ABSTRACT
One reason is that our spelling system is essentially a mixture of two systems: the system used in England before the Norman Conquest in 1066 was mixed with a new system introduced by the Norman-French scribes. We therefore find two spellings for the same sound (as in the final sound of mouse and mice) or two sounds for the same spelling (as in the first sound of get and gem). Later borrowings of words from foreign languages – particularly from French, Latin and Greek – brought additional spellings; you will recognise as unusual such spellings as the ch of chorus, the ph of philosophy, the g of genre, the oi of reservoir, and the oup of coup. Some spellings were changed to bring words nearer to the form they had in other languages, and the changes introduced letters that have never been pronounced in English. One example is the b in debt: the b was present in the Latin word from which the French equivalent came, but English borrowed the word from French when French no longer had a b. Other examples of such changes are the b in doubt, the l in salmon, and the p in receipt.
