Web Activity 8.8 Predict the future of English orthography

Because of its association with education and formal institutions, the spelling of words tends to be more firmly fixed in a language than their pronunciation—where our culture can be quite tolerant of alternative pronunciations of the same word, we tend to subscribe to the notion that the way in which a word is written is a clear matter of right and wrong.

However, just like spoken language, orthography is subject to certain pressures from variation and language change. In recent centuries, the firm control of written language by editors, educators, and publishers has limited this variation. But with the rise of the internet, people with various educational backgrounds can all publish material in English without having the content pass through an editorial filter to make sure that it conforms to the standard conventions. As a result, readers are getting more and more exposure to nonstandard forms, which in turn makes their representations of the written words more unstable. As their own representations become less stable, they are more likely to introduce nonstandard spellings into their own writing. All of this is a recipe for language change in the English writing system.

Over the next week, keep a log of any nonstandard spellings of English words that you come across. Next to each example, note where it came from (e.g., newspaper, blog post, email, storefront, etc.?)

To get you started, you might try keeping an eye out in particular for:

• The use or non-use of apostrophes (it’s versus its; your versus you’re, etc.)
• The spellings of words that sound the same or very similar, but have different standard orthographies (affect, effect)
• The spelling of very uncommon words

1. Are there some nonstandard forms that seem to crop up with particular frequency?
2. In what media or communicative contexts are you most likely to see nonstandard spellings?
3. Are there certain common nonstandard forms that have begun to creep into your own written language (for example, are you prone to having certain forms identified as incorrect by your instructors? Do you find yourself even wondering what the correct form actually is?)
4. Based on your observations, can you make any predictions about whether English orthography is likely to shift in the direction of certain nonstandard spellings? (For example, a telltale sign of shifting conventions would be the occasional appearance of nonstandard forms even in “official” publications like newspapers and magazines, or the heavy use of certain forms by an entire generation of language users.)
5. If some of your predicted changes were to come to pass, what are the implications from a psycholinguistic perspective? Would these changes affect ease of learning or using the writing system? Would they lead to problematic ambiguity?