rich but lacks the vowels so commonly used in Turkish.
Ataturk personally promoted the project on the basis of it being easier to
learn and therefore produces higher rates of literacy. Indeed the literacy rate
rose from 20% to over 90%. However, many factors were at work here. This was an
attempt to use alphabet reform to change history and push a country into the
modern age by breaking with the past. It was a cultural, historical, linguistic
and pedagogic break.
Conclusion
Alphabets, especially when they phonetically
match sounds, accelerate literacy and learning. We could, for example, reform
English so that literacy can be dramatically improved. However, culturally and
practically this is unlikely. Alphabet reform seems to only work where there is
enormous political and cultural will to break from the past, as in Turkey. In
any case, an alphabet is a boon to learning a language.
Bibliography
Crystal, D. (1995). The
Cambridge encyclopedia of the English language. Cambridge [England: Cambridge University Press.
Crystal D (2012). Spell It Out: The Singular Story
of English Spelling
5 comments:
Most languages have reformed their writing systems to a major or minor degree in the past hundred years - except English. The harm done by unnecessary difficult spellings extends to the consistent ones, and affects half the population being illiterate or nearly so, and most people unable to spell.
We could change this, cheaply and allowing for present readers' needs.
2011, Yule, Valerie 'Recent developments which affect spelling. On the possibility of removing the unnecessary difficulties in English spelling, while leaving the basic appearance of English print intact.' English Today, 107, vol 27, No 3. Sept 2011, pp 62-67 http://journals.cambridge.org/repo_A839oLF6
http://home.vicnet.net.au/~ozideas/spelling.htm
http://home.vicnet.net.au/~ozideas/spelling.htm#word Can you spell? The best of us may not be perfect.
http://home.vicnet.net.au/~ozideas/spellresearch.htm
1986. The design of spelling to meet needs & abilities. Harvard Educational Review. 56.3. 278 - 297. http://www.hepg.org/her/abstract/489
and see http://blogs.msdn.com/naturallanguage/archive/2006/07/05/old-vs-new-spelling-in-french-a-new-speller-based-on-the-french-spelling-reform.aspx
http://home.vicnet.net.au/~ozideas/literacy.htm
http://home.vicnet.net.au/~ozideas/writsys.htm Writing systems of the world
http://www.ozreadandspell.com.au/ A half hour cartoon overview of reading and spelling, especially useful for learners who are stuck somewhere
2002. It's the spelling that's stupid, not me; Taking Ockham's Razor to English Spelling. ABC Radio National broadcast. Ockham's Razor. 5.5. http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/ockhamsrazor/its-the-spelling-thats-stupid---not-me/3505566
2004 Sharing Knowledge with learners. Self-Help in learning to read Ockham’s Razor, Radio National 29 February. http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/ockhamsrazor/sharing-knowledge-with-learners---self-help-in/3406522
Thanks Valerie. I couldn't agree more. The rational arguments are overwhelming. However, the problem is a sort of cultural inertia and snobbery around current English, its spelling and punctuation. England is a deeply conservative and backward looking nation that constantly indulges in Lynn Truss like pedantry around spelling and punctuation.
Dear Donald
Congratulations on your very clear description of the history of western writing and how different alphabets affect progress in learning to read and write.
I hope you may change your views about the feasibility of reforming English spelling if you read my ebook ‘Spelling it out: the problems and costs of English spelling’, which I published on amazon in July 2012. Perhaps you might even like to review it?
I give an account of the history of English spelling too, but mine is more critical than Crystal’s, because I was not born to English-speaking parents and did not begin to learn English until the age of 14. I also explain exactly how English spelling differs from other alphabetic writing systems, and some of the costs it entails.
Additionally, I have identified the 14 inconsistencies which are the main retardants of literacy progress in English, and among those the 7 that impede it most of all, and make tentative suggestions for reducing them.
I believe that a radical transformation of English writing is unrealistic, but that it is perfectly possible, given a serious desire to reduce educational underachievement, to make learning to read and write English much easier than it currently is.- I wrote the book with the hope that it might start a public debate about this.
Masha Bell, Dorset, UK,
Ex English teacher, now independent literacy researcher,
author of ebook 'SPELLING IT OUT: the problems and costs of English spelling' (2012)
'Rules and Exceptions of English Spelling' (2009)
'Understanding English Spelling' (2004)
www.EnglishSpellingProblems.co.uk
http://EnglishSpellingProblems.blogspot.com
http://ImprovingEnglishSpelling.blogspot.com
and Youtube video 'Why improve English spelling?'
Dorset, UK
The idea of phonetic alphabet for a language with vowel reduction is absurd.
The language is intended to provide benefits to its literate users, so the invariability of morphemes and consistent cross-language spelling is what does really matter.
Great blog, your contents are great . Ever since i found your blog I have been reading every single article. Really love the way you took out your time to explain English Grammar . Thank you , you are doing a great job .
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