why is forty spelt such, yet four and fourteen have a u in them?

Answer 1

Both four and forty come from the OLD English words FOWER and FOWERTY

It is easy to keep the pronunciation and spelling of FOWER into FOUR.

It is more difficult to keep the OWER sound in the old Fowerty followed by TY and so the OWER has been shortened to O.

Fowerty has just become a lazy Forty.

We pronounce FOUR with the long vowel sound whereas FORTY is pronounced with a short vowel sound because T and Y follow.

You may not have thought about it before - but - just say the numbers to yourself one after the other and listen.

You will hear F-o-e-r
and then F-o-r-t-y

Good 'innit ????

Answer 2

The difference in spelling actually reflects a slight change in the vowel in the form forty". This change goes back to Old English and beyond - and is caused by the adding of the suffix. It's actually a less obvious example of a change found in many everyday words.


In Old English (and many other Germanic languages) adding of an ending with and i/y type vowel (in this case it was originally -ig, now -y) caused a type of "vowel harmony" (or "metaphony") in which the vowel of the accented syllable became more like that of the suffix.

This specific type is called "umlaut" or "i-mutation" --because the vowel of the suffix was an i-type vowel, and the changed vowel would become or move closer to an i-type vowel. In any case, the changed vowel typically become shorter and/or moved toward the front of mouth ("fronting")

German did the same sort of thing. One of the best examples that English speakers may know is the word "Frau" ("woman") which is pronounced "frow", but when it adds the suffix "-lein" to became "Fräulein", pronounced "froyline" (notice the i/y sound in the first syllable! and the marking over the a that indicates this change in pronunciation-- called an "umlaut")

By the way, when I refer to an "i-type" vowel, notice that before Modern English, and still in most European languages the long i makes an "ee" sound... so don't be surprised that this change may be reflected by e's in the spelling.

This shift in English is also the origin of some of our unusual plural forms: goose > geese; foot > feet; mouse > mice; man > men. Also a result of this change: long > length; hale > health; old > elder.


For more on this sound change:
http://www.hf.ntnu.no/engelsk/staff/johannesson/!oe/texts/lect/i_mut.htm
http://www.wmich.edu/medieval/research/rawl/IOE/pronunciation.html#pronounce:imutation

Answer 3

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Answer 4

Don't know, and apparently nobody else does either- I see you had zero answers in 15 hours. English has a lot of quirks like that, though. Guess that's why they say it's so hard for a non-native to learn to speak it.