ABSTRACT
O'Connor (1973: 145) defines spelling pronunciation as ‘bringing pronunciation into line with the orthography’. Strang (1970: 33) explains why it is so much a nineteenth- and twentieth-century phenomenon: since the requirements of universal education in 1870, she says,
we have been producing young people who through written material are exposed to a far wider range of experience than their familial background … afforded. Reinforcing the tendencies which result is a general sense of the authority of written forms.
