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Another type of spelling characteristic is related to word origin. For example, when representing a vowel, y represents the sound / ɪ / in some words borrowed from Greek (reflecting an original upsilon ), whereas the letter usually representing this sound in non-Greek words is the letter i .
An orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, punctuation, word boundaries, capitalization, hyphenation, and emphasis.. Most national and international languages have an established writing system that has undergone substantial standardization, thus exhibiting less dialect variation than the spoken language.
Spelling may reflect a folk etymology (as in the English words hiccough and island, so spelt because of an imagined connection with the words cough and isle), or distant etymology (as in the English word debt in which the silent b was added under the influence of Latin). Spelling may reflect morphophonemic structure rather than the purely ...
A spelling pronunciation is the pronunciation of a word according to its spelling when this differs from a longstanding standard or traditional pronunciation. Words that are spelled with letters that were never pronounced or that were not pronounced for many generations or even hundreds of years have increasingly been pronounced as written, especially since the arrival of mandatory schooling ...
Learning proper spelling by rote is a traditional element of elementary education, and divergence from standard spelling is often perceived as an indicator of low intelligence, illiteracy, or lower class standing. [4] Spelling tests are commonly used to assess a student's mastery of the words in the spelling lessons the student has received so ...
Words like rally, shallow and swallow are not covered here because the /l/ is followed by a vowel; instead, earlier rules apply. Nor are words like male covered, which had long /aː/ in Middle English.) /ɑː/ when followed by /lm/, as in palm, calm, etc. (The /l/ has dropped out in pronunciation.)
An etymological dictionary discusses the etymology of the words listed. Often, large dictionaries, such as the Oxford English Dictionary and Webster's, will contain some etymological information, without aspiring to focus on etymology. [1] Etymological dictionaries are the product of research in historical linguistics. For many words in any ...
Etymonline, or Online Etymology Dictionary, sometimes abbreviated as OED (not to be confused with the Oxford English Dictionary, which the site often cites), is a free online dictionary that describes the origins of English words, written and compiled by Douglas R. Harper.