Learned or learnt? Spelled or spelt? - A Google Ngram analysis

 Learned or learnt? Spelled or spelt? Burned or burnt? Which spelling do you use? If you speak American English, probably the ed version, if you speak British English, you probably just write what you feel like on the day. I know I use both, but I also know I need to be consistent in my forthcoming book, Teaching English Spelling. So time for some research and I found this extraordinary and very new tool from GoogleLabs (still in Beta) called Google Ngram. You write two or more (up to five) words or phrases into the Ngram search box and it searches a corpus of 500 billion words from 5.2 million books on Google Books. Then it turns out a graph of how often the word or phrase occurred in books in the years you have specified. You can search all English books, British English books, or American English books. Look, rather than explain, I'll show you what my Ngram results were:

British English 1800 - 2000: learnt (blue) vs learned (red)

We can see learned is more common but declining. The worrying thing is that we just seem to be talking about both of them less! Let's see if the same is happening in American English:

American English 1800 - 2000: learnt (blue) vs learned (red)

Ah, less of a decline there! And a very clear and consistent preference for the ed ending.

Now burnt and burned:

British English 1800 - 2000: burnt (blue) vs burned (red)

Oh, interesting! As the years have passed British English speakers have burned about the same but burnt a lot less. No idea why! And American English?

American English 1800 - 2000: burnt (blue) vs burned (red)

Oh, wow! Completely different. Preference swapped over mid-18th century. No coincidence I suppose that Noah Webster's American Dictionary of the English Language was published in 1828.

What about my big question: spelt or spelled? 

British English 1800 - 2000: spelt (blue) vs spelled (red)

So traditionally spelt in British English but the American English has gained ground over the past 60 years and now spelled has taken over. But in American English:

 

American English 1800 - 2000: spelt (blue) vs spelled (red)

No competition!

So which should I use in my book? You may think spelled wins hands down, but I wonder if I should support the underdog? I'm planning to bring out a British version first, closely followed by an American version. Perhaps spelt needs a little boost from me in the British version, then spelled in the American one. But then again ...

Which will I do? There's only one way to find out ...send me your email address and I'll let you know when the book's out (soon)!

And which should you use? What do you think? Let me know in the comments. 

What do you think of Google Ngram?

How could you use it?

Johanna

Homophones, homographs, synonyms and other spelling challenges

I would imagine that all languages contain synonyms - different words that have the same or very similar meanings. But English probably has more than its fair share of homophones (words that sound the same but have different spellings and different meanings) and homographs (those which are spelt the same but have different pronunciation and different meanings).

I have tried to simplify the differences between words with the same spelling and/or the same pronunciation and/or the same meaning here:

This diagram is inspired and adapted from one here.

You can see that we have three elements to consider: meaning, pronunciation and spelling. Sometimes they overlap, sometimes they don't. If we have two words that are exactly the same in meaning, pronunciation and spelling, then they are just two identical words. If the three elements are all different, then of course they are completely separate words. But you will see from the diagram that there are six other alternatives.

When spelling we have to watch out for:

• homophones: make sure you have the right spelling for the meaning you want to convey. These are probably the trickiest types of words and spell checkers can't help you with these;
• alternative spellings - there are a few words that have two possible spellings- I guess that's good news really - if you don't know how to spell one, spell the other! And some of these differences are between US and UK English, eg colour and color;
• homographs: remember sometimes one spelling can have two different pronunciations and meanings - try not to get confused by this;
• alternative pronunciations - again don't be misled by the differences in pronunciation, the spelling of these doesn't change.

In the next few postings we'll look at some homophones and some of those alternative spellings.

Meanwhile a challenge for you:

How many words that are homophones can you find in this posting (NOT including the diagram)? For example, I (eye).

Write them in the comments below.

British and American Spelling - spelling successfully reformed?

I've been asked several times to write about the differences between British and American spelling. I started to make a list and then got a bit bored, because there are lots of other such lists on the web. So at the end of this posting I'll link to some sites where you can find them (Check carefully though - some lists say that the British version of bank is *banque - rubbish! It's bank of course.) And there will be a much fuller exploration of British and American English in my book which I talked about in the last posting here.

But today let's look at how US spelling came to be different from English spelling. The big mover and shaker was Noah Webster. In "An Essay on the Necessity, Advantages, and Practicality of Reforming the Mode of Spelling and of Rendering the Orthography of Words Correspondent to Pronunciation" (phew - NOT a snappy title Mr Webster!) written in 1789, he says

It has been observed by all writers, on the English language, that the orthography or spelling of words is very irregular ... The question now occurs; ought the Americans to retain these faults which produce innumerable inconveniencies in the acquisition and use of the language, or ought they at once to reform these abuses, and introduce order and regularity into the orthography of the AMERICAN TONGUE?

Mr Webster thought reform was definitely needed. And he proposed the following changes:

1. "The omission of all superfluous or silent letters." So he wanted bread to be bred, friend to be frend and give to be giv.

2. "A substitution of a character that has a certain definite sound, for one that is more vague and indeterminate." This would give us *neer for near, *laf for laugh, *blud for blood, *wimmin for women and *korus for chorus.

3. "... ch in French derivatives should be changed into sh". So you would do your washing in a *masheen and a *shef would work in a restaurant. Other French spellings would also go, leaving us with *toor (tour) and *obleek (oblique).

4. "A trifling alteration in a character, or the addition of a point would distinguish different sounds, without the substitution of a new character." So here he proposed putting a little line across th to distinguish the voiced and unvoiced sounds. And he suggested using some dots over vowel letters to differentiate them.

Some of these suggestions were adopted at least in part but many of them the public just refused to use.

• our got changed to or, so colour became color, but it never got as far as *culor.
• re at the end of a word became er, so the British theatre became the US theater but for some reason not always (American National Theatre) and acre didn't become acer (because it would change the pronunciation).
• Cheque got shortened to check, but unique didn't ever make it to *uneek (or *yooneek).

So was it a good idea or has it just made spelling more complicated, especially for those learning English as a second or foreign language? Certainly American spellings do look at first sight more logical and regular. On the other hand, there are now often two different spellings to learn, the British and the American. And there are still a lot of inconsistencies. If the reforms had been more complete, maybe this would have been more useful but now there are perhaps more opportunities for confusion, not fewer.

And another issue for me is that English orthography seems to purposely use different spellings to distinguish between most homophones. So check and cheque sound the same but are spelt differently to show they have different meanings. Also tire (to get tired) and tyre (black rubber on the wheel) deliberately, I think, have different spellings. In simplifying these for US English, that difference is lost.

So what about spelling reform generally - does it work? My feeling is that it's something that comes naturally to a language and it's a difficult thing to force on the native speakers of that language. It wouldn't surprise me if *alot replaced a lot, not because anyone in authority has said it should but it is the way many native speakers write it. And maybe u will become the new spelling of you. Capital letters may die out (or is it just a phase we're going through?) and the days of the apostrophe seem numbered (except that it appears where it shouldn't!).

I'd love to hear your opinions:

• Is US English easier to spell than British English?
• Tell us about other varieties of English (Canadian, Australian, New Zealand, South African, Indian, Carribean, etc, etc)
• Can spelling reform work?
• Has it worked in other languages that you know?
• What other English spellings do you think might change?
  

Oh, and the links I promised you:
For a full list of the differences between US and UK English (and some other varieties):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_and_British_English_spelling_differences
A bit more user-friendly if you just want to check something quickly:
http://www2.gsu.edu/~wwwesl/egw/jones/differences.htm (but beware of *banque)
And if you want to read more from Noah Webster (where the info above came from):
http://edweb.sdsu.edu/people/DKitchen/new_655/webster_language.htm

Johanna