The English language can be frustrating at times, especially for new learners of the language whether they are children or non-native speakers. Often, words seemed to be spelled in a way that seems to defy logic: how can “red” and “read” share the same pronunciation?
And what about the word “night” – why on earth is that spelled with a “gh”? Where has that consonant combination come from? (Actually, in linguistic terms, the “gh” sound is known as a “digraph” – but don’t ask me why that isn’t spelled “digraf”.)
Well, in the case of the silent “gh”, there is a logical explanation and it’s quite interesting from a historical and linguistic perspective.
English, Dutch and German belong to the same language family; that is, the West Germanic language family. In German and Dutch, the word for night is “nacht” and this word has three consonant sounds from the “n”, “ch” and the “t”. It’s likely, then, that English also shared the “chuh” sound of the “ch” at some point in the past, and we spelled it with a “gh”. Over the course of history, we dropped this “chuh” sound leaving us with today’s version of night pronounced with the silent “gh”.
Interestingly, the word night wasn’t always spelled with an “i”, either, but with a “y” as in “nyght”. The last time “nyght” appeared in English print was in 1566. In The register of the Privy Council of Scotland (published in 1877), John Hill Burton, a famous historian and economist, wrote: “Undir silence of nycht befoir day”. In 1603, however, the modern day “night” appeared in Shakespeare’s Hamlet: “I am thy fathers spirit, doomd for a time To walke the night”.
It’s fascinating to look at language and investigate the historical and linguistic links that sometimes lie right in front of our eyes. We could make life easier by using a more phonetic system of pronunciation and spelling, but in the process, we would lose something of the culture and history that colours (or colors) our language.
