enough is enuf by Gabe Henry
Gabe Henry may have single-handedly revolutionized the study of Linguistics with this brilliant work of nonfiction enough is enuf, subtitled Our Failed Attempts to Make English Eezier to Spell.
“Linguistics is the scientific study of language as sound” was drummed into the heads of Georgetown University students for decades by the late Father Francis P. Dinneen, S.J., who wrote THE required book General Linguistics. Aye, therein lies the rub; English spelling is illogical, often irregular and does not conform to its sound.
The late Irish-Catholic professor priest may have had the knowledge but lacked the humor of author Gabe Henry, who irreverently conveys the complexity, irregularity and absurdity of our English language in a history of the many often bizarre attempts to simplify the spelling. It is this reviewer’s opinion he should be granted at least an honorary doctorate by any number of the top universities that offer advanced degrees in this field of study.
His research is extensive, sound, well-documented and could serve as a Ph.D. dissertation. This is his third book. The others are: What the Fact?! 365 Strange Days in History and Eating Salad Drunk, which illustrated humorous haikus contributed by top contemporary comedians.
The Complexities of English
Unless one is some sort of weird spelling savant or went to bed regularly with an English dictionary as a pillow, there will be times of struggle and doubt for even the best of writers. The Romance and Germanic languages, and even some with a limited number of speakers, like Finnish, have spelling that neatly coincides with pronunciation: it’s easier for native speakers and those studying the language to spell accurately most of the time. English is one of those will-o’-the-wisp tongues that developed over a long period of time, influenced by waves of invasions.
Gabe Henry presents a brief origin story of our language with its basis in German and Dutch. The British Isles were invaded and/or conquered by the Romans, who left more than ruins and Hadrian’s Wall behind with a plethora of Latin vocabulary, followed by the Norse Vikings and the Normans, whose language was French. William the Conqueror, Henry II, Edward III and Richard II spoke French as their primary language. It wasn’t until the 15th century, with Henry V, that English became an official language of the Court and in writing.
Like all modern languages, it changes and evolves with new words added to dictionaries with great frequency. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) has been updated a staggering four times per year since the advent of eBooks. Lexicography may be a dynamic field to consider for college students selecting a major.
The Evolution of Language
Spelling has evolved over time. The 21st century has brought “textspeak” into broadly accepted usage, abbreviating words and also altering punctuation. It is yet another variant in the many attempts to make English spelling simpler and more consistent. As the author queries, “Why do choir and liar rhyme while daughter and laughter don’t?” He explains that spelling bees are only common in English-speaking countries, with the reason, “English spelling is absurd.”
There are unpronounced letters, rules with multiple exceptions, as in “i before e except after c” which is still taught, eight pronunciations of the common combination “ough”, and oodles of homophones. These are two or more words that sound the same but have different meanings, such as bear/bare, aisle/I’ll, naughty/knotty and so on.
Linguists, we are advised, have concurred that English has 44 sounds but only 26 letters. Humorists, including Mark Twain, Weird Al Yankovic (parody song “Word Crimes), George Carlin and the watermelon-smashing Gallagher wrote or performed wittily about the oddities in our language.
Gabe Henry introduces readers to a few of the many rebel wordsmiths who attempted not only to declare “Enough is enuf” but also proposed ways to regulate standards of English spelling with unintended hilarity, including the self-declared Melvil Dui formerly known as Melville Dewey of library Decimal classification fame, Samuel Johnson, and a myriad of others, including printers, typesetters and Eliza Burnz, the mother of shorthand stenography.
Benjamin Franklin was gently dissuaded from promoting his “Scheme for a New Alphabet” by his sensible, forthright friend Polly Stevenson, the daughter of his landlady. Beginning with a 12th-century monk named Ormin, there were some strange attempts to add letters as he proposed. Others chose to subtract vowels or consonants, and there were even attempts to substitute numbers into the existing words. None of these made much sense, nor did they serve to simplify English spelling.
Perfect Mixture of History and Humor
In 1850, George Darling Watt, the first official British English convert of the Church of the Latter Day Saints, or Mormon Church, who soon became Brigham Young’s secretary, was charged with constructing a new alphabet. By 1854, he had duly invented the Deseret Alphabet with 38 unique letters and symbols designed to help church officials communicate in secrecy.
Articles using this alphabet did appear in Deseret News, a major Salt Lake City newspaper that continues today, although printed in Standard English. This ambitious venture lapsed quickly into obscurity when schoolteachers refused to learn and teach newly issued textbooks.
Noah Webster was one of the more successful in simplifying spelling by eliminating the letter “U” in words, including honour, colour and neighbour, as well as other changes. He sneakily altered enough words that American and British English gradually became differentiated.
Gabe Henry has succeeded admirably in illuminating the history of our expressive, idiosyncratic, colorful English language in all its bewildering, logic-defying glory. enough is enuf: Our Failed Attempts to Make English Eezier to Spell belongs in the curriculum of every Introduction to Linguistics and Phonetics and Phonemics classrooms, ESL courses and high school and college English classes. It is the perfect gift for anyone with an interest in languages or those simply in need of a good laugh.
About Gabe Henry:
Gabe Henry is the author of Eating Salad Drunk: Haikus for the Burnout Age by Comedy Greats and the history-humor compendium What the Fact?! 365 Strange Days in History. Eating Salad Drunk was featured in The New Yorker in February 2022 (“A Smattering of Haiku for the Burnout Age”) and ranked one of Vulture’s Best Comedy Books of 2022. Henry’s work has been published in New York Magazine, The Weekly Humorist, The New Yorker, Light Poetry Magazine, and the Motion Picture Association’s magazine The Credits. In 2021, he co-created the trivia gameshow “JeoPARTY” (jeh-PAR-tee) with NPR’s Ophira Eisenberg. He lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
