Learning to Read English
Reading English is a challenge because most letters can make several sounds. There are many different ways of pronouncing each letter, many rules for governing pronunciation, and many exceptions to the rules of English.
The reasons for these challenges lie in the history of English. No language is completely isolated from the influence of other languages, but English has a large number of languages playing important roles in its development. As a result, reading English is one of the great challenges to learning English.
English starts with Anglo-Saxon which is a Germanic language. But Anglo-Saxon had already incorporated some elements of Latin due to the strength and importance of the Roman Empire at the time.
The Anglo-Saxons were invaders in Britain. The native inhabitants spoke various Celtic languages, so these Celtic languages influenced English.
Next came the Vikings. They settled some parts of Britain and spoke another Germanic language, Norse, which made contributions to the English language.
Christianity came to Britain which gave the languages of Christianity, Latin and Greek, influence. Latin and Greek later became the languages of science as well. Latin and Greek words continued to be adopted into English long after the initial arrival of these languages.
So we still haven’t even covered the most important events and already we have Anglo-Saxon, Latin, Celtic, Norse, and Greek. Of these languages, Anglo-Saxon is easily the most important influence on English followed by Latin and Greek.
In 1066 Britain was invaded by the French Normans. At first, ordinary people spoke English while the rulers spoke a form of French. Eventually, the Norman rulers of Britain started speaking English but not without bringing a lot of French words into the language. This made French one of the most important influences on the English language.
How does this affect learning to read English?
All of these different languages contributed words to English and the pronunciations and spellings for these words were partly governed by the language that they came from. Of course these rules got mixed up and changed making things even more confusing. This convoluted history creates many of the unusual obstacles to learning to read.
The solution…well there isn’t one but I do plan on giving a few tips that will help you overcome these obstacles.
Until then, best of luck with your studies.