Etymology

Etymology: the history of a word or a morpheme. It can also help identify morphemes within a word.

layers of language

Have you ever seen a televised spelling bee? One of the most common questions asked is the word’s origin. The secret that these spelling geniuses understand that most people don’t, is that English is a combination of several different languages. Not only does it incorporate the words and their meanings but the phonology and morphology of the language as well. Since the phonemes and letters are fixed, the letters needed to be re combined to make new graphemes from the other languages. This combination of different language systems make English appear random and non-standardized as an overall language system. However, if salient features of the language systems that are combined to make up the English language are understood, an order begins to appear.

The layers of language

English spellings reflect the varied historical roots of English. These include influences from Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Norman-French as well as classical Latin and Greek.

 

Anglo-Saxon

The Anglo-Saxon layer represents the oldest words in English. They were brought to England from invading tribes of Europe. The Anglos were a Germanic tribe from northern Europe. They had few words that were connected to their daily lives. Many of our one syllable words like bed, cold, walk, eat, milk and field come from this group.
Later Norman invaders from Saxon, now France, introduced their language which had been influenced by the Roman language of Latin. They introduced more complex morphological patterns like compound words, and prefixes and suffixes.

Syllable Patterns

This initial layer has 6 distinct syllable patterns:

Closed syllables
  1. This syllable can only have one vowel.
  2. The vowel is followed by by one or more consonants.
  3. The vowel is short and marked with a breve ( ˘ ).
  4. it can be combined with other syllables to make a multi syllabic words.
Vowel-Consonant-E Syllable
  1. This syllable has a vowel, then a consonant, then an e.
  2. The first vowel has a long sound, marked with a macron ( ¯ ).
  3. The e is silent.
  4. it can be combined with other syllables to make a multi syllabic words.
Open syllables
  1. This syllable has only one vowel which is the last letter in the syllable.
  2. The first vowel has a long sound, marked with a macron ( ¯ ).
  3. it can be combined with other syllables to make a multi syllabic words.
Consonant -LE syllable
  1. This syllable has only three letters, a consonant, an l and an e.
  2. The e is silent. It is the vowel. Every syllable needs to have at least one vowel. The consonant and the l are sounded like a blend.
  3. This syllable must be the last syllable in a multi syllabic word.
R controlled syllable
  1. This syllable contains a single vowel followed by an r.
  2. The vowel is is neither long r short; it is controlled by the r.
  3. it can be combined with other syllables to make a multi syllabic words.
Double Vowel syllable
  1. This syllable contains a vowel digraph or a diphthong. These vowels work in teams.
  2. it can be combined with other syllables to make a multi syllabic words.

    Vowel Digraph: Two vowels together that represent one sound. ex. beet
    Diphthong: A sound that begins with one vowel sound that glides into another. ex. boil