Blackwell Reference Online

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Etymology is a rival principle of phonemic representation in many alphabetic orthographies. It is evidence of the speech community's linguistic awareness and its readiness to acknowledge the independent existence of the written norm of its language. In English etymological spelling is rampant, because the spelling system has not been adjusted for several centuries. For example, <w> in acknowledge indicates the etymological relation with to know . ‘Silent’ letters such as <l> in folk , <k> in knife and <w> in wrestle are etymological remnants. Etymological spellings are often preserved to indicate morphological derivation, as in many learned words of Latin origin. Thus sign- in signal and paradigm- in paradigmatic are spelt phonemically, but as isolated words they contain a letter, <g>, which has no counterpart in the phonemic representation. In this way etymological spellings relate to other words belonging to the same paradigm, or to historically earlier word forms. See also spelling . Reading Smith 1980. ... log in or subscribe to read full text