English is Crazy [History of Spelling]
You have to write in English, but it’s not your native language.
Or maybe it is your native language, but spelling just isn’t your thing.
Like, why is there an “h” in “ghost”? Why is “kernel” written as “colonel”???
What’s going on??
So I’m happy to tell you that it’s not you, it’s English.
English is a hot mess.
Let’s talk about why and how, and I’ll tell you all about “ghost,” “colonel,” and more.
But you’re going to need some context, so we’re starting in the middle of the 5th century. This is going to be quite the ride, so get your coffee and sense of humor ready.
[450ish] People migrated to Britain from northwest Germany, southern Denmark, and the Netherlands. These people were called Anglo-Saxons. The language they spoke in their new land was called Old English, and it derived from Anglo-Frisian, which is West Germanic. (This is how Old English likely sounded.)
[600s] Pope Gregory sent missionaries to England to convert the Anglo-Saxons, who were pagan.
At this time, the bible had been translated from Biblical Hebrew into Latin.
Latin loanwords became popular, especially those describing legal or religious subjects. This probably felt pretty natural for the Anglo-Saxons, since Britain had been previously occupied by the Romans [43–410], and Latin was not foreign to the country. Eventually, the Anglo-Saxons also started writing their own religious texts in Latin.
[1066] Then, the Normans conquered. The Normans spoke Old Norman French, which was a dialect of Old French. Meanwhile, Old French derived from Vulgar Latin, which derived from Classical Latin.
Old Norman French was also influenced by Old Norse, AKA a bunch of North Germanic dialects which later became Scandinavian languages. This is because the Normans were actually Vikings who settled in France. That’s why they’re called Normans — from “northmen.”
Hang on, Old French, you say! That sounds fancy!
Well, it was. So much so that the cool new language in Britain became Anglo-Norman. While it was initially imposed upon the upper classes, it then spread to all levels of society, influencing the Old English still spoken by the common people.
So you can already begin to understand why today’s English is such a mess. It’s a West Germanic language influenced by a Latin language that was influenced by a North Germanic language.
Okay, now let’s get to the spelling.
GHOST
[1100s] English was back in style, but it had evolved and got a new name. Heavily influenced by Anglo-Norman, it became Middle English. (And it sounded like this.)
[1450] Johannes Gutenberg came around with his printing press. Until this time, there was no standardized or even consistent way of spelling. There was no “English Academy” that dictated the official way to write in English. People who were lucky enough to be literate just kind of spelled things however they felt.
But with the printing press, masses of people were able to read the same text. So however the printing press workers (called typesetters) decided to spell a word, that’s the spelling that people got used to seeing.
[1476] Then there was this British guy William Caxton. He was a translator and had his own printing press business in Westminster, London.
[1477] One of the first books he printed in English was called, “Dictes and Sayenges of the Phylosophers.”
Notice the spelling. Caxton’s typesetters were of course spelling things however they saw fit, mainly phonetically. They even spelled the same words differently throughout the text.
Now not only was English pronounced a bit differently during that time, but these typesetters were not native English speakers — they were Flemish. So we have a group of non-native speakers essentially deciding English spelling!
The typesetters added an “h” to “gost” (ghost) in their texts, as well as to a lot of other words that start with “g.”
For some reason, the “h” only stayed in “ghost”, “ghastly”, and maybe a few other ones.
COLONEL
[1500s] The language kept growing and changing, and eventually became Early Modern English. This is the language used by Shakespeare!
This is also when the word “colonel” came into the language. “Colonel,” which is pronounced “kernel” in English, was taken from French.
But the French had taken it from Italian (collonelo), and when they did that, they swapped the “L” with an “R.”
So in English, it was popular to say and write the word as “koronel” or “kernel.”
But when the British began translating Italian documents into English, and they came across the original word “colonello,” they decided to spell the English version as “colonel.”
Eventually, French was like, wait, we’re saying this wrong, and they started both writing the word and pronouncing it with an “L.”
English never followed suit, and instead writes it one way and pronounces it the other way until this day. Because why not.
Bonus: Ye Olde English
You must have seen this “Ye Olde” phrase somewhere. Maybe in a movie set in the Dark Ages, or maybe you saw it on the awning of an old-timey style bookstore.
Well I have another surprise for you.
No one ever used “ye” as a determiner. In fact, not only was “ye” not “the,” but it was actually a pronoun. It was the plural form of “thou.” (“Hear ye, hear ye…”)
Okay, then where did “ye olde whatever” come from?
So there used to be a letter called “thorn” that made the “th” sound. It looked like this: þ. It represented the “th” sound in words like “this,” “that,” “the.” So “the” was originally written: þe.
There was also another letter that made a similar sound, called “eth.” It looked like this: ð. It represented the “th” sound in words like “thought” and “thing.”
Thorn eventually became the more popular way of writing both “th” sounds.
Thorn’s shape morphed over time, and ended up looking like a “y.” Then when the printers came around, they didn’t have this letter, but they did have a “y.” So typesetters started writing “th” words using a “y,” or other letters.
Eventually, the “t” +”h” spelling became a popular substitute, and texts originally written with “y” were updated to have “th.”
Now when it comes to “olde,” that’s just something modern people added to look old-timey. No one living in their own century thought of their time period as “olde” or “old,” and definitely would not have called their own shop “old.”
Standardization of Spelling
[1600s] We’re finally at Modern English, or the latest form of English.
A lot went down when it came to standardizing spelling in English. We didn’t even get to why “knight” and “knife” have silent Ks (they weren’t always silent!) or why British English writes “colour” while American English insists on “color.”
The truth is we still don’t have a real, across-the-board standardized way of spelling in English. While France has the French Academy that dictates the language, and Israel has the Hebrew Academy, English kind of just follows popular dictionaries.
[1755] Johnson’s A Dictionary of the English Language was published in Britain. Today we have the Oxford English Dictionary and other super influential ones. Commonwealth countries, like Canada and Australia, tend to follow the British spelling.
[1828] Webster’s Dictionary was published in the United States. Today we follow other ones as well.
Of course this is an extremely watered-down, simplified timeline that skips hundreds of years. Lots of super influential things happened that I haven’t mentioned, like the Hundred Years’ War, and the Great Vowel Shift.
But this is a blogpost and you’re at work, and you have things to do.
So the next time you struggle to spell or read a new word in English, just remember:
It’s not you, it’s English.
English is a mess, and it’s been that way for hundreds of years.
Have a great day!
