No questions from Tangiora this Monday because she is in Bali but grandson Morgan’s latest is, ‘Why is there an H in CHRISTMAS and CHEMIST?’ My reply:- When CH is used to spell [k] we know that word comes from Greece. The Greeks had a throaty [kh] sound, spelt with X — and also a plain [k] sound spelt with K. The Romans already used X to spell a different sound, the sound at the end of REX. When they adopted some Greek words they used CH instead of Greek X. Christ’s name in Greek starts with X, Χριστός. The Romans wrote it CHRISTUS. From that we get CHRISTMAS. We only have one [k] sound now and so we could write KRIST, with a K. They do in Denmark. Or just C — they do that in Italy.
Shorter version last blog. Long ago long vowels were followed by single consonants, and short strong vowels were always followed by double letters, like this: ‘A henn satt on an egg. A catt and its kittens satt on a matt.’ ‘I hop you hopp over the logg.’ ‘I mad you a funny cotton dress. I hop you are not madd at me.’ Everything was written by hand but only a few people knew how to write and their hands grew tired. To save paper and time and energy they stopped doubling letters at the end of words. However, then HOP spelt both ‘hop’ and ‘hope’; MAD spelt both ‘mad’ and ‘made’. So they decided to add a silent E to show that D has always been single in ‘made’ and P has always been single in
Tangiora — In our last session with the Spelling Queen she said she’d tell us about marking short and long vowels. I think we are talking here about the difference between HOP and HOPE. Good Morning Paquita. What do you mean by marking? Paquita — Good morning Tangiora. Some languages use actual marks above vowel letters to show if they are short or long. English had a few but the early printers in London found them too fiddly and got rid of them. I’ve seen these marks above vowels in French menus, in Vietnamese information sheets in Carnarvon and Swedish labels in IKEA, but none in English, except a few French words like CAFÉ. Tangiora — Then how do we know if it’s a short vowel or
