DICTIONARY OF THE BRITISH ENGLISH SPELLING SYSTEM Dictionary of the British English Spelling System Greg Brooks Emeritus Professor of Education, University of Sheffield http://www.openbookpublishers.com © 2015 Greg Brooks Version 1.1. Minor edits made July 2017 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0). This license allows you to share, copy, distribute and transmit the work; to adapt the work and to make commercial use of the work providing attribution is made to the author (but not in any way that suggests that he endorses you or your use of the work). Attribution should include the following information: Brooks, Greg, Dictionary of the British English Spelling System. Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2015. http://dx.doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0053 In order to access detailed and updated information on the license, please visit http://www.openbookpublishers.com/product/325#copyright Further details about CC BY licenses are available at http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0 All the external links were active on the 19/07/2017 unless otherwise stated. Digital material and resources associated with this volume are available at http://www.openbookpublishers.com/product/325#resources ISBN Paperback: 978-1-78374-107-6 ISBN Hardback: 978-1-78374-108-3 ISBN Digital (PDF): 978-1-78374-109-0 ISBN Digital ebook (epub): 978-1-78374-110-6 ISBN Digital ebook (mobi): 978-1-78374-111-3 DOI: 10.11647/OBP.0053 Cover image: Spiegel by Jaume Plensa (2010). http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/ Category:Yorkshire_Sculpture_Park#mediaviewer/File:YSP_11.jpg All paper used by Open Book Publishers is SFI (Sustainable Forestry Initiative), and PEFC (Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification Schemes) Certified. Printed in the United Kingdom and United States by Lightning Source for Open Book Publishers (Cambridge, UK). To Maxine Burton, for being such a patient and reliable native-speaker informant, and for tolerating my obsession for so long. Contents List of tables xvii About the author xxi Acknowledgments xxiii A 40-year gestation xxv How to use this book xxix 1. Introduction 1 1.1 Context 1 1.2 Aims 2 1.3 Some terminology 3 1.4 Phonemes 4 1.5 Long and short vowels 5 1.6 Graphemes 5 1.7 Consonant clusters and ‘blends’ 6 1.8 Split digraphs and ‘magic <e>’ 6 1.9 Stem words and derived forms 7 1.10 Positions within words 7 1.11 Open and closed syllables 9 1.12 ‘2-phoneme graphemes’ 9 1.13 ‘Regular’ correspondences 10 2. The phonemes of spoken English 13 2.1 Choosing an accent to analyse 13 2.2 How many phonemes? 14 2.3 The consonant phonemes of Received Pronunciation 15 2.4 The vowel phonemes of Received Pronunciation 16 2.5 Polysyllabic words and word stress 18 viii Dictionary of the British English Spelling System 3. The phoneme-grapheme correspondences of English, 1: 19 Consonants 3.1 The general picture: the regular spellings of English 19 consonant phonemes 3.2 Order of description 21 3.3 Frequencies 22 3.4 The main system and the rest 23 3.5 Consonants with doubled spellings which are rare in one- 24 syllable words: /b d g m n p t/, plus /r/ 3.5.1 /b/ as in by 24 3.5.2 /d/ as in dye 25 3.5.3 /g/ as in goo 27 3.5.4 /m/ as in my 29 3.5.5 /n/ as in nigh 32 3.5.6 /p/ as in pie 34 3.5.7 /t/ as in tie 35 3.5.8 /r/ as in rye 39 3.6 /r/-linking 41 3.7 Consonants with doubled spellings which are regular at 47 the end of one-syllable words after a short vowel spelt with one letter: /k ʧ f ʤ l s v z/ 3.7.1 /k/ as in coo 47 3.7.2 /ʧ/ as in chew 55 3.7.3 /f/ as in few 59 3.7.4 /ʤ/ as in jaw 62 3.7.5 /l/ as in law 66 3.7.6 /s/ as in sue 69 3.7.7 /v/ as in view 78 3.7.8 /z/ as in zoo 81 3.8 Consonants without doubled spellings: /h ŋ ∫ ʒ θ ð w j/ 86 3.8.1 /h/ as in who 86 3.8.2 /ŋ/ as in ring 87 3.8.3 /∫/ as in fission 89 3.8.4 /ʒ/ as in vision 94