Why is ‘island’ spelled with an ’s’?
No, this isn’t a joke question. It’s not like: “Why does ‘bath’ have a silent ‘p’?” It is a question that did used to worry me. I would often be asked it. I taught English in the UK for a number of years to school children, college students, and undergraduates, and it was a subject that was always coming up.
Well perhaps I exaggerate - a little. They weren’t always asking me: “Sir, sir, sir … Why has ‘island’ got an ’s’ in it? We don’t say is-land, do we sir?” But the peculiarities of English spelling was a regular source of conversation and involved amusement, wonder, angst, frustration and frequent demoralization for both students and tutors. And in the UK, it is meant to be our language - we are the ones speaking and reading it all the time. It inhabits our brains. It is the natural language of our dreams. It is just that a significant proportion of UK natural speakers struggle with spelling accuracy. The millions learning English as a second language have my sympathy and respect.
Part of the problem is that the English language isn’t like a set of traffic lights. Traffic lights are simple. There is a one-to-one relationship between the symbol and the meaning. Red means stop. Green means go. In English there isn’t that one-to-one relationship between the symbol (the written letter) and the sound. There are over 45 distinct sounds in English and only 26 letters in the alphabet, so there are bound to be problems. At this point, spelling reform advocates traditionally throw in the ‘fish’ to illustrate the absurdities. They argue that the constructed word ‘ghoti’ could be pronounced ‘fish’ in English. You just take the f sound from the ‘gh’ in ‘enough’, the i sound from the ‘o’ in ‘women’ and the sh sound from the ‘ti’ in ’station’.
Defenders of the English spelling argue that this is an absurd example and that, in fact, English is approximately 75% regular and predictable. Nevertheless, 400 or so irregular spellings are amongst the most frequently used in the language - hence the strong impression of irregularity.
Apart from the lack of tight sound-symbol correspondence, English spelling has been complicated by other factors. The English language has always absorbed words from other languages and that influx has often brought in foreign spellings (for example: balcony, brusque, canoe, cocoa, grotto, intrigue, moustache, vogue). ‘Yacht’ appears to have a very strange spelling to most natural English speakers. The word appeared in English in the sixteenth century, almost certainly from the Norwegian ‘jaght’. In its 1500 year history English has borrowed words from over 350 languages.
The Norman French scribes, who largely controlled the written culture in England for a long time after the 1066 invasion, left a big mark on English spelling. For example, the very logical Old English ‘cw’ in ‘cwic’, and ‘cwen’ were replaced with the French ‘qu’ pattern in ‘quick’ and ‘queen’, and the logical OE ‘is’ and ’sinder’ became the more Frenchified ‘ice’ and ‘cinder’. (There are hundreds of other examples.)
Another major cause of spelling problems was the Great Vowel Shift, but that is best left for another day. And you don’t really want to go there now - believe me, you really, really don’t!
So, why is ‘island’ spelled with an ’s’? The answer is both simple and outrageous. It was the result of a pedantic cock-up!
During the Renaissance in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, scholars rediscovered the Classics and lots of Latin and Greek based words entered the language. (’Renaissance’ is, of course, a Latin word that English borrowed from Old French and forgot to give back.) Many writers followed a fashion of spelling words to indicate their Latin or Greek origin. For example, the ‘g’ was added to ‘reign’ to reflect the Latin root ‘regno’, and ‘b’ was inserted in ‘debt’ to reflect the Latin root ‘debitum’. But the problem was that this fashion was carried out in a haphazard and inaccurate way. In some cases people tried to demonstrate their learning without knowing what they were talking about (a problem that readers of this blog will be very familiar with). Because some pedants thought that ‘island’ was derived from the Latin ‘insula’ they inserted an ’s’ into the very logical ‘iland’. But, the Middle English ‘iland’ was derived from the Old English ‘ealand’ (sea-land, or land surrounded by the sea), and not from the Latin ‘insula’ (which later produced the French ‘isle’).
I laugh at the silent ‘p’ in ‘bath’. I hate the silent ‘b’ in ‘debt’ and the silent ‘g’ in ‘reign’. I really, really hate the silent ’s’ in ‘island’!
(Any spelling mistakes in this article, are, of course, deliberately included to test your proof-reading skills. A version of this article was first blogged on August 16, 2007.)
Interesting.
Although I’m baffled by the silent “p” in bath (I pronounce it “barth”). Unless its a clever libguistics joke about peeing in the bath
This is why I like Russian. Unless the two special letters are used to soften of harden the following sound, all the letters have one constant pronounciation.
Pandora Caitiff
The joke is about peeing rather than phonetics. Interesting point about Russian. From what you are saying there must be a much closer one to one relationship between sound and symbol.
Yep. There are 33 letters. Each letter has only one way of pronouncing it. Except for the two special letters. One softens the consanent it follows. The other means the consanent is not “palatalised”.
Mind you, its a fairly workmanlike language. There are no words like “the” or “a”. I quite like it’s clarity and straighforwardness.
Although I love the inticaies of English too. For eaxmple the difference between “readable” and “legible”. Or “competant” and “adequate”
As an ESL, I must appreciate your sympathy. I didn’t realize Britons had a problem with spelling. It certainly puts my struggles into perspective.
As languages go, I, frankly, prefer English to Spanish, just because its grammar is much simpler, though Spanish pronunciation is a piece of cake, which misleads many to believe the language is easy.
You can conjugate a verb in like 40 ways in Spanish, and most nouns and even adjectives have a gender. A lot of words have written-out accents on them, and the rules for when to accentuate a word have many exceptions.
I believe it is easier for a studious person to learn English well that to learn Spanish well, though anyone can survive by murdering both languages, I think.
Thank you for explaining the reason for some of the weirdly spelled English words. It never hurts to know why one’s life is miserable
Lorena
As someone who has tried with various degrees of success and failure to learn French, Italian, and Latin, I now appreciate your point about the relative simplicity of English grammar.
The arrival of the Vikings in England (who spoke a language that was close to Anglo-Saxon) meant that the two races communicated with a similar word stock, even if the endings (the tricky grammatical bits) were different. This throwing together and grinding down of two languages into one meant that the tricky bits got forgotten and that modern English does have the advantage of having natural rather than grammatical gender, and is, in comparison to other languages, largely uninflected - hence the simpler grammar.
Funnily enough my youngest son asked me why “island” had an “s” in it just a few days ago. And I gave him the wrong answer!
I love the English language and the way it has evolved to trip us all up and keep us on our toes.
I find that I can understand a number of languages I have never learnt just because I speak English and German, in particular Dutch and Danish.
Some languages are technically easier to master than English - Welsh for instance - simply because they are regular in grammar and pronunciation. But where’s the fun in that?
As a child I was taught to read using the initial teaching alphabet which sought to overcome the problems you encountered. I did read very easily but I am unsure whether it helped in the long run. For me it posed few problems as I was a bilingual child anyway so had no problems with taking on board a further “language” but I think others struggled when they had to convert back to proper reading. It is much easier to pick up the oddities of a language as a small child so I wonder if they were disadvantaged by having to encounter them at a later stage.
I also went through an Esperanto phase but that’s another story! This comment is long enough. Such a fascinating topic though.
Reluctant Blogger
It’s interesting to hear about someone who positively survived the ITA experiment. According to the critics it was meant to muck your spelling up for life. Clearly your linguistic skills managed to climb over that particular mountain.
I feel slightly relieved that you went through (and came out the other side) of the Esperanto phase. Always an encouraging sign.
Me and English: as you well know this relationship has been a tug of love, pain and sensitivity for many years and probably always will be.
Loved the blog and learnt a great deal from it. I have questioned the silent letters but believed they were there because some querky person just put them there one day. However, I did know English has been formulated by other language influences and that’s why it’s so original in its composition.
I regret hugely my school education in the main. I wish I had had more confidence and somone to believe in me to do well with school. The lack of believe all too readily was exposed with the English or the lack of it
No, I can’t see or hear the silent p in bath. I can’t see any spelling mistakes here -though perhaps that may be due to a little tiredness.
I have loved books all my life, struggled to write well as a child and never had the opportunity to study classics in any depth.
I suppose that is one of the reasons why I love to write now. Another casting away of my demons, the failures at English O-level intially. Sincerely though, I see this as an incredible,art form, tool and powerful in what language can do. How it can convey so many things.
I know it is never too late and have thought of going back to “school” and start at English all over again and see how much I really know. I fear I know little really. Writing more by chance and quess work than really knowing why you would spell or write something in a particular way.
Thanks for the posting. It makes me happy and sad all at once. Sad that I wish I could have known more earlier and happy that at least I may know something now.