English orthography
According to O'Grady,et al.(1989).English
orthography is the set of convections for representing language in written
form.In this section,we will consider the nature of English orthography .
Orthography is a system for representing a language
in written form.It encompasses more than the symbols that represent the sound
(often called characters,letters or graphomes)..
According to Muhammad,(2014:6),when students learn a
second or foreign language, they face some overlaps because of the very
different phoneme systems of both languages.So,when they try to speak a second
language they produce the sounds which are closest to the sounds that are
existed in their mother tongue. For examlpe, most Sudanese speakers pronounce
the word park and cheap as bark and sheep.This kind of pronunciation problem
creates a big hindrance in the process of communication among the speakers.
Scholars in the field of teaching have stated that
English orthography is the alphabetic spelling system used by the English
language.English orthography,like other alphabetical orthographies,exhibits a
set of relationships between speech sounds and the corresponding written
words.In standard English spelling,however,nearly every sound can be spelled in
more than one way,and most spelling and all letters can be pronouced in more
one way and often in many different ways.This is largely due to the complex
history of the English language,together with the absence of systematic reforms
implemented in contrast to the position in a number of the other languages.Some
of the problems have been noticed that learners of English as a foreign
language,especially in Sudanese universities have problems with pronunciation
and spelling when using English.So orthographic system is either ignored or mistaken in those productive skills
.Therefore,this reflects negatively on learners' on written and spoken skills.
If indeed the origin of the alphabet writing system
were based on a correspondence between single symbol and single sound type,then
one might reasonably ask why there is such a frequent mismatch between the
forms of written English and the sounds of spoken English.The spelling of
written English was very largely fixed in the form that was used when printing
was introduced in fifteenth century England.Since the fifteenth century,the
pronunciation of spoken English has undergone substantial changes.Yule,(1996.)
Warren (2007),describes English orthography as
"In English words,graph means write;get means carth;phone means
sound".Full definition of orthography,it is the art of writing words with
the proper letters according to standard usage.In linguistics the term
orthography is often used to refer to any method of writing a language,without
judgment as to right and wrong,with s scientific understanding that orthographic
standardization exists on a range of strength of convection.The original sense
of the word,though,implies a dichotomy of correct and incorrect, and the word
is still most often used to refer specifically to a thoroughly standardized,
prescriptively correct, way of writing a language.
Yule,(2010).English orthography or spelling of
contemporary English allow for a lot of variation in how each sound is
represented .The vowel sound represented by /i/ is written in various ways, as
sho i (critique), ie (belief) ,ei
(receipt) ,ea (meat) ,ee (queen) and eo (people)
And the
consonant sound represented by /s/ had various spelling,
i.
s(sugar)
ii.
ss (tissue)
iii.
ssi (mission).
Part of the reason for this is that the English
language is full of words borrowed, often with their spelling, from other
language,as in "ph"for /f/ in the Greek borrowing alphabet and
orthography.
The English writing system is alphabetic in a very
loose sense. Some reasons for this irregular correspondence betweePn sound and
symbolic representation may be found in a number of historical influences on
the form of written English. The spelling of written English was largely fixed
in the form that was used when printing was introduced into 15century England.
At that time, there were a number of convection regarding the written
representation of words that had been derived from forms used in writing other languages,
notably Latin and French. Example qu replaced older English cw in words like
queen.
An irregularity a frequently expressed complaint
about English orthography is that it does not establish a one to one
relationship between symbols and sounds. The following excerpt from a some
problems with English orthography
a) Some
letters do not represented any sound in a particular word.Example through,sign,give,palm.
b) A
group of two or more letters can be used together to represent a single
sound.Example,think,chip,ship.
c) A
single letter can represent a cluster of two or more
sounds.Example,saxophone/ks/,exile/gz/.
d) The
same letter can represent different sound in different
words.Example,on/a/,bone/ow/.
e) The
same sound can be represented by different letter in different
words.Example,rude,loop,soup,new,see,to,two/uw/.
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