A Brief History of English Spelling

Much confusion exists concerning the spelling of English words. Hundreds of years ago English spelling was phonetic. People pronounced the w in write and the k in know.

In the 7th Century Christian missionaries arrived to the British Isles to convert the local populace. They also started to write down English words in the Roman alphabet. The problem was that this alphabet was not perfectly suitable for English. But letters were combined to represent sounds that didn’t exist in Latin. These included th, sh and gh. Now it was possible to spell there, shut and light.

Following the Norman Invasion in the 11th Century the effect on English spelling was profound. Cwen became queen. Mys became mice. And wunder transformed into wonder. One major issue was that there were many regional accents in England. In the Middle Ages there were over 60 spellings of the word night. This included nite, nyght and nihte.

At the end of the 100 years’ war with France, English once again became England’s official language around 1430. But officials who had previously written in French or Latin had a difficult time making the change. The reason why so many French spellings of French origin words survive in English is due to the orthographical difficulties of these officials. These include centre, table, and double. This has also resulted in spelling inconsistencies such as enter and centre.

But most of the French words have been respelled to reflect their English pronunciation. So you have beef, government, and mountain from boeuf, gouvernement, and montagne. Some of the spellings don’t make sense, like peuple into people.  

Towards the end of the 15th Century English spelling became further corrupted. William Caxton is often regarded as the first person to have brought the printing press to England. Unfortunately he hired Flemish men to help him with his new business, and they spoke little or no English. This resulted in serious spelling errors that have affected words to this very day. Eny evolved into any, along with bisy into busy.

They also earned more money per line, inspiring them to add letters to lengthen words. As a direct result today we have head from hed, friend from frend, and season from seson.

Another factor that had a tremendous effect was the spelling in Bibles translated into English. In the 16th Century these were printed abroad, because English bishops supported the Pope’s ban on translating the Bible from Latin into native languages. The bishops kept finding the Bibles, buying them and bringing them for public burning in front of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. This led to the repeated copying of Bibles, leading to more and more spelling variations. For many families this was the first and last book they bought, along with learning to read and write from it, too.

In the second half of the 16th Century English spelling was a chaotic mess. Finally there was a demand for standardization. Teachers started to create lists for their students. Edmond Coote published his in 1595, entitled The English Schoolemaister. This book turned out to be very famous and influential.

Coote got rid of the many extra words printers had inserted. He shortened hadde to had and worde to word.  But there were still a substantial amount of such words left over, like build, have, and well. But in the end Coote was more concerned with choosing the most common spellings, not the simplest.

The dictionaries of Samuel Johnson and Noah Webster were not so successful in standardizing spelling. A large variety of differences exist between American and British English. You have centre vs. center; colour, favour, and neighbour on one hand and color, favor, and neighbor on the other.

In the 16th Century foreign words that entered English were anglicized, so that the German nudel became noodles. But when strudel showed up at the end of the 19th Century we didn’t spell it stroodle. English speakers respect foreign spellings more in the modern era.

And spelling is still shifting, constantly changing. People are even creating their own spellings all over the Internet. For example, writers keep actively removing the “h” from rhubarb; up to 150,000 instances of rubarb are out there. 

Thanksgiving Truths

Thanksgiving is most often celebrated in Canada and the United States. Historically, Thanksgiving is rooted in religion and culture. But what are the real roots of this holiday? In America, the story of the “first” Thanksgiving has been handed down to schoolchildren as a kind of fairy-tale myth. In school you learn of Squanto, and the Indians and Pilgrims sitting down together to a great feast. But is this really the truth? Is this really what happened? Let’s investigate.

          In the Old Testament of the Bible, numerous thanksgiving celebrations are mentioned. There are accounts of Noah, King David, King Hezekiah, Nehemiah, and Daniel. Early Christians also often gave thanks to God for their blessings. In the English tradition, days of thanksgiving and related religious services became important in the time of the English Reformation when Henry VIII was king.

          Pilgrims and Puritans who left England for America brought with them these traditions. There were several days of Thanksgiving held in New England that have been thought to be the “first Thanksgiving.” This includes Puritan holidays in Plymouth in 1621 and 1623, and one in Boston in 1631. The earliest Thanksgivings were a mixture of European traditions and those of the American Indians as well, who celebrated the end of the harvest season with a feast.

          But throughout American history, many myths about the origins of Thanksgiving have grown. Our images of the Pilgrims and Indians from that time are distorted.

          In 1614 English explorers returned to England with a ship filled with Patuxet Indians, for use as slaves. Behind them the English left smallpox, which wiped out most of the Indians. Throughout most of the 17th century, whole Indian nations would almost be destroyed by European diseases. The new English settlers persecuted and massacred the survivors, including women and children.

          When the Pilgrims arrived in Massachusetts Bay they found one living Patuxet, named Squanto. He had survived slavery in England and also spoke English. Squanto taught them how to grow corn and fish. He negotiated a peace treaty between the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag Nation. At the end of the first year the Pilgrims had a great feast honoring Squanto and Wampanoags.

          But as more Pilgrims and Puritans arrived, they considered the land there to be for theirs. They seized land, took young Indians for slaves, and killed the rest. In 1637, members of the Pequot tribe gathered for their annual Green Corn Festival. They were made up of over 700 men, women and children. In the hours before dawn English and Dutch mercenaries ordered the tribe to come out of the longhouse. Those who did so were shot or clubbed to death. The mercenaries burned alive the terrified women and children who were still inside. The next day, the governor of the Massachusetts Bay colony held a “Day of Thanksgiving,” thanking God for helping them destroy these Indians.

          The Pilgrims and the Puritans saw themselves as the “chosen elect” of God. They considered that they were fighting a holy war against Satan. They had to “purify” first themselves and then others who didn’t see the Bible in the same way as they did. In order to achieve this they used lying, torture and genocide. Even though the Indians greatly helped the English settlers to survive in the New World, the settlers were brutal in return. In a Thanksgiving sermon given at the end of 1623, a man named Mather the Elder gave God thanks for the horrible smallpox plague that had destroyed most of the Wampanoag Indians who had helped them so much. He especially gave them thanks for the death of the young men and children.

          At the famous Thanksgiving feast with Squanto, the Pilgrims and the Wampanoags, the Pilgrims actually invited the Indians only to negotiate a treaty. With this treaty, they had the goal of securing the lands of Plymouth Plantation for themselves. This was until more English arrived to New England, changing the balance of power. It should also be said, that because of their sense of charity, it was most probably the Indians who ended up bringing most of the food to the feast.

          A generation later, most of the Indians and Whites were trying to kill each other in a horrible conflict. At the end of the conflict, most of the New England Indians were either exterminated, or had run up to Canada. Others became slaves in the Carolinas.

          The current mixture of myth and history about the first Thanksgiving we learn about as children arose in the late 19th century. This doesn’t mean that there’s something wrong with the idea behind Thanksgiving. But it’s important to present an accurate history to children about what really happened, to know the truth about the past.

Memories of Tropical Christmases

Even though I’m American I don’t have any memories of American Christmases. This is because every year my parents took me to Dominican Republic during the holiday season. Until I moved to Slovakia, I had only experienced tropical Christmases.

We would usually spend just over a week in Dominican Republic. I was always glad about this because New York winters were harsh and unforgiving. When we arrived at the airport in Santo Domingo, the heat and humidity shocked me. I felt as though I was breathing through a damp bed sheet.

The plane passengers had to walk across the baking runway. Inside the airport there were musicians welcoming visitors with crude, frantic merengue played on four instruments.

My father’s family lived in Santo Domingo. One of my aunts had four sons so I really enjoyed spending time with my cousins. I knew that home was dreary and freezing. In Santo Domingo the atmosphere was more vibrant. Though people had little money they had a great time. No one ever left home without wearing large smiles.

In this environment I was freer. In New York life was tame. Everyone lived in a cage. In my parents’ country, people were wilder.

I remember the loudness of the half-island nation. Dominicans often screamed or shouted at each other. When they were angry the noise level was unbearable. Christmas was not a quiet and peaceful time to spend at home with your family. It was a crazy period. Dominicans celebrated as though the end of the world was approaching.

Because my father’s family was Jehovah’s Witnesses they didn’t celebrate Christmas. They simply didn’t believe in the holiday. But since we were there we often had a somber dinner of cold chicken legs, potato salad, bread, and even roast pork. The party was always outside the house, never inside. Many family members on my father’s side watched others having a joyous time, instead of participating.

My mother’s family was from San Francisco de Macoris, in the northeast part of the island. We would just go there a couple of days. Sometimes my father wouldn’t come at all. My mother, sister and I would take a dangerous bus ride up there. My parents often had arguments because we spent too much of the holiday with my father’s family and not enough with hers.

I didn’t enjoy San Francisco as much as I did Santo Domingo. I found my maternal cousins too well-behaved and civilized. I couldn’t wait to return to the capital for New Year’s. Once I passed a New Year’s in San Francisco and I was greatly disappointed.

The most terrible moment was when it was time to go back to New York. The thought of traveling from warm weather to a cruel climate made me feel as though someone had died. I knew that snow, darkness, and school would be waiting for me. As I became older though, I grew tired of my annual trips to Dominican Republic. I was hungry for new lands, people, and experience.

During my first year in Slovakia I finally experienced a cold and quiet Christmas. I found Christmas here to be like attending a pleasantly melancholic funeral. They were nothing at all like the end-of-the-world parties Dominicans had at the same time of year.

For me it was a major change and out of the last ten Christmases, nine of them were Slovak. My next one will also be in Slovakia, but my old hunger for new experiences is returning…