Spelling pronunciation: Encyclopedia II - Spelling pronunciation - Spelling pronunciations and history

Spelling pronunciation - Spelling pronunciations and history

Spelling pronunciations often restore ancient pronunciation patterns. For example, centuries ago, the word often did have a [t], heard elsewhere in oft. The [t] dropped by a regular process before the ending -en, as elsewhere in soften, moisten, fasten. After the [t] fell, often continued to be spelled with t. The current tendency to pronounce the [t] thus restores an ancient rendition.

The word palm (in the sense, 'palm of the hand') was originally Latin, and had an [l] in that language. The word was inherited into French, where it lost the [l]: paume. From the French it was borrowed into Middle English, still without [l]: paume. Scholars, aware of its Latin origin, then introduced a (then-silent) 'l' into the spelling. The rendering of this l in pronunciation is apparently a fairly recent phenomenon.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Spelling pronunciations and history", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki