full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Arika Okrent: Why don't "tough" and "dough" rhyme?

Unscramble the Blue Letters


So, things were already pretty messy. Then, in 1476, the printing press arrived in England. Some of the people working the psseres may have mainly sepkon Flemish— not English. And they were given manuscripts that varied widely in their spelling. Without standardization, different writers went with various spellings based in part on what they happened to encounter while reading.

Many wdors had a multitude of sliepglns. The word “dough,” for iannscte, used to be spelled in all these ways and was originally pronounced “dach.” The guttural Germanic sound it enedd with was one the Latin alphabet didn’t cover. It eventually came to be represented with “g-h.” But, for some “g-h” words, English spkreaes eventually dropped the guttural sound altogether; for others, they ended up pronouncing it as “f” instead, as exemplified in “dough” versus “tough.” Printing presses memorialized the selilnpg even though the pronunciation elvautenly changed. And this wasn’t just the case with “g-h.” Some letters in other words also fell silent: words like knife, gnat, and wrong all contain the vestiges of past pronunciations.

Open Cloze


So, things were already pretty messy. Then, in 1476, the printing press arrived in England. Some of the people working the _______ may have mainly ______ Flemish— not English. And they were given manuscripts that varied widely in their spelling. Without standardization, different writers went with various spellings based in part on what they happened to encounter while reading.

Many _____ had a multitude of _________. The word “dough,” for ________, used to be spelled in all these ways and was originally pronounced “dach.” The guttural Germanic sound it _____ with was one the Latin alphabet didn’t cover. It eventually came to be represented with “g-h.” But, for some “g-h” words, English ________ eventually dropped the guttural sound altogether; for others, they ended up pronouncing it as “f” instead, as exemplified in “dough” versus “tough.” Printing presses memorialized the ________ even though the pronunciation __________ changed. And this wasn’t just the case with “g-h.” Some letters in other words also fell silent: words like knife, gnat, and wrong all contain the vestiges of past pronunciations.

Solution


  1. words
  2. presses
  3. eventually
  4. instance
  5. spellings
  6. speakers
  7. spoken
  8. spelling
  9. ended

Original Text


So, things were already pretty messy. Then, in 1476, the printing press arrived in England. Some of the people working the presses may have mainly spoken Flemish— not English. And they were given manuscripts that varied widely in their spelling. Without standardization, different writers went with various spellings based in part on what they happened to encounter while reading.

Many words had a multitude of spellings. The word “dough,” for instance, used to be spelled in all these ways and was originally pronounced “dach.” The guttural Germanic sound it ended with was one the Latin alphabet didn’t cover. It eventually came to be represented with “g-h.” But, for some “g-h” words, English speakers eventually dropped the guttural sound altogether; for others, they ended up pronouncing it as “f” instead, as exemplified in “dough” versus “tough.” Printing presses memorialized the spelling even though the pronunciation eventually changed. And this wasn’t just the case with “g-h.” Some letters in other words also fell silent: words like knife, gnat, and wrong all contain the vestiges of past pronunciations.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
english speakers 3
vowel shift 3
english spelling 2
english language 2
french speakers 2
printing press 2


Important Words


  1. alphabet
  2. arrived
  3. based
  4. case
  5. changed
  6. cover
  7. dropped
  8. encounter
  9. ended
  10. england
  11. english
  12. eventually
  13. exemplified
  14. fell
  15. germanic
  16. gnat
  17. guttural
  18. happened
  19. instance
  20. knife
  21. latin
  22. letters
  23. manuscripts
  24. memorialized
  25. messy
  26. multitude
  27. originally
  28. part
  29. people
  30. press
  31. presses
  32. pretty
  33. printing
  34. pronounced
  35. pronouncing
  36. pronunciation
  37. pronunciations
  38. reading
  39. represented
  40. sound
  41. speakers
  42. spelled
  43. spelling
  44. spellings
  45. spoken
  46. standardization
  47. varied
  48. vestiges
  49. ways
  50. widely
  51. word
  52. words
  53. working
  54. writers
  55. wrong