Why is phone spelt with a 'p'. Shouldn't it be spelt like fone??? And other similar words?

Answer 1

Actually, the use of "ph" to represent one sound (the "f" sound) is not any more unusual than the use of "ch", "th" and "sh" to do the same. In fact, all of these are rooted in the same historical practice, which goes back to the early Greek alphabet. The practice actually comes to English (and OTHER European languages) through Latin, so it is not something specifically "weird" about English!

So what was it the Greeks were doing?

The Greeks borrowed their alphabet from the ancient Semitic alphabet (specifically from the Phoenicians who were important traders in the Mediterranean). Now the Semitic alphabet only represented consonants, which worked well for languages like Hebrew and Phoenician, but not so well for Greek. So the Greeks ended up making certain adaptations. For instance, when a Semitic symbol represented a sound for which the Greeks did not have a clear equivalent, they might use the symbol to represent a vowel sound instead.

ONE of the adapatations of the early Greek spelling was to combine the letter "H" with other letters to indicate certain sounds, specifically, the "digraphs" (two-letter combinations that represent one sound) -ph-, -th-, -kh-. (This practice also explains the origin of "ch" and "sh".) Later -H- in Greek was used for a long "e" and the sounds marked by digraphs were given their own characters (e.g., the Greek letter called "theta", used for the "th" sound).

It was during the early time, when Greek was using these digraphs, that the Romans borrowed the alphabet and began to write with an adaptation of an early Greek alphabet. But Latin continued the practice of combining letters with H for words it took from Greek. European languages influenced by Latin (and given the church and scholarly use of the language that was everyone, to some degree!) followed the same practice, at least for words.
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?l=h
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_words_of_Greek_origin#The_written_form_of_Greek_words_in_English

Of course, the reason it DOES seem different from "sh" "ch" and "th" is that English does not have a seperate letters for these sounds as it does for "f" (though at one time it DID have some such letters -- the "eth" and "thorn").

On "digraphs"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digraph_(orthography)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H#Value

Answer 2

WORD HISTORY The everyday word telephone illustrates some important linguistic and etymological processes. First, the noun telephone is one of a class of technological and scientific words made up of combining forms derived from classical languages, in this case tele– and –phone. Tele– is from the Greek combining form tēle– or tēl–, a form of tēle, meaning “afar, far off,” while –phone is from Greek phōnē, “sound, voice.” Such words derived from classical languages can be put together in French or German, for example, as well as in English. Which language actually gave birth to them cannot always be determined. In this case French téléphone (about 1830) seems to have priority. The word was used for an acoustic apparatus, as it originally was in English (1844). Alexander Graham Bell appropriated the word for his invention in 1876, and in 1877 we have the first instance of the verb telephone meaning “to speak to by telephone.” The verb is an example of a linguistic process called functional shift. This occurs when a word develops a new part of speech: a noun is used as a verb (to date), a verb as a noun (a break), an adjective as a noun (the rich), a noun as an adjective (a stone wall), or even an adjective as a verb (to round). When we telephone a friend, we are changing the syntactic function of telephone, making it a verb rather than a noun.

Answer 3

In this case, it's because the word is derived from a Greek word (phone, two syllables) meaning "sound, voice." Other words that are also derived from this root include phonograph, phonetics, and anglophone.

The phonetic spelling of words has a long history of evolution and revision, especially for English, which has borrowed words from literally hundreds of languages in the course of its formation and subsequent mutation. I really couldn't tell you why the dipthong "ph" is pronounced like an "f," other than that's just what happened over the course of time.

Answer 4

Ph is a digraph in the English language and many other languages that represents the sound /f/. Ph in English generally occurs in words derived from Greek, due to Latin transcription of Greek Phi (Φ φ) as ph. In Ancient Greek, the sound originally stood for an aspirated /p/. In some non-standard spellings of English, like leet, ph may be used as a replacement of all occurrences of f.

The French language, German language, Welsh language, and the constructed languages Interlingua Occidental language also use the digraph for Greek loanwords. However, in German, ph may be often replaced by f (the replacement is allowed in certain cases according to the German spelling reform of 1996). In most languages, ph was completely replaced by f. In Vietnamese, ph is exclusively used because the letter f does not exist.

In the romanization of Thai language, ph represents the sound /pÊ°/.



this took a lot of scouring - but I found it, eventually.

Answer 5

ph makes the sound of a f that is why it's spelt that way but I guess if you wanted to spell it fone you could. This is why people have trouble understanding our language.

Answer 6

Since English language is a sound language but not a word langage. And people may say its a borrowed langauge or begged language, however its sweet and simple.

Answer 7

Because like many English words, they have a Greek root, it comes from the Greek.

Answer 8

It comes from the greek "phone" which means "sound".

Many of our words are derived from other sources, often greek, or Latin. The study of where words come from is called "etymology", and it's usually quite interesting!

Answer 9

this is where the english language sucks. many english words are spelled as such, giving a hard time for people to remember.. english words also incoporated other languages' words using the same spelling but different pronounciation.. well, they should have made it more systematic

Answer 10

If you are in America,it probably will soon be spelt that way