Welcome to the History of English Podcast, a podcast about the history of the English language.

This is episode 153, zombie letters.

In this episode, we're going to look at why so many English words have crazy spellings

that don't seem to make any sense.

Why do words like debt and doubt have a B in there?

Why does the word sign have a G in it?

And why do names like Thomas and Esther have an H in them?

Well, of course, the answer lies in the history of the language, and specifically an attempt

by writers and printers in the 1500s to revive older spellings from the distant past.

In many cases, letters were added to words to reflect sounds that had disappeared over

time.

In a sense, those letters were brought back to life to indicate where the word came from,

and to show the connection between related words in English.

Those zombie letters that were brought back to life were imported to scholars, but they

were a nightmare for people who wanted the language to be spelled phonetically.

So this time, we're going to examine why those old spellings were revived, and how that

process contributed to the wonderful myths that is English spelling.

But before we begin, let me remind you that the website for the podcast is historyofenglishpodcast.com,

and you can sign up to support the podcast and get bonus episodes at patreon.com slash

history of English.

I also wanted to let you know that the transcripts of the podcast episodes have been moved from

Patreon to the main website, historyofenglishpodcast.com.

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