Spelling vowels

Having surveyed the vowels of CUBE, we now will look at the most common way of transcribing these vowels: spelling. The problem with spelling is that it is not fully reliable. Let us see why.

It probably occurs in all natural languages that unrelated meanings are associated with the same string of sounds. For example, the sound shape of the past tense form of read rijd is red, and it cannot be distinguished from the colour name red red. Two such words are called homonyms or homophones. In a consistent transcription system homonyms are transcribed identically. Our single example shows that this is not always the case in spelling: read (past) and red are not “transcribed”, ie spelled the same. There are also cases where two words are spelled the same, although their sound shapes are different: both rijd and red are spelled read,Note that a noun rijd is spelled reed, this is a homonym of read (pres). two such words are said to be homographs. The existence of homographs is also against the principles of a consistent transcription: if two words are pronounced differently, they also ought to be transcribed differently.

Because of the large amount of homonyms and homographs in English, the correspondence between sounds and spelling is rather chaotic. Most of the discrepancies are the result of the conservatism of English spelling, which has not changed much since the introduction of the printing press more than 560 years ago.

We will survey how vowels are typically spelled. Here we will only consider the spelling of vowels that are stressed, unstressed vowels will be discussed in a later section.

Short/checked vowels

There are five vowel letters in the Roman alphabet, A, E, I, O, and U. A sixth letter, Y, can also be used for transcribing vowels, however, it is in most instances a variant of I.

The basic regularity of spelling the short vowels is shown in the table below.

the foot–strut split In Early Modern English (the language of Shakespeare, for example), there were only five short vowels, i e a o u. (This is still the situation in many accents spoken in the north of England.) Elsewhere the short u has unrounded and lowered: it became ə, so the Shakesperian (and northern) pronunciation of strut, cup, punk, or thumb contained u, while today in most accents it is ə, as in the table. Crucially, this change did not happen in some words (mostly after a labial consonant), which has led to a split:Since most u’s have turned into ə, there were very few short u’s remainig. Long uː's have shortened to supply more, in words like good, foot, cook, wool, etc. while punk is pəŋk, put is put (not only in the north of England, but everywhere). Likewise, we have butter bətə, but butcher butʃə, etc. Thus the Early Modern English u has split into two vowels in Modern English, ə and u. Accordingly, while the letter U regularly represents the short vowel ə, in a few words (like put, push, pussy, pull, bush, bull, butch, full, cushion) it exceptionally represents short u. We will call this last set put words.

want wordsBeside the confusion caused by the foot–strut split, there are two major reasons for departures from the correspondences in the table above. In a set of words, o is spelled A: eg want wont, wash woʃ, was woz, what wot, quality kwolətij, squash skwoʃ. The common feature of these words is that the vowel is preceded by w (spelled either W or U).The change did not occur before a velar consonant: wax waks, swank swaŋk, quack kwak, etc. This is a historical sound change, wa > wo, which is not reflected by the spelling. This set is called want words.

(Many accents of English have lowered o to a, but this did not undo the change we are discussing. So while want is want for many Americans, it does not rhyme with (ie it does not contain the same vowel as) rant.)

love wordsIn another set of words o does not represent o, but ə (or, rarely, u), as if spelled by U. There are various reasons for this discrepancy. In some of these words (eg company), an earlier o changed to u (before a nasal) and then the u changed to ə (as described above). In others (eg mother, month) long oː changed to long uː, which then shortened to u (and then changed to ə). Yet other words (eg love, come, some, son, wonder) were spelled by U earlier, the spelling has changed to O because it was very difficult to distinguish lowercase U and M, N, V, W in handwriting. Accordingly, in most such words the O is next to one of these consonant letters. Let us call this set, ie words in which the letter O represents ə (or u), love words.

The following table summarizes the regular spelling of each short vowel, the three rarer equivalences discussed above, as well as some exceptional spellings.

The regular spelling of short vowels and the rarer cases (want words, love words, and put words) we have already covered. The table above includes some exceptionally spelled words too, in which i is spelled E (and in a single word, U), e is spelled A (and in a single word U), and u is spelled O (these are love words in which the u did not become ə). Note that a is only spelled A, it has no rarer or exceptional spelling, and that u has no regular spelling (because of the foot–strut split).

Diphthongs/free vowels

Many diphthongs of CUBE derive from earlier long vowels. These vowels were often spelled by the same vowel letter as short vowels, the shortness or length was indicated by the following letters (to be discussed later). Some examples are provided in the following chart.

The seven diphthongs cannot be uniquely spelled by five vowel letters, two of them, oj and aw are always spelled by a vowel digraph: oj by OI or OY, aw by OU or OW.Just as I and Y are interchangeable in the spelling of vowels, U and W are also interchangeable as the second part of a digraph. The variant of a digraph with I typically occurs before a consonant letter (eg boil, coin, voice), while those with Y before a vowel letter and word finally (eg loyal, boy, joy). The distribution of digraphs with U and W are less consistent: the U variant is common before a consonant letter (eg noun, cloud, count), but the W variant occurs in any position (eg crown, vowel, now).

Many other diphthongs were not long vowels but diphthongs in earlier stages of English, too. These and other long vowels were spelled by digraphs. Several mergers have resulted in the current situation: the same diphthong often has many different spellings. The following chart introduces the most common diphthong–digraph equivalents.

With the exception aj, all other diphthongs have at least one digraph spelling, some have several. It happens to be the wide diphthongs then, that is, aj aw oj, which have only one regular spelling, the others regularly occur spelled in multiple ways. We have seen that I and Y are interchangeable in digraphs, but not in UI: UY is not a regular digraph.

There are also less common spellings for diphthongs, these are exemplified in the following table:

There are several digraphs that represent different diphthongs with greater or smaller frequency. EA is regularly ij, but in some words it represents ej; EI/EY is regularly ej, but it may also represent ij or even aj; likewise AI/AY is typically ej, but exceptionally ij or aj; and OU/OW is regularly aw, but in some words it represents əw and OU (though not OW) may even be uw.

There also exist some vowel letter combinations which qualify as a digarph in some words, here’s a list:

• AE: ij in Caesar, faeces; ej in Israel, reggae
• AO: ej in gaol (normally spelled jail)
• EO: ij in people, feoff
• OE: ij in foetus, Oedipus, phoenix, Phoebe, subpoena

not digraphIt is not trivial to tell if a vowel combination is a digraph or not. In some cases two vowel letters represent two separate vowels, hence do not constitute a vowel digraph: eg in create krijejt, chaos kejos, Croat krəwat. There are also cases where the first vowel letter, U or I, represent a glide and the second a vowel: eg quit kwit, suede swejd (where U=w), alien ejljən (where I=j). I (and also E) may also represent palatalization of the preceding consonant: eg fusion fjuwʒən, cautious koːʃəs, pigeon pidʒən. In yet other words, U indicates the absence of the palatalization of G: eg guess ges, guide gajd. Finally, a word-final E is typically not part of a digraph together with a preceding vowel letter: eg in Mae mej, die daj (cf dying), toe təw, blue bluw (cf bluish).

digraph as short vowelWhile in the cases discussed so far a digraph represents a diphthong, some digraphs represent a short vowel. The following table contains some more and some less common examples.

With this we conclude our survey of the spelling of diphthongs and of the uses of digraphs, and turn to the spelling of R vowels, that is, long monophthongs.

R vowels

As we have seen, many instances of the R vowels are the result of compensatory lengthening accompanying either the loss of an earier r (eg start start > staːt), ie broadening, or of a ə that has been epenthesized before a r (eg fire fajər > faə > faː), ie breaking and smoothing. Accordingly, we find an R in the spelling of many R vowels. We repeat the chart that shows the correlations of checked and R vowels and of free and R vowels below.

For almost all common and less common letter to sound equivalences we can find examples with checked–R and free–R vowel counterparts. Let as take the free/checked–R vowels one by one.

R vowels without RNot all R vowels result from the influence of an earlier r, a fact which is reflected in the spelling as shown above. We list such cases below.

• There is a dedicated digraph, AU/AW, that regularly represents an R vowel without a following R: eg clause kloːz, law loː (or with it: aura oːrə).
• Historical l is lost in some words resulting in a long vowel due to compensatory lengthening: eg palm paːm, halve haːv; potentially also rounding the vowel: eg talk toːk.
• An l may also lengthen and round the preceding vowel without being lost: eg call koːl, small smoːl.
• An earlier h (spelled GH) is lost in many words lengthening the preceding vowel: eg fought foːt.
• We have seen that smoothing is not necessarily preceded by breaking, resulting in a long vowel without R: eg idea ajdiː, vowel vaːl.
• In the south of England short a lengthens somewhat unpredictably before f θ s m n: eg staff staːf, laugh laːf, path paːθ, past paːst, ask aːsk, sample saːmpəl, dance daːns, demand dimaːnd, etc.
• Finally, long aː (and əː) occurs in some recent loanwords: eg toccata təkaːtə, Gestapo gestaːpəw, milieu miljəw, etc. (Note that other vowels typically appear as diphthongs in English: kiwi kijwij, née nej, polo pəwləw, Zulu zuwluw, etc.)

Another source of long monophthongs is the loss of an earlier l, which is often retained in spelling. The vowel thus lengthened is usually spelled A: eg palm pɑːm, calm kɑːm, almond ɑːmənd.There are words in which the l is lost without any trace: eg salmon samən. In fact, half hɑːf and calf kɑːf also belong here, the length of their vowel is due to a further process, bath-broadening, described below. However, in most cases the quality of the vowel changes more radically: it is rounded and raised, not only lengthened, in this case the spelling is either A or AU: eg chalk ʧoːk, talk toːk, baulk boːk. Furthermore, lengthening can also occur without the loss of the l: eg altar oːltə, bald boːld, Malta moːltə, cauldron koːldrən, Gaul goːl. There are also cases where the rounding and lenthening is later followed by a shortening of the vowel: eg halt hɔlt, alter ɔltə, salt sɔlt, falcon fɔlkən, ballocks bɔləks. (What happens may be predicted with some precision from the following consonant: no rounding occurs before m, f, and v (ie labial consonants), the l is lost before k, and the l is retained before other consonants and word finally.)

The digraph AU/AW is unique among digraphs, because it is not pronounced as a diphthong, it represents the R vowel oː irrespective of whether an R follows it or not: eg aura oːrə, auto oːtəw, awe oː. This is thus another case of R vowels spelled without an R.

Note the two words broad broːd and abroad əbroːd, which are totally exceptionally spelled as if they had a diphthong (əw, cf road rəwd), but in them the digraph OA is used to represent the R vowel oː.

An R vowel, ɑː, resulted in a process that occurred in the south of England, called bath-broadening. In this process the checked vowel a broadened to ɑː in certain contexts, including voiceless fricatives, some nasal+consonant clusters, as well as other random words: eg bath bɑːθ, path pɑːθ (but math maθ),maθ is an abbreviation of maθəmatɪks, which may explain why it retains the vowel of the longer form. pass pɑːs (but mass mas), dance dɑːns (but stance stans), last lɑːst, branch brɑːnʧ, sample sɑːmpəl, banana bənɑːnə, etc. bath-broadening also resulted in R vowels that do not involve an R in their spelling.

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