Work and fork. Why don’t they rhyme?

Ever wonder why certain words in the English language don’t rhyme? They have the same spelling, but… I have and I’m sure most of us have pondered this question. Let’s take a look at the following. Read aloud.

• Dork, fork, pork, and work
• Anger, banger, and danger
• Ballet, mallet, and wallet
• Food, mood, and good
• Both, doth, and cloth
• Howl, growl, and bowl
• Bush, push, and gush
• Car, far, tar, and war
• Cart, fart, mart, and wart

The above are just a few examples. I’m sure you can think of more, right off the top of your head. The reasons are many.

Reasons include unique sound combinations, unusual endings, and words borrowed from other languages. These unrhymable words can make writing poetry or song lyrics challenging, not to mention learning English as a second language. It’s never enough to learn the rules of spelling, we also learn pronunciation of new words by trial and error as young children. Many words that rhyme shouldn’t, and many that don’t, should! And as the video pointed out, the letter “w” really does have a semi-vowel status, which could explain why, for instance, bash doesn’t rhyme with wash: it “really” has a different vowel sound w(ua)sh.

Let’s look at the history of the English language to discover the why and why nots. The following information was gathered from LingoDigest.

English is a West Germanic language, primarily descending from the dialects spoken by the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, who were tribal groups that migrated from what is now Denmark and northern Germany to Britain during the 5th and 6th centuries. But this was merely the beginning of English’s formation. Over the centuries, English has been influenced, enriched, and diversified by numerous other languages and cultures.

When the Romans invaded Britain in 43 AD, they brought Latin with them, introducing numerous words into the vernacular, particularly in the realms of law, government, and religion. In the 9th and 10th centuries, the Vikings invaded, and Old Norse left a significant imprint, especially on the English vocabulary.

The 11th century brought the Norman Conquest, which added an extensive layer of Old French to the English language. French was the language of the aristocracy and the courts for several centuries, while English continued to be used by the common people. Consequently, many French words were incorporated into English, particularly related to law, arts, food, and fashion.

So, English has always been a linguistic melting pot, absorbing words and influences from Latin, Old Norse, Old French, and later from Greek, Italian, Spanish, and many other languages. Each of these languages has its unique pronunciation and spelling conventions, and they’ve all left their marks on English.

Then came a great vowel shift – the phonetic upheaval

The discrepancy between spelling and pronunciation can be significantly attributed to a phonetic evolution known as the Great Vowel Shift, which occurred between the 14th and 18th centuries. This was a time of profound changes in the pronunciation of English vowels.

The problem was that while the spoken language evolved, the written language didn’t keep pace. By the time the Great Vowel Shift occurred, the English spelling system was more or less established. Therefore, while people began to pronounce words differently, the spelling of those words remained the same.

For example, the word ‘bite’ was likely pronounced with two syllables in Middle English, something like ‘beet-uh.’ After the Great Vowel Shift, it began to be pronounced as it is today, but its spelling remained unchanged.

Then came a dramatic change – the Gutenberg press

It standardized the English language in the 15th century. Printers started establishing conventions for how words should be spelled, which helped to stabilize the language. However, this also froze many idiosyncratic spellings in place.

Moreover, during this period, there was a fascination with the classical languages, Latin and Greek, among scholars. This led to some words being intentionally respelled to more closely resemble their classical roots, even if those roots had not been pronounced for centuries. The word ‘debt,’ for instance, borrowed from Old French as ‘dette,’ was respelled to resemble its Latin root, ‘debitum,’ even though the ‘b’ was not pronounced.

So, what’s with silent letters?

These are another significant factor contributing to the discrepancy between English spelling and pronunciation. English is littered with silent letters, from the ‘k’ in ‘knight’ to the ‘g’ in ‘gnaw’ to the ‘b’ in ‘doubt.’

These silent letters are often the remnants of how these words used to be pronounced hundreds of years ago. For instance, in Old English, the ‘k’ in ‘knight’ was not silent, and the word was pronounced more like ‘k-neecht,’ with the ‘k’ and ‘ch’ sounds both pronounced. As English pronunciation evolved, we stopped pronouncing the ‘k,’ but it remained in the spelling.

BTW, could you please pass the KA-NIFE?