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I am not a native speaker, and I find it very interesting that night is written with gh. Why is it spelled this way?

herisson
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Arthur Yakovlev
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1 Answers1

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When you see a GH spelling in English and it's silent or not pronounced like G, you're dealing with Middle English. That's the language for which English spelling was developed.

Middle English had an /h/ phoneme, and it occurred both

  • pronounced [h] before vowels
    (where /h/ occurs in Modern English: Ha he who huh hey /ha hi hu hə he/)

and

  • pronounced [x] (rather like German CH or Russian Х or Hebrew ח) after vowels.
    It was spelled GH in those cases, because it was pronounced [x], instead of [h].

Part of the change from Middle to Modern English was that the postvocalic [x] allophone of /h/ either disappeared (as in night), or mutated to another fricative, like [f] in enough or trough.

Once these had disappeared (leaving only fossils in the spelling), the prevocalic allophones, having no other H-like sounds to contrast with, mutated into the current bevy of voiceless vocal onsets.

John Lawler
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    How was it pronounced? In broad Scots they say something like 'It's a bricht, moonlicht nicht! was it like that? – WS2 Jan 26 '14 at 02:37
  • I gave the pronunciation in IPA. If you don't understand IPA, you shouldn't be discussing pronunciation. – John Lawler Jan 26 '14 at 03:19
  • The only thing I know about IPA is that it stands for India Pale Ale (a worthy brew). But now you have pointed me in the direction I will make endeavours with the International Phonetic Alphabet. – WS2 Jan 26 '14 at 10:02
  • This is the American English phonemic system; all of the symbols are IPA, courtesy of Kenyon and Knott. The British system (RP) uses a several different systems. The more phonetic detail you add, the more dialects you can account for; the less detail you demand, the more general your coverage. – John Lawler Jan 26 '14 at 15:01
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    @WS2 At 03.24 you can hear a text being read out in Middle English, and yes, it does rather sound like Scottish. It's quite fascinating stuff. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrnXgVTTrCI&list=PL60EDCEF24DB56379 – Mari-Lou A Jan 26 '14 at 23:28
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    @Mari-LouA Very interesting indeed. Thanks for that. – WS2 Jan 27 '14 at 00:27
  • The George Mason Dialect Database is also a very good place to investigate. It contains recordings -- transcribed into IPA -- of hundreds of speakers (native and non-native) speaking the same paragraph, categorized by location for natives, and native language for non-natives. A fascinating way to learn some phonetics. – John Lawler Jan 27 '14 at 01:03
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    Could I add that in my native East Yorkshire, there is a (sort of) remnant of the now-silent /x/. In this speech, so-called long A is a more-or-less pure vowel, so 'late' is pronounced /leːt/. This is true for all long As except in some words with silent 'gh': 'eight' is pronounced /ɛɪt/, 'weight' is pronounced /wɛɪt/ [so 'weight' and 'wait' don't rhyme]. This diphthong occurs only in this small group of words where /x/ disappeared, – David Garner May 25 '16 at 08:28
  • @DavidGarner This is a common enough phenomenon in language change to have its own special name: Compensatory Lengthening. Compare Spanish mismo 'same' with French mȇme -- the accented ȇ in French marks a vowel that's been lengthened to compensate for losing the /s/. – John Lawler Apr 04 '17 at 14:26
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    @JohnLawler Thanks for that, and for awakening a 50-year-old memory of a French teacher explaining the 'circonflex'. I guess 'Compensatory Lengthening' applies to the non-rhotic pronunciation of [e.g.] 'cart'? – David Garner Apr 05 '17 at 11:01
  • Yup. Non-rhotic dialects lengthen vowels before /r/; the phoneme is still there, even when it's only represented by its ghost. – John Lawler Apr 05 '17 at 12:31
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    So does this show better that night is a cognate with the German Nacht? And you did not give the pronunciation of the whole word, you just gave the pronunciation of gh. I still cannot deduce how the whole word night used to be pronounced. [nixt]? [naixt]? – Honza Zidek Apr 29 '19 at 08:37
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    @HonzaZidek: There are two changes involved: the vowel [i:] -> [ai] and the consonant [x] -> ∅. They are independent and vary from place to place and person to person during the period of changing. So, depending on where and when one is referring to, the pronunciation might be any of [ni:xt], [naixt], or [ni:t], since the changes could occur in any order. – John Lawler Apr 29 '19 at 14:05