If you were stranded on a desert island, wouldn’t you get to thinking how odd it is that we don’t pronounce the s in island? It was added during the Renaissance in an attempt to make the word look more like its Latin source, insula. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Silent S in Island”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, this is Tricia. I’m calling from Chula Vista, California.
Hi, Chula Vista, right south of San Diego. Welcome.
And the reason that I’m calling is I’m an ELD teacher, which is what California calls ESL or English as a Second Language.
And I teach in a public high school about five miles north of the Mexican border.
And so kids are always asking me questions about, you know, why is everything pronounced so oddly in English? There’s no patterns and all of that.
And I do my very best to explain, oh, that’s a word from French and all that.
But last week, the kids were asking me, why don’t we say the S in island? Or, you know, all the words like aisle in the grocery store and all of that.
And I didn’t have an answer for them. So that’s why I’m calling. I want to know why we don’t pronounce the S in island.
Wow, this is great. This is fantastic because there’s an answer and actually connects three words.
It connects island, I-S-L-A-N-D, aisle, A-I-S-L-E, and aisle, I-S-L-E. And what happened was that all three of these words come from different origins.
Island comes from an Old English word, which meant island. Aisle actually originally came from a word meaning wing.
And actually, neither of these had an S in them. Yeah, it’s like a la in Spanish.
That’s right. For wing. Exactly. And then aisle, I-S-L-E, came from a word meaning island.
And also did not originally have an S in it. But then the Renaissance happened.
And when the Renaissance happened, there was a second major wave of these Latin-influenced words and spellings that arrived in French and arrived in a variety of the European languages.
And people saw that the root word here, insula, which means island, had an S in it. And so they started adding this S into these words that they believed came from that Latin word, even though they didn’t.
So ILE did indeed come from insula, but ILE and island did not come from the Latin word insula, but they added the S anyway.
And so they retained the pronunciation as if they didn’t have the S, but the newly added S in the spelling persisted.
And so it was just silent because it was added?
Yes, exactly. They added it so they could conform to what they believed the etymology to be. And only in one of the words were they correct.
Oh, all right. Well, as you’re talking, I’m thinking about in French, the Ile de la Cite, because the ILE means island there, doesn’t it?
Exactly. And that’s where we get I-S-L-E, exactly from the French. And we don’t actually use the S. Originally, we didn’t use the S and the French don’t use the S.
Well, that’s great. I would never have guessed that it would be such an elaborate examination. I thought it was going to be something very simple.
Well, that is relatively simple. It goes to show you what can happen when we make assumptions about language and try to conform language to a kind of logic that we believe is there.
They saw a logic that didn’t exist, and they tried to constrain language into this form of Latin because they felt that Latin was purer or more perfect.
And they were typically wrong about that.
Now, that’s not to say that we didn’t get a ton of really great scientific words or words related to religion that we absolutely needed and still use today.
We got those from Latin and we couldn’t have done without them. We would have had to invent our own from the Anglo-Saxon.
But that saying, they still made a lot of assumptions that have since proven to be wrong.
Wow.
Well, my students are going to be thrilled because they knew that I was asking a question from their class, and they can’t wait to hear the answer.
So I really appreciate you choosing to answer my question.
Can I ask you one more question before you go, Tricia?
Yes, sir.
Where are you from?
I’m from Michigan.
I should have asked you if you could guess.
Yeah. I was trying to figure. I was going to pick a state, but I decided that might be offensive if I said the wrong one.
That’s where I was going. Michigan.
I knew it wasn’t Oklahoma.
No, because everybody says I have a Michigan A.
Yeah. I know an Argentine priest who asked me, oh, where are you from? Where are you from? Are you from Michigan? I’m like, how can you know that? You’re from Argentina.
It’s not just your A’s.
Your vowels, Tricia. All of your vowels have Michigan stamped on the back.
Okay. Well, that’s me born and bred.
That’s all right. We love it. It’s refreshing.
Thanks for calling, Tricia, and good luck with those kids, all right?
Oh, thank you. I appreciate it.
Bye-bye.
Okay. Bye.
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