by Lorinda K. F. Newton

“Jingle Bells! Jingle Bells!” sang Taylor and her little brother, Lucas, from the backseat of the car. Then they paused.

“Mom,” said Taylor, “Thanks for the Christmas carol book. I’ve wondered what the verses were for ‘Jingle Bells.’ I only knew the chorus.”

“You’re welcome,” replied Mom.

The kids sang:

Dashing through the snow In a one-horse open sleigh
O’er the fields we go
Laughing all the way.

Bells on bob tails ring Making spirits bright
What fun it is to laugh and sing
A sleighing song tonight.

“Hey, Mom? What’s a bobtail?” asked Lucas.

“To bob means to cut shorter. People used to cut a horse’s tail very short so it wouldn’t get tangled in the reins.”

“What a weird word!” exclaimed Lucas. “Why not just say cut short?”

“Speaking of weird words, Mom, why is sleigh written with E-I-G-H instead of S-L-A-Y?” asked Taylor.

“And why is through spelled T-H-R-O-U-G-H? I thought it was spelled T-H-R-U like a drive-thru at McDonald’s,” added Lucas. “And why is laugh spelled so funny? It doesn’t even have an F!”

“One question at a time!” laughingly exclaimed their mother. “To answer them, I need to tell you the history of the English language.”

“A language has a history?” asked Lucas incredulously.

“That’s right,” replied Mom. “Due to the history of the British Isles, the English language has experienced many changes over the centuries.”

Brief History of English

The original people of the British Isles were Celts who spoke Gaelic. Under Roman rule (43-410 AD), many Celts adopted Latin as their language. A few decades after the Romans left England, Germanic tribes invaded and wiped out the Celtic culture except in Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. But some of the Celtic place names continued to be used, such as London, Kent, and Winchester.

Old English 450-1150

These tribes, the Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and Frisians, had similar languages that eventually merged into Anglo-Saxon or Old English. It is unrecognizable to modern English speakers. Its alphabet of 33 characters looks like the runes in the Lord of the Rings. A well-known piece of literature from this time is Beowulf. To see and hear Beowulf in Old English, click here.

During this time, the church and scholars spoke and wrote in Latin. This led to Anglo-Saxons adding Latin words to their vocabulary. From the seventh to the ninth centuries, scholars transitioned from using the Anglo-Saxon alphabet to the Latin alphabet to write Old English.

In the 700s, the Vikings began raiding and settling in the northern parts of the British Isles. Their language, Old Norse, was similar to Anglo-Saxon, so the English easily picked up some Viking vocabulary.

In 1066, William the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy, France, invaded England and made it his kingdom. He set up his Norman nobles as feudal lords over the Anglo-Saxons.

Middle English 1150-1500

The royal family and nobles spoke only French while the peasants continued to speak Anglo-Saxon. Over time, Old English developed into Middle English, which looks and sounds like German. As the Normans and Anglo-Saxon people groups mixed, many French words entered the English language.

By the 1300s, nearly everyone spoke English, not French. The most important work in Middle English is The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer. To see and hear Middle English read from this work, click here.

Modern English 1500 to Present

During the Renaissance, English sounded and looked much more like modern English.But modern readers often find the early modern English of Shakespeare and the King James Bible difficult to read.

The significant difference between Middle English and Modern English is a shift in vowel sounds, which occurred between the 15th and 17th centuries. Also, the guttural sounds and the pronouncing of specific letters, such as the final E, had been dropped. For example, the word make was pronounced maw-kə in Middle English, but in Modern English, the A changed to its long sound and the E became silent. Although the sounds changed, the spelling didn’t. This explains why many words are not spelled the way they sound.

The invention of the printing press in the 15 century and the creation of dictionaries in the 16th century caused English to become more standardized as one language instead of a collection of dialects. The spelling of many words became fixed at this time. Unfortunately, the dictionary authors chose word spellings based on the popularity of use, not by any set of spelling rules. So, English spelling lacked consistency.

During the British Empire (1601-1997), English borrowed words from languages from around the globe. When a foreign word was adopted, sometimes it entered English directly without a change to its spelling, such as yacht (Dutch) or llama (Spanish<Quechua). Others were adapted to be more like an English word.

Each of the English speaking colonies, such as America, Australia, and South Africa, also developed their own dialects and idioms, expanding the language even more.

When Noah Webster wrote the first American dictionary, published in 1828, he learned twenty languages in order to include word histories with his definition entries. In addition, he sought to reform English spelling. He removed the U in certain words such as colour, creating the American spelling color. He also changed the -re endings to -er, as in theatre to theater.

English vocabulary has continued to increase with the development of inventions and scientific discoveries.

Now English has the most extensive vocabulary and is the most widely spoken language in the world. Although the most common words are of Germanic origin, over half of English words came from Latin (much through the French language). Today, according to Dictionary.com, English has borrowed 80 percent of its vocabulary from hundreds of languages!

This explains why English spelling is so complicated, and strange spellings for words such as sleigh, through, and laugh exist.

Silent Letters Explained

Two of these words end with a silent GH. At one time, the GH represented a guttural sound that English lost. German still use guttural sounds. For instance, we pronounce the name Bach bock. Germans, on the other hand, pronounce the CH with a sound like a cat hiss. Perhaps sleigh and through were pronounced with a hiss.

Now laugh is a strange word. One would think it should be spelled laff. Initially, it, too, may have had the same hiss sound for the GH. In German, the word laugh is lachen, where the CH is pronounced the same as in Bach. But over time, the pronunciation morphed to an F sound.

The English language’s colorful history reflects the cultures that speak it and the cultures it borrowed words from. Over the centuries, how words were pronounced shifted, but their original spellings were left unchanged. Silent letters remain as historical markers from the past, tying us to an overarching history of the English speaking peoples from the Dark Ages to now.

Next time your child complains about how a word is spelled, ask him to research its history. Often, knowing the origin of a word will explain why it is spelled the way it is.

For more information about silent letters in English, see my reference page, “Origin of Silent Letters.” Feel free to contact me with questions as well.

Lorinda K. F. Newton began homeschooling her children in 2004, and her family joined Academy Northwest in 2014. Her family lives on beautiful Whidbey Island north of Seattle, Washington. She writes about faith, culture, and governing from a biblical worldview at Lorinda’s Ponderings.