The Z Word
The Z Word
The Z Word
My column in the East Anglian Daily Times on 21 November 2012:
I am, I fear, in the bad books. A reader from Stowmarket has written to complain about my last column.
It was my usual rant about what currently passes as education policy. In particular I raised questions about school league tables. I said I wondered whether they are really as significant as everyone seems to think. I suggested that most parents look beyond them, seeking a school for their child that does well in results but which also offers a rich range of extra-curricular activities such as music, debating and sport.
To my mind, none of this is especially controversial. It’s commonsense.
But my critic wasn’t offended by what I said so much as how I said it. Her complaint focused on words like this: ‘criticize’ and ‘realize’. Here’s what she wrote:
“I was always taught that an 's' was correct. We are not American and I find it extremely annoying to have words such as 'realise' spelt as 'realize'. Surely a Headmaster should know better or is our language
changing?’
It’s an interesting point which many readers will agree with. So, with your indulgence, let me revert to my default role as English teacher and explore some of the vagaries of English spelling.
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Spelling in English was once a matter of personal taste. We know that Shakespeare and his contemporaries would spell the same word in a dozen or more ways. Look at any gravestone or plaque in old churchyard and you’ll notice spellings like ‘beare’ ‘resolvtion’ and ‘pitty’ (I’m citing these examples from a church I recently visited in Lancashire).
You’ll see the letters ‘f’ and ‘s’ used interchangeably and words like ‘book’ with an occasional extra ‘e’ on the end. You’ll notice unexpected capital letters on some nouns (such as ‘in this Place).
The reason is that the printing press wasn’t an English invention. When William Caxton set up the first press in Westminster in 1476, he relied on experts in the new technology from northern Europe. They weren’t familiar with English and many of the spellings we now view as quaint were actually the result of their typesetting errors.
Printing was the beginning of the standardisation of English spelling and it gained further momentum in the eighteenth century with the early dictionaries. Dr Johnson’s ground-breaking edition of 1755 was important in establishing fixed ways of spelling words, though it also contains some contradictory forms. And the good Doctor – like other writers of the day – used ‘–ze’ at the end of verbs like ‘philosophize’.
It’s in this period that grammarians began to make rules intended to show whether we were truly educated or not. In the eighteenth century we were first told not to end a sentence with a preposition (eg ‘this is food I don’t like the taste of’). The extra letters were dropped from words like ‘publicke’. And the warnings were issued not to start sentences with ‘And’.
Fifty years on, Noah Webster created the first American dictionary. Eager to show that American English had authority in its own right, he created some different rules – such as spellings like ‘color’ and ‘favorite’ dropping unnecessary vowels. He also mandated that American verb forms would end ‘-ize’ because it was more logically linked to how we pronounce words like ‘authorize’.
It’s a reminder of how our language changes, partly because of the way we use it (accents evolve and words swing in and out of fashion) and because of rules that are taught to us in school.
I always aim to use standard English spelling in my writing. I use the noun ‘practice’ where Americans would use ‘practise’ and I use ‘realise’ rather than ‘realize’.
But my computer isn’t so savvy. Its default version of English is American English, and I tend to write these articles in the bleary-eyed early hours of the morning.
Which may explain why occasionally you’ll get some celebratory Americanisms. And I wouldn’t get too agitated about it: after all, it has provided a handy excuse for a quick history of English spelling. And if there’s any remaining offense (American spelling), I can only apologize (ditto).
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Sixth Form joke:
I bought a second hand car from Bonnie Tyler. It runs well, but every now and then it falls apart.
Geoff Barton
22 November 2012
Thursday, 22 November 2012