Highly Irregular by Arika Okrent

Author:Arika Okrent
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2021-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

For vowels, there is no obstruction, only a subtle shaping of the air. The body of the tongue raises and lowers and goes back and forth. The lips round and unround. The sound bends slightly; sometimes it matters (a pin is not a pen), and sometimes it doesn’t (if you live in the American South, a pin is still not a pen, but you might pronounce them exactly the same).

The shifting indeterminacy of vowels is not a problem of English but of language in general. There are many writing systems for other languages that don’t even bother to use symbols for vowels, so that shifting doesn’t mess with spelling traditions. It does mess with spelling for English, but not simply because we try to write them down. Other languages that use the same alphabet as we do are more dependable in how their vowels are represented.

There are spelling inconsistencies for all the vowels in English, but things really get out of control for the ‘ee’ sound. There are just so many ways to write it in English. One e (me), two e’s (beer), an ie (believe), an ea (leaf), an ei (seize), an i (police), a y (messy), an ey (key), a ui (mosquito), an eo (people), and even an oe (phoenix).

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