English spelling is not phonetic due to the many sources of its words, resulting in numerous possible spellings for a word. The Great Vowel Shift caused further irregularities, and loanwords add to the complexity. Shakespeare’s name has multiple spellings.
The English language does not use phonetic spelling at least in part because there would be so many different ways of spelling words that it would make it difficult for people to understand. There are so many different ways to spell English words largely because English uses many words from very different sources, from Germanic to Latin to Greek. For example, based solely on the way it sounds, the word “scissors” could theoretically be spelled some 80 million different ways, including “sizerz,” “schiesourrrhce,” and “cisers.” This is only theoretical though, because to reach all 80 million possibilities a person would have to use letters in incorrect ways, like using the “z” at the end of a word to make an “s” sound.
Learn more about pronunciation and English:
Between about 1350 and 1500, there was a dramatic change in the way English vowels were pronounced, called the Great Vowel Shift. For example, the “ee” sound went from sounding like the “a” in “plate” to the way it is now pronounced in “feet.” It’s not entirely clear why this happened, but it has led to many of the strange conventions in modern English spelling – for example, why ‘plough’ and ‘through’ can have the same spelling as ‘ough’ but are pronounced very differently .
There are about 20 different spellings of Shakespeare’s name found in texts from his life, with 6 variations (including abbreviations) of his signature.
English also has many strange spellings and pronunciations because it has so many loanwords, many of which are written phonetically. For example, the word “jacket” comes from the French “jaquette”, but is written as in English.
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