Whither the 'u' in the word 'forty'?

There are some linguists who have described English spelling as "the world's most awesome mess." Actually, 80 to 85 percent of English spelling is completely predictable. But the unpredictable spellings are truly marvelous.

Of all the mysteries in English spelling, one of the most prominent is "colonel." There is no "r" in the spelling, and yet we pronounce it with an "r". So what happened here?

What happened was that in the 16th century, we borrowed coronel from French. Around the same time, we also borrowed colonello from Italian. For at least 50 years, both of those pronunciations and spellings were in circulation.

By about 1650, the spelling from French, coronel, had dropped out, but the pronunciation clearly had not. We had standardized the Italian spelling, with the French pronunciation.

So that explains one of the language's mysteries, and in fact many English spellings can be explained by knowing the history of English. But some just cannot be explained. I can tell you, for instance, that we have no idea where the "u" in "forty" went. 

Anne Curzan writes for Michigan Today.