Why are there so many different spelling rules in English? We have many words that sound the same but have different meanings (homophones). Here are some examples:
-ate, eight
-bare, bear
-cell, sell
-chord, cord
-genes, jeans
-know, no
-thyme, time
-we'd, weed
We have so many spelling options because English is an amalgam of many languages. Another way to describe it is that English has many roots. Welsh, Anglo-Saxon (Germanic), French, Latin, and Greek all have contributed words and their spellings to English. Here are some of their influences:
-C or G making the soft sound (/s/ or /j/) it come from Latin
-CH for /k/, PH for /f/, and Y for /i/ are from Greek
-silent letters such as k in know were added to make them seem French
Orton-Gillingham methods teach these spelling conventions so children who can't remember the way a word looks will be able to spell it by sound.
A fascinating book describing the progression of English from the beginning is The Adventure of English by Melvin Bragg. The content of the book has also been presented in a 5 hour documentary of the same name.
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