Why is English so hard to spell?

For many Americans, spelling bees are a part of growing up in the United States. The challenge is obvious. From the moment kids begin to learn to read, there are clear differences between how words are pronounced and how they are spelled. Those who speak English as their first language may not realize that this is virtually unique among the major alphabetic languages. As John McWhorter, author of "Words on the Move," writes, "English spelling is a tragic accident that steers us away from what's happening in our mouths."

Languages like Italian or Finnish have spelling and pronunciation that line up much more readily. According to a paper by Philip Seymour in the British Journal of Psychology, children learning reading and writing in languages like these can achieve greater than 90% accuracy by the end of their first year, while English students are far below this level even after years of learning. English is the collector and assimilator of the world's words and retains all their color and irregularities. The spelling bee transforms all this craziness into a feature, not a bug.

A brief history of the English language in three paragraphs

One

English, originally a Germanic language, derives its grammar and basic vocabulary from German and Dutch. Over the years, the British isles saw waves of invasions — the Romans, the Vikings, and then, in 1066, the Normans, who put French in the driver's seat for several generations. Old English was spoken during this time, but documents around governance and legal matters were largely in French, while Latin was used by academics and religious orders. Thus, the English vocabulary grew larger than Germanic or Romance languages as French and Latin words entered into the common lexicon.

Two

The invention and spread of the printing press in the late 1400's spurred the growth of record keeping, manuscripts and other written documents which in turn helped solidify the norms around spelling. During this era, pronunciation generally followed the spellings and vice versa. But that was a short lived luxury.

Three

Language normally evolves fairly slowly as words are passed back and forth between geographies and generations. However, in the 1500's, a phenomenon known as 'The Great Vowel Shift' spread dramatically through southern England, shifting the pronunciation of all long vowels. The word "bite," for example, was pronounced closer to "beet" in 1400, before shifting through the centuries to our current sound. The Great Vowel Shift and subsequent permutations divorced the written from the spoken word, leaving a legacy that is still with us today. While this can make English more challenging to learn, it also functions as a kind of time capsule hidden in the spelling. Dr. Mark Sietsema, an announcer for the Scripps National Spelling Bee, appreciates that feature. "It's beautiful the way the words preserve, like in amber, all the facts of history."

Inconsistent consonants 

Some letters in English have come to represent more than one sound. Individual reasons vary, but these letters can often vary, but these letters can often be found in words that have been borrowed from outside languages (called loanwords) and retain parts of their original pronunciation and spelling. This can effectively create multiple sounds for single consonants, such as the letter C sounding like an "S", which is directly inherited from French.

Photo: Reuters

The vowelphabet

There are 26 letters in the English language, and roughly 44 sounds, depending on dialect*. Consonants are more straightforward, with 24 of the sounds representing 21 consonants. They are made by limiting airflow with teeth, lips or tongue while speaking. The other 20 or so are vowel sounds and are shaped by the unobstructed mouth and throat. Since so many sounds are created by just five letters (plus sometimes Y), linguists have a diagram to show how and where they are formed in the mouth.

Where vowels are formed in the mouth

As each of the words are pronounced in the diagram below, the tongue is moving to shape the vowel sound. In the center is the schwa sound represented by an upside- down "e" - it is the most natural and relaxed sound made by humans, with no effort made by the throat or tongue.

Notably, at the center of all the sounds is the universal schwa sound. The schwa sound ("uhhh") is formed in the middle of the mouth and requires no effort with the mouth or throat. Dr. Sietsema looks at it as the beginning of all other vowels. "The schwa is a lump of clay, and everything else you do with your lips, tongue and palette shapes that clay into the individual vowels."

Photo: Reuters

The schwa, perhaps because it is the vowel sound requiring the least effort to produce, has become fairly pervasive in English. It is often seen sneaking its way into pronunciations as they evolve or to provide emphasis ("please" becomes "PUH-lease!"). Most vowels represent a few sounds, though the schwa is unique in that its sound can be conjured by all of the vowels in the alphabet. So it can be particularly challenging to reverse engineer a word containing the schwa sound from just hearing it spoken. Which is why this sound at the center of the English language has become known as the bane of all spelling bee contestants.

The Bee

The Scripps National Spelling Bee has been held every year since 1925, with slight pauses for WWII and the recent pandemic. The bee's roots are drawn from the 1800's, when smaller and more local grassroots competitions occurred across the states. They used a popular spelling book by Noah Webster (of later dictionary fame) that sought to standardize spelling and remove British forms such as the ou in colour and the k from musick. The Scripps National Spelling Bee carries on the tradition by using the Merriam-Webster dictionary as its source of words to this day.

This year, 234 qualifying spellers under the age of 16 from all over the country will compete. Spellers will have two minutes to decode the words the announcers present. During the first 90 seconds, they can ask up to five questions that may unlock information about how the word has evolved in English and, hopefully, clues to its proper spelling.

Dr. Sietsema explains the process with a sample word and shows the complexity that can arise within the two minutes each speller has to come up with the correct spelling.

The word is… "bor-buh-RIG-muss"

This is a tricky word — it has four syllables, two of which are the dreaded schwa sound. It could potentially be spelled a dozen different ways.

NONE OF THESE ARE CORRECT

•    boarborigmous 
•    bourbarigmus    
•    borborygmas   
•    borbirigmys

Time for some investigation.

What is the part of speech?

Noun

A noun means the end of the word is probably not -ous, which is more common with adjectives. Few nouns end with -ous, and those that do tend to have a full U sound, not a schwa (couscous, rendezvous).

But that still leaves us with many potential vowels that could spell the last schwa-

•    Christmas   
•    dermis   
•    thermos    
•    chlamys

So on to the next question. . .

The language of origin?

It's from an originally Greek word that passed through Latin.

Greek nouns often end in -os but going through Latin, these nouns often have the -os ending changed to the Latin analog -us, so odds are that our word ends in -mus.

Additionally, Greek nouns that end in -os often have a second pronunciation with a full "AH" sound for the vowel (cosmos), which then leads us to ask. . .

Are there any alternate pronunciations?

None

This helps to reinforce the ending -us. It also tells us that no unstressed syllables are being dropped, which can mean unpronounced vowels.

FOUR SYLLABLE WORDS OFTEN PRONOUNCED AS THREE

•    interesting 
•    temperature    
•    vegetable

Only one pronunciation also means the first part is likely a -bor spelling. Especially since it's Greek. Most other forms are Germanic (boar, Boer, boor, Bohr)

bor . . . . . mus but what about the second syllable?

SECOND SYLLABLE POSSIBILITIES

•    borbar    borber    
•    borbir     borbor  
•    borbur    borbyr

Finding the definition may help next. . .

What is the meaning of the word?

A rumbling sound made by the movement of gas in the intestine.

At this point, the speller would be wondering what the Greek roots of the word are. With only two words in English from ancient Greek borboryzein, it is rather obscure and unlikely to be known. Hearing the word in a sentence could help though. . .

Could you use this word in a sentence?

"Ben was embarrassed by the borborygmus he experienced during the church service."

This paints a picture of a recurring instance, and the word itself may illustrate the growl of an empty stomach "bor . . . bor. . . bor. .bor" The repetition in the first two syllables is not uncommon and linguists call this "reduplication" which simply doubles the spelling (murmur, choo-choo, clop-clop)

so we now have borbor....mus

Final answer

Since it's Greek, the third syllable is likely an i (stigma, enigma) or y (kerygma, sphygmometer) and it's down to a best guess. Some spellers will reason that spelling bees like to use tricky words and will go with the "y" while others may opt for the straightforward "i"

Tricky is the right vibe - the "y" is correct!

borborygmus

The number of words the contestants could potentially be tested on during the first two rounds of the National Spelling Bee comes to about 4,000. The participants are tested on the spelling of these words in the first round, and on their meanings in the second. After that, any word in the dictionary is fair game, which jumps the word count from 4,000 to around 470,000, and the words become progressively more difficult in each successive round.

Lots of words, but how many?

Up until round two of the Scripps National Spelling Bee, spellers are tested on 4,000 words determined by the organizers. In round three and beyond, all the words in the Merriam-Webster Unabridged are fair game, with each round using increasingly more difficult words. For comparison, the average vocabulary of an eight-year-old is about 10,000 words, and a native speaker is between 20-35,000.

In the last decade, spellers have raised the intensity of the competition, with ties occurring in 2014, 2015 and 2016, culminating with the "octo-champs", when eight spellers were all crowned co-champion in 2019. The spelling bee has adjusted the rules slightly since then by implementing a more challenging second round when spellers are tested on word meanings before moving into the rest of the spelling rounds. And to avoid the likelihood of a tie, a lightning round spell-off will determine who to crown as the one true winner.

Editorial Director for the Scripps National Spelling Bee Corrie Loeffler thinks the spelling bee's enduring appeal is derived from the hard work the spellers put in. "There is a precociousness that is so fun to watch and really easy to play along and that makes it fun," she said. "But there is also high drama in a spelling competition. It demands pretty much perfection from its champion and there aren't a lot of competitions out there that expect that."