The History of English Podcast · Kevin Stroud

Episode 184: Spelling Says a Lot (Part 1)

·1 hr 21 min·1 clip

Welcome to the History of English podcast, a podcast about the history of the English language

The episode returns to the problem of English spelling. It treats the written language as evidence for older pronunciation, not just a set of conventions. The host points out that English spelling looks arbitrary until the older sound system is put back in place. That idea frames the discussion around the early 1600s, when English was beginning to spread more widely around the world. The episode starts with the relationship between letters and sounds. It keeps that link in view as it explains why the old spellings matter for historical reconstruction. The focus then narrows to the vowel spellings au and aw. These spellings are presented as practical solutions to a sound that did not have a single dedicated letter. The host breaks the sound into an ow-like diphthong and explains why scribes chose the letters they did. The older sound is described as beginning with an ah-like element and ending with a u-like element. Because that combination fit the available alphabetic tools, writers used a and u together to represent it. The episode makes clear that this was never a perfect system. It was a workaround. Over time, the sound itself changed. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the older ow sound shifted toward the aw sound heard in many modern words. The episode keeps the historical timeline in view as that change unfolds. It notes that late-sixteenth- and early-seventeenth-century spelling reformers still describe the earlier pronunciation. Robert Robinson's 1617 discussion is presented as an early sign that the vowel was starting to move. The host suggests that speakers in the early 1600s would mostly still have said forms closer to cows and tout. A few speakers, though, were already drifting toward the later pronunciation. From there, the episode widens back out to the series' larger project. It reminds listeners that many spellings make sense once older pronunciation is taken into account. That broader point sets up the next section on letter B. B is a contrast because its history is much more straightforward. The episode closes by setting up the next installment, which will continue the survey of the alphabet and the early modern sound of English.

As heard by us

A close look at how au and aw help reconstruct early 1600s English pronunciation.

The episode looks at how spelling can help recover the sound of English in the early 1600s, when the language was moving around the world. Its close attention to au and aw shows how old pronunciation can stay visible in writing long after speech has shifted, and that gives the…

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Hear how au and aw still point back to an older English vowel sound.

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