1066 - The Ink-horn Controversy

The "Ink-horn" Controversy

The Rise of Phonetic Awareness

In the fifteenth century, a consensus in the use of the written language was established

An agreement emerged among writers about how to spell and punctuate the language, and which words or grammatical forms to use in writing, in cases where alternatives existed

However, there was little reflection on the way people actually spoke

Only after English was written down in a standardized form, and began to be taught in schools, the observers started to reflect about it and express their worries over how best to pronounce it

In the sixteenth century speech was increasingly being evaluated, as well as the written language

The Court was seen as the place “where the best englysshe is spoken”

A notion of correct speech was now being recognized, and was being taught: it was being seen as a criterion of good breeding

The reasoning of the observers of the language often went thus: "If writing best represents the standard form of a language, then all the letters in a word should be pronounced"

Some pedants insisted on pronouncing even the silent letters which had been added to a word to show their etymology

Shakespeare pokes fun at this, when he displays Holofernes' shock at the way Don Armado pronounces his words (Love's Labour's Lost):

I abhor such fanatical phantasims [extravagantly behaved persons], such insociable and point-device [affectedly precise] companions, such rackers of orthography as to speak 'dout', sine [without] 'b', when he should say 'doubt'; 'det' when he should pronounce 'debt' – 'd, e, b, t', not 'd, e, t'. He clepeth [calls] a calf 'cauf', half 'hauf', neighbour vocatur [is called] 'nebour' – 'neigh' abbreviated 'ne'. This is abhominable – which he would call 'abominable'.