The Blogginator, or Bloggenater, or ...

Last week I was editing a Grade 4 science program that included a test question about "pollenation." I knew it should be "pollination," but that made me wonder how "pollen" with an "e" becomes "pollination" with an "i." (Those of you who tune in here regularly for recipes, cute anecdotes about my kids and cats, and movie reviews might want to go check your email or see what's up on Facebook right about now.)

It's a wonder to me that anyone ever learns English as a second language. English is loaded with irregular spellings, and there's no rhyme or reason to how endings go. Why does "ring" change to "rang" but "bring" changes to "brought"? Who can explain "deceive/deception/deceit" and "receive/reception/receipt"? Probably someone, but not me.

I suspect that a lot of English's strange spellings stem from pronunciation. For instance, "absorb" probably becomes "absorption" because "absorbtion" sounds like "absorption" anyhow—so somewhere along the way, the spelling caught up with the pronunciation. (Etymologists among my readership are welcome to chime in here!)

English contains countless examples of strange spelling changes, like "fly/flown" and "break/broke," but what interests me are the ones like "pollen/pollination"—the ones where just one or two letters change, for no apparent reason. I put the question to my Twitter pals and got tons of replies. Here are some of the most interesting:

pronounce --> pronunciation
float --> flotation
religious --> sacrilegious
enemy --> inimical
empire --> imperial
governor --> gubernatorial
fire --> fiery

It's amazing enough that any of us learn to be good spellers, but to imagine an English learner coming from a language with strict spelling rules (like Italian), it must be a daunting task indeed.

Many thanks to EditorMark, GrammarGirl, sethlipkin, 4ndyman, stevebwriter, and all the others who contributed ideas for this post.

Comments

[Margaret]

When my students tell me how hard French is, I remind them of some of this--as well as many words that are spelled the same but pronounced differently. (or spelled differently but pronounced the same!)

[Cheri Wiles]

I pride myself on being a strong speller, but honestly, "despair" and "desperation" will catch me up every time. (Dang. Hope I spelled them correctly there ...)

[Elena]

I'm not convinced on the religious--sacrilegious example. Sacrilegious comes from the word sacrilege, not religion. There must be a similar root to both words though. I wish an etymologist would explain it.

[raych]

*geeks out*

Ok, so a 'p' is basically a voiceless 'b' (that is, you're making a hum when you say the 'b' but other than that they're the same lip and tongue movements [see also: k/g, t/d, f/v) and letters tend to take on the voicedness of the letter following them, so 'absorb' ends with a voiced 'b' but the voiceless 't' in 'absorption' steals the voicedness from the 'b' and makes it a 'p.' You're probably right about the spelling catching up with the pronunciation.

Linguistics! Nerdily fascinating!!

[Viktor]

Sacrilege is from sacri-lege - one who steals sacred things. (OED says verbatim "f. sacri- sacer sacred + -leg-, leg{ebreve}re to gather, after the phrase sacrum or sacra legere to purloin sacred objects, to commit sacrilege".)

Religion is a messier word. OED says "in Anglo-Norman, originally in commune religion, translating post-classical Latin catholica religio". RE- is a known prefix but OED then says "+ a second element of uncertain origin;" (and proceeds to give two possible explanations for the suffix). It seems likely that that suffix is the same as in sacrilege of course.

Anyhow, I didn't really comment to show that I own a dictionary -- but to say that I am one of those strange non-native speakers. Of course your language is hard, but any language is hard. Most of my English developed during my high school years, when I made it a rule that I had to look up every word that I was not certain of, or at least feed it through spell check.

I write and read quite a lot of English, but for many years I rarely spoke English - this means that my main problem with English comes in those situations where pronunciation 'destroys' spelling.

An early failure of mine was when I went to England and had to take the bus to Reading, and assumed that it had the same pronunciation as reading (the verb).

Anyhow, I didn't mean to be long winded; the bottom line is that it is just a matter of applying yourself a little.