Enigmas of the English Alphabet: and the Art of the Scribe

By Alvaro J. Alves-Milho

This book provides an easy-to-understand guide to the peculiarities of English Pronunciation and Spelling. It was created for students of English as a Second Language.

It represents each different vocalic sound in the word itself by using a few diacritic symbols. This approach helps to understand the sound of a word directly a

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ewings Publishing LLC
• Release date: Jul 25, 2022
• ISBN: 9798886400960

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Copyright © 2022 Alvaro J. Alves-Milho.

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ISBN: 979-8-88640-094-6 (sc)

ISBN: 979-8-88640-095-3 (hc)

ISBN: 979-8-88640-096-0 (e)

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

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This book is dedicated to Mr. Odon Betanzos,

who encouraged me to continue my research,

and to all seekers of truth.

Visit www.EnigmasOfEnglish.com/chapters

to see additional information and illustrations.

Contents

Chapter 1 Preface

Chapter 2 Basic Concepts

Chapter 3 The Invention of Writing

Chapter 4 The Alphabet

Chapter 5 The Latin and Romance Languages

Chapter 6 Germanic Languages

Chapter 7 French

Chapter 8 Old English

Chapter 9 Modern English

Chapter 10 The Dictionaries

Chapter 11 Frustrations of Learning English Spelling

Chapter 12 Efforts to Fix the Problem

Chapter 13 Possibility of Change

Chapter 14 Basic Guide to English Pronunciation

Chapter 15 Short Vowels

Chapter 16 Long Vowels

Chapter 17 Learn by singing

Chapter 18 Conclusion

Chapter 19 Bibliography

Appendix A: English suffixes

Appendix B: Examples of English writing using diacritical symbols

Appendix C: Word List A

Appendix D: Word List B

1

PREFACE

English is the most used language in the World. In fact, there are more people learning it as a second language than there are native speakers.

Nevertheless, English has a number of peculiar features that are not well known, not only to foreign-language students, but even to those who were born in it.

This work focuses on the written representation of the English language, particularly its spelling rules (or lack of them), from the viewpoint of a foreign-language speaker who may be used to specific rules in his or her own language and may be wondering: What exactly are the rules for English?

In the English language the concept that the way a word is spelled represents its sound does not apply consistently. As opposed to most other major European languages, English does not have a definite set of rules to specify how words should be written. Due to circumstances that will be discussed later, the pronunciation of words diverged from their original writing to a point that, as described by Benjamin Franklin: our words will gradually cease to express sounds, they will only stand for things, as the written words do in the Chinese Language.¹

As a consequence, English is probably the only major European language that represents almost each word in its dictionaries with a pronunciation guide.

Other languages do not need this guide as their use of the alphabet has been standardized, with greater or lesser complexity, so that each combination of letters by itself is enough for the trained reader to reproduce the sound of a word, even if he has never read that word before.

The negative effects of English’s irregularity are dismissed by traditional linguists, explained away by the fact that English uses approximately forty different sounds (the number of which varies according to geographical location) that are represented by only twenty-six letters. However, this situation might explain why Americans seem to take longer to read and write than speakers of other languages, as well as other situations where a difficulty to read and write is diagnosed as an illness, or using a more modern term a disorder, when in many cases that difficulty may be related to the facts described here.

As fascinating as the irregularities of English are the constant and vain efforts that were undertaken by men such as Benjamin Franklin, Noah Webster and others to correct the situation, which have unfortunately failed, partly due to a tendency toward complexity and excessive localization in the solutions proposed.

The first part of this book provides some of the facts that made English spelling become what it is, while the second part gives a few guidelines that can be useful in determining the pronunciation of many English words.

Understanding these facts can help a student of English, and in particular the foreign-language student, to improve his or her reading and pronunciation skills.

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¹ Bill Bryson, The