From the archive
We Need to Talk About Spelling
Step inside the mind of a linguist as Danny Bate considers what words like “ticketed” reveal about English spelling and how the language’s written form is becoming, in subtle and accidental ways, a little more Chinese-like.
The other day, I got stuck spelling a word. Seeking to describe an event for which guests required a ticket, I typed out “ticketted” and was immediately confronted by the red squiggly line of error. Was it really ticketed, with only two Ts? That did not look right.
But no: Two-T ticketed is correct. English’s decentralized authorities (for example, dictionaries like Merriam-Webster’s) have certified it. Behind their approval, I see greater, subtler forces at work. In brief, I suggest that written English is silently, gradually, and accidentally becoming a bit more Chinese-like. No, it has nothing to do with emojis.
What furrowed my brow in this case was that ticketed seemed to fly in the face of English’s successful system of "Magic E," whereby a final mute E assists in the sound of the vowel two places to its left—note the difference between van and vane, sit and site, not and note.
"...drifting speech and innovative symbolism are, I posit, making written English today accidentally closer to the venerable system of Chinese writing, with its vast cast of characters."
To counteract the effects of E, English spelling can double its consonants: Hear the U in mute and mutter. My intuition was that ticketted fit the pronunciation best, correctly signaling that ticketed does not rhyme with deleted. I have had the same problem with "developped"; a learner might wrongly rhyme the approved spelling developed with eloped.
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