There are twenty-six letters in the English alphabet and approximately forty-four phonemes, which are the ¡®distinct units of sound¡¯ (Hawker 2001: 664) that make up words. This automatically means that there must be a mismatch between the spellings and sounds of words simply because there are not nearly enough letters to spell each sound. There are no letters to represent the sound made by two consonants being joined together such as ¡®ch¡¯. Those who can easily speak and write English will of course automatically know what sounds these spellings make. However, for someone learning the spelling conventions of English there could easily be complications. For example the three words ¡®charade¡¯, ¡®cholesterol¡¯ and ¡®church¡¯; they all begin with the identical spelling of ¡®ch¡¯ but

There are some letters in words, which no dialects of English pronounce, and these occurred through alterations (sometimes accidental) in previous centuries. The establishment of the printing press in the fifteenth century can be accredited with many of the problems we have today. As the language evolved and words like ¡®knee¡¯ and ¡®time¡¯ (Crystal 2003: 275) dropped the now silent letters the printing presses were not changed and so the spellings remained up until this day.

Regional difference in speech is one of the major causes for mismatches between spoken and written language. Regional variations are not taken into account during the spelling of a word whereas there are very distinct differences when it comes to actual speech. Take for example cockney English where often there is a ¡®notable omission¡¯ (Gimson 1994: 85) of the pulomic, egressive, central, voiceless, glottal, fricative [h] (McMahon, lecture dated October 14 2003) consonant in a number of words; the word ¡®hotel¡¯ usually [ho?t?l] becomes [o?t?l]. A person who speaks cockney would of course still write the English language with all of the [h] letters still included. This does not make the speech incorrect; it is simply a dialectal difference, which the spelling system does not account for. In the same way many British dialects do not pronounce an [?] sound even if it is included in the spelling. Rhotic accents are the exception with words like ¡®father¡¯ being pronounced [f¨»:o??] rather than the SSB version of [f¨»:o?].

Some topics in this essay:
Rules Reasons, Geoffrey Finch, British SSB, Standard English, Speakers English, , English French, French German, David Crystal, written language, spelling system, Davenport Hannahs, spoken written, crystal 2003, english spelling, english language, spoken written language, spelling words, written speech, craigie 1928 85, differences spoken, english pronounce, english spelling system, spoken written speech, differences spoken written,