a fibrous substance which forms the external skeletons of some insects, spiders and crustaceans'. The word actually begins with a [k] sound but an individual who had not already come across the word would not know this, the spelling would not help them. .
In the same way different sounds can be created from the same spelling, different spellings can be used to create the same sound. This has created a number of homophones (Ashby 1995: 1) in the English language, these are words, which look different but sound identical. Illustrations include weight' and wait' which both have the identical phonetic spelling of [weIt] or horse' and hoarse' which is phonetically spelt [h?:s]. Regional differences in speech affect the pronunciation of words. In Standard Southern British (SSB) the two words look' and luck' are phonetically spelt [l?k] and [l?k] whereas in northern dialects they are homophones both pronounced [l?k]. .
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?].
