The Tongue Between the Teeth,
Or, The Oddest English Spellings (Part 4)
It is easy to get used to certain conventions.
style=”mso-spacerun: yes”> No characters exist for the initial
consonants of the English words shin,
chin,
and thin, and at
an early age we learn that two letters are needed to render them in
spelling. In Part 3 of the series
“The Oddest English Spellings,” I compared sh
style=’font-weight:normal’>elf, nati
style=’font-weight:normal’>on, pensi
style=’font-weight:normal’>on, Russi
style=’font-weight:normal’>a, consc
style=’font-weight:normal’>ience, delici
style=’font-weight:normal’>ous, s
style=’font-weight:normal’>ure, ch
style=’font-weight:normal’>ic, and Sch
style=’font-weight:normal’>ubert, in all of which the letters
given in bold designate the same sound. In other cases, the same combination of letters has
more than once phonetic value. So
in character, ch
style=’font-weight:normal’>ic, and ch
style=’font-weight:normal’>ick; kn
style=’font-weight:normal’>owledge and ackn
style=’font-weight:normal’>owledge, numb
style=’font-weight:normal’> and amb
style=’font-weight:normal’>er, dogm
style=’font-weight:normal’>a and diaphragm
style=’font-weight:normal’>. English spelling is so capricious that we take everything in
stride. Only occasionally, when a
word’s visual image is shockingly at variance with its pronunciation, do we
wonder why such things should happen and then we resign ourselves to our
fate.
Why, really, is choir
not spelled quire?
style=”mso-spacerun: yes”> It would sound as sweet, perhaps even
sweeter. In Middle English, after
this word was borrowed from Old French, it was spelled quer(e)
style=’font-style:normal’> and cuer, but the latter part of the 16th century, some learned people
decided that the quere had to be
“restored,” so as to resemble its Latin etymon chorus.
style=’font-style:normal’> The
result of the restoration was a ridiculous hybrid that pretends to be 40%
Latin, looks 100% French, but is fully, misleadingly English.
style=”mso-spacerun: yes”> In the not too distant past, such
spellings were called corrupt. Modern linguistics shuns the epithet corrupt,
style=’font-style:normal’> for everything has a reason and should be treated
with respect. The politically
correct term is altered.
style=”mso-spacerun: yes”>
So be it, but heaven save us from enthusiastic language
planners. We owe to them some of
our silliest spellings (fortunately, not all of them are extant; thus, we do
not write habundance because of its
presumed derivation from Latin habere “have”) and such felicities of grammar as: “When a student
style=’font-style:normal’> comes, I never make them
style=’font-style:normal’>wait.”
The sentiment is praiseworthy, but the congruence (a
student—them) is “corrupt.”
Abundance is related
to the verb abound, from Old
French abonder, from Latin abundare,
style=’font-style:normal’> that is, ab-undare
style=’font-style:normal’> (undare
“flow,” unda “wave”); abundance
suggests the idea of overflowing.
But today my story is not about abound
style=’font-style:normal’> or surround (it has the same root and has nothing to do with round
style=’font-style:normal’>). It
will be about the digraph (a combination of two letters) th,
style=’font-style:normal’>which can designate a voiceless consonant, as in bath,
style=’font-style:normal’> and a voiced one, as in bathe.
style=’font-style:normal’>
In word initial position, it is voiced in the
style=’font-style:normal’>and in a few pronouns, conjunctions, and adverbs:
this, that, these, those, thee ~ thy, their, though, there,
style=’font-style:normal’> then(ce), thus, and thither.
style=’font-style:normal’> Compare thy
~ thigh, the only pair of English words of
this type. But sometimes the letter
h following t
style=’font-style:normal’> is mute, as it is after r
style=’font-style:normal’> in rhyme (a
doublet of rime), for
example. So why is it there?
style=”mso-spacerun: yes”> The answer is the same as with choir
style=’font-style:normal’>: excessive
zeal in etymologizing. Inserting h
after t
style=’font-style:normal’>gained considerable vogue during the
Renaissance. Words taken over from
French were made to look like their Latin ancestors, which in turn, often went
back to Greek. This is how theater,
style=’font-style:normal’> thesis, author, throne,
style=’font-style:normal’> and several others acquired their h,
style=’font-style:normal’> and so powerful was the influence of spelling that
people began to pronounce those words, as they are still pronounced today.
style=”mso-spacerun: yes”> Considering the fact that literacy was
rare, this result comes as a surprise.
Thesis and author
style=’font-style:normal’> are bookish words, but throne?
style=’font-style:normal’> Who did
not hear about kings and thrones?
A much greater surprise is the history of the names Catherine,
Elizabeth, and Anthony.
style=’font-style:normal’> Here,
it seems, the variants with t should
have prevailed. And indeed, in
British English, Anthony is
pronounced as though it were spelled Antony
style=’font-style:normal’>.
Shakespeare’s Anthony should be only Antony
style=’font-style:normal’> even in American English, in which Anthony
style=’font-style:normal’> and anthem have the same sound in the middle. But Catherine, Anthony, and Elizabeth are full,
“official” names. Their homey
variants have withstood Latinization; hence Kit, Kat, Tony, Betsy, and Bess (“Elizabeth,
Elspeth, Betsy, and Bess, / They all went together to seek a bird’s nest”).
Real confusion occurred when the spelling th
style=’font-style:normal’>became the norm, but speakers took no notice.
style=”mso-spacerun: yes”> The examples are well-known: Thomas
(with Tom
style=’font-style:normal’> being spelled phonetically), Thames
style=’font-style:normal’>(except the river name in Connecticut),
Esther, thyme, and (in British English) Anthony.
style=’font-style:normal’> Phthisis
was at one time pronounced tizik,
style=’font-style:normal’> but this pronunciation, which was archaic in Britain
long ago, seems to have disappeared in American English as well.
style=”mso-spacerun: yes”> (Not that many people use this
word.) In asthma
style=’font-style:normal’>and isthmus, both t and h
style=’font-style:normal’>are usually mute. The name of Gotham, a parish in Nottinghamshire, unlike the
nickname of New York, is pronounced gotam. The same holds for the
phrase three wise men of Gotham (“Three
wise men of Gotham / Went to sea in a bowl: / And if the bowl had been stronger
/ My song would have been longer”; however, in folklore, wise people often
feign stupidity to deceive their superiors, and such tales are also told about
the inhabitants of Gotham). Chatham
style=’font-style:normal’> is Chat-(h)am: t and h
style=’font-style:normal’> belong to different syllables in it.
style=”mso-spacerun: yes”> Not only Latin played havoc with th.
style=’font-style:normal’> I have
never been to a place called Rotherhithe, but, according to the books I
consulted, its name should be pronounced redrif.
style=”mso-spacerun: yes”>
Is there another language like English?
Anatoly Liberman is the author of Word Origins…And How We Know Them. His column on word origins, The Oxford Etymologist, appears here each Wednesday. Send your etymology question to blog.us@oup.com; he’ll do his best to avoid responding with “origin unknown.”
