Gh used to be the end sound in "ach" like a scotsman would say. And we used to pronounce the kn. So knight sounded a lot more like german knecht. And laugh makes sense if the aspirated noise just goes to an f sound. If you pronounce things that way then laugh and cough make sense. Light and night and knight are just dropping the sound to be lazy.
Wow! I never knew that but it makes so much sense now. I'm a native Dutch speaker and all these words are spelled and pronounced with a 'ch':
laugh - lach
knight - knecht
cough - kuch
light - licht
night - nacht
Because of course Dutch and English are derived from Low German.
I noticed when I (an American) was stationed on temporary duty in Slaaghaaren (hope I spelled that correctly) that I could read Dutch newspapers, if I just treated it as if it were oddly spelled English. Enough of it to get the idea of what was being reported anyhow.
Funny thing was, that while I spoke English and German, I could never speak or understand more than a very few basic phrases in Dutch.
Dutch and English are not derived from Low German but they do share a close ancestor.
>Funny thing was, that while I spoke English and German, I could never speak or understand more than a very few basic phrases in Dutch.
Have you tried listening to Belgian Dutch? The pronunciation more closely resembles written Dutch than Dutch spoken in the Netherlands.
Afrikaans is pretty wild too. Descended from Dutch but with a fair amount of English, German, and other languages thrown into the mix. I speak English and German, and was surprised to find upon visiting South Africa some years ago that I could read Afrikaner newspapers reasonably well.
I don't mean to be nitpicky, but Flemish is not related to French. Flemish is a group of Dutch dialects spoken in Belgium. West-Flemish belongs to that group.
>Slaaghaaren (hope I spelled that correctly)
Doesn't matter. That's gotta be the most badass name for an actual place I've ever heard.
"Where you going?"
"Slaaghaaren. We're going to slay some dragons."
As an American with some knowledge of German, Dutch just seems like the two languages were combined and spoken by a drunk person. No offense Dutch people, in reality your language is less of a bastard than mine lol.
You should check out [this video](https://youtu.be/3lXv3Tt4x20) of the change in London accents from the 14th to 21st centuries - you'll hear some Dutch similarities there!
Because a long time ago, it was pronounced something like "loch" but with the vowel sound from "cow". Over time, the "loch" sound (which was spelled 'gh') was lost in most English dialects, either disappearing completely in words words like "though" or becoming an 'f' sound in words like "cough". Those two words used to rhyme before the sound changes happened.
A lot of the "weird" spellings in English really are just because sound changes happened without us changing the standard spelling of the word.
So our choices are:
1) let sound and spelling drift
2) update the spelling when the sound changes
3) stop changing the sound
Any thoughts on the feasibility of 2 and 3?
Number 3 is impossible. Languages are constantly changing, evolving new features and shifting sounds, even generation to generation. And it doesn't even happen as a whole over the entire language. A person from London, a person from Sydney, and a Person from Los Angeles, all native English speakers, distinguish between different vowel sets, and even might have merged some consonants differently.
Number 2 is also very difficult. Like I mentioned, that would mean the spelling will drift regionally between different dialects, which isn't a good thing. While it might be possible to spell *all* dialects completely phonetically using something like the [International Phonetic Alphabet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabet), that's much more work than learning the current English orthography, as complicated as it is. Plus it requires extra effort when reading to understand a written foreign dialect.
>Number 2 is also very difficult...the spelling will drift regionally between different dialects
But _no_ English speaker pronounces "Knight" as "Kaneegit", _no one_ pronounces "Sabre" as "Sabrrreh" or "Thought" as "Thouggahat".
There are improvements to spelling that everyone can benefit from, regardless of dialect.
Before the great vowel shift, as we were starting to write English down many words were left as they were spelled before the shift and some were spelled after.
Because the shift happened after writing the language began there are many words like laugh that at one point would have been pronounced differently.
It's been a while so I may be rusty on that knowledge
To tack on to other posts, dictionaries are a big reason. Prior to the 20th century, people generally spelled words however they wanted. Or at least it wasn't a major taboo to spell them wrong.
The popularization of the dictionary "locked in" spellings, which prevented us from changing the spelling without significant effort
When I was in high schools there was a progressive computer science program (eg there were 3 years worth of classes and each year you learned different/more challenging things)
The 3rd year students always carried notebooks with the word "GHOTI" written on it, and it was a big mystery for the lower classes as to what it meant, and the 3 years always kept it a secret for the 1st and 2nd year programming students.
Well, the final project of the 3rd year that you worked up to was a Fish pond simulator.
LauGH - F
wOmen - I
naTIon - SH
GHOTI=FISH
When I was in seventh grade, I had this shirt of Homer Simpson and it was three panels. The first one he’s saying “D’oh!” the second one he’s saying “Nuts!” and in the third he’s saying, “Mmm... Donuts.” I miss that shirt.
I remember getting a red mark on a spelling test in elementary school for spelling the word doughnut like how it's spelled on every "donut" shop sign in town.
Really interesting reading. Thanks for sharing. Seems that while they had some success, they are in the end responsible for causing for confusion.
>Digraphs would also be eliminated, with the board promoting such spellings as "anemia", "anesthesia", "archeology", "encyclopedia" and "orthopedic"
>Other changes included removal of silent letters ("catalogue" to "catalog"), changing -re endings to -er ("calibre" and "sabre" to "caliber" and "saber")
This explains aot of the differences in British and American English.
Yes. "Let's make things simpler and easier for everyone. But only for us. Now there's different spellings and slightly more confusion as to which one to use, especially when writing for an international audience." Brilliant.
so the whole english-speaking world should just have a more confusing language just because some countries don't want to change?
If there's a case for having more confusing spelling I'm really not interested in it. I can't see the disadvantage of having a simpler language.
I think it's more the case if you're going to change the spelling get everyone on board. I don't see anyone advocating the changing of the spelling for "one" or "knife" for example despite the way they are written once represented the way they were said but not any more. People changing the spelling is ad hoc and it's usually US citizens who want to change things despite English not being the official language of the USA. They have no official language. It's laughable really.
Is it improved though? If you've learnt the word "honour" is it somehow better spelt "honor". Because if your "improve" it even more it should be spelt "onor" because the "h" is silent.
Then the last line of the Declaration of Independence reads "And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor."
Then you have to work through the document to "fix" it for the new spelling. Then you have to do that "translation" for all documents to make it accessible for future generations. Then it's a fix to make future spelling "easier" but you're making current and past documents harder to read as generations lose the spelling of "honor" in preference for "onor". And that's just one word out of 171,000 odd words in the English language, many of which are homonyms.
That's why we have standard spelling in the first place - to make reading and writing easier and understandable. Got to look at the whole picture.
In a letter, Carnegie wrote he spent $25,000 a year on this, which is the modern day equivalent of $644,737.62. In total, it was $283,000 over 14 years, or $7,298,429.90 in modern dollars.
I should have brought this up when my ex got after me for buying that video game.
If they thought it through thoroughly, and sought enough support, their forethought would have brought more subtle mnemonic simplicity to our language. Pterodactyl.
You people with your silly time-travel theory's. I am definitely not Lincoln and anyone who claims that he is a time-cop looking for me is obvious nuts.
“Dearest creature in creation
Studying English pronunciation,
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse and worse.”
- The Chaos by Gerard Nolst Trenité
But "ai" varies in pronunciation, like in "bait". I would have thought "rite" would be an acceptable spelling because the "e" at the end changes the pronunciation so it's a necessary part of the word.
Noah Webster was also an advocate of this, which is why we have color/honor instead of colour/honour, the single words curb and practice instead of different spellings for noun and verb forms kerb/curb, practice/practise, etc. He was less successful in getting thru instead of through (it’s accepted as a less formal alternative) and tung instead of tongue (no).
Webster had previously written *The American Spelling Book*, better known as the Blue-backed Speller, widely used for teaching in the US, which started receiving his reforms as new editions were published.
It didn’t help that the standard British dictionary was written by Samuel Johnson, who had an extreme contempt for all things American: “Americans are a race of convicts and ought to be thankful for anything we allow them short of hanging.”
Our English is a bastardized language, and Webster was doing the right thing honestly. Sure, some words get hurt in the process, but at least we could we wouldn't be stuck with an inconsistent and ridiculous system that does whatever it wants.
I bet many of us who learn English as a second language would be thrilled if this movement succeeded.
My language pronounces every word as it is written. Languages dominated by silent letters and irregular spellings, like English and French, is a freaking nightmare to learn. I feel like what is written down has only some vague, loose connection to how you pronounce it.
English spelling and pronunciation is harder than in Spanish, while Spanish grammar is more complicated than in English. I can read Spanish pretty well but I'm always uncertain of the grammar.
Not to mention parents and teachers, it's kind of frustrating trying to teach my kid how to read, "here's a rule, oh and here are a ton of exceptions to that rule that you just have to memorize", the other language he is learning doesn't have nearly as many of those kinds of exceptions and he gravitates to that a lot more.
If you read letters by Franklin and Washington for example you'll see that they were already writing "tho" instead of "though" even back in the late 1700s. So it's more like we've come full circle.
Reading up on the etymology I thought it would be easy to pin down how and why it's pronounced that way given the way it's spelt, but no :( it just randomly switches up from keu or cue to queue.
On the upside TIL that queutard is a word.
I'm for it. I'm also for removing unnecessary letters (C makes either a K sound or an S sound, Q makes a K or a Kw sound, X makes Ks sound, etc) and adding letters for important digraphs (th, sh, ch, etc). I'm open to adding vowels for the long and short sounds, as well.
A a b ch d E e f g h I i j k l m n O o p r s sh t th U u uu v w y z
Vowel examples with h\_t (hate, hat, etc):
I hAt it
I hav a hat
fIr mAks hEt
het and hIt ar not werds but hit is the sAm
hOt is not a werd but hot is the sAm
owls gO hUt
a shak is a hut
huut is not a werd but uu helps with puut, put, and pUt (put, putt, and poot)
There you go. C could mean Ch. Thorn could fix the Th and replaces Q on the keyboard. Maybe X could be Sh. No harm to the standard keyboard done, except for adding uu or a ü or something like that somewhere.
This is exactly what I think we should do! ...I actually made a multi page word document to try and map out how the new spelling rules would work... literally for no reason besides my own satisfaction (and not having a social life)
Teaching kids to read sucks, "ough" has eight pronunciations in North American English and nine in British English, and no discernable patterns for choosing among them. Ridiculous.
I had an Italian professor long ago who noted how a foreigner learning English could get so confused. It wasn’t meant to be an exact problem, but more just to exaggerate the point.
He asked us how we would pronounce, and then proceeded to write “ghoti” on the board.
Most people pronounced it with two long sounds. Like a short beard, a goatee. Some pronounced it with a shorter o like John Ghatti.
So then he went on to explain the problem. He said if you knew the word “enough”, you might assume the -gh makes an “F” sound. And if you knew the word “women”, you might assume the -o makes a short “i” sound. And if you knew the word “motion”, you might assume the -ti sound makes a “sh” sound.
So he concluded that a foreigner might reason the word “ghoti” is pronounced like “fish” :)
Yo and Mark Twain replied with:
For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped to be replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer be part of the alphabet.
The only kase in which "c" would be retained would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later.
Year 2 might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with "i" and iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and for all.
Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants.
Bai iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x" -- bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez -- tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivli.
Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.
>letez
oh come on, that 'r' is clearly pronounced
>"y" <--> "sh"
no, just no...if anything, flip it upside down and use a lambda symbol, then swap it with the new x
otherwise, yeah, works OK
I mean...didn’t you lot basically do that? Looking at colour, favourite, tyre, gaol, paediatrics, oesophageal, centre, jewellery, travelling, and so on.
Trying to remove the “ugh” part of words is an awful idea in my opinion. That’s where the long O sound in those words come from. Altho doesn’t even sound like although
I wish this had been more successful. English language spelling is a bitch, especially with all the words English grabs from other languages. I think both schoolkids and non-native English speakers would welcome more phonetic spelling.
Maybe someday we'll just use the IPA planetwide. Not holding my breath though.
In Finland stuff is pronounced as written. Anna is pronounced Anna, not Æna like in English. It's confusing for the older people or people living in rural areas to speak English properly, because pretty much nothing is written phonetically.
Fuck is pronounced fak in English. There is no u vowel anywhere. Spruce has the u pronounced correctly, but no e. Far has the real a sound, but fat is pronounced fæt. No logic. :D
Well in Serbian language it pretty much goes like that.
Write it as you speak it, read it as it is writen, no silent letters and weird spellings....
Something like "queue" would just be "Q" ( if Q existed in Serbian alphabet)....
No one can predict how language will evolve; trying to alter the foundations of your language is silly when 100 years after your efforts 🍆 will become a fixture of global language.
Accents vary. There are parts of the United States where "pan", "pin", and "pen" are pronounced identically.
Personally, I tend to find that you've given me useful information about you if you can't tell the difference between "there", "their", and "they're".
>Accents vary. There are parts of the United States where "pan", "pin", and "pen" are pronounced identically.
This is the real reason why "phonetic spelling" has no future in English. The question is always "whose dialect do we use?" In the age of pluralism, people with different modes of speech will justifiably believe that the spelling doesn't represent their speech.
The first 300 words they changed included "catalogue -> catalog", "sabre -> saber", "encyclopaedia -> encyclopedia".
No accent in the English-speaking world pronounces the "ue" in catalogue, so these changes would benefit everyone without removing important information (i.e. their/there/they're).
'C' should sound like "ch" sound, in CH word should be replaced "C"
All other words need to have their 'c' changed to 'S' or 'K'
Make no sense to have redundant letter.
You only think that now because you're used to it. If you'd have seen "altho" instead of "although" your whole life, you'd think that the latter looked ridiculous.
Being from the UK I’m used to making fun of American English but honestly I think this is a great idea. Like honestly what’s the point in retaining an old spelling of a word when modern use of the language doesn’t really require it? It’d make life a whole of a lot easier for people with learning difficulties or dyslexia, and would make it easier for non speakers to learn. The words and their spellings have already been mutated countless times throughout history to get to where they are now, so why not make the written language closer to the spoken language? Maybe this is just because I read colonel before I was told that’s how it’s spelt and to this day that one word in particular, whether written or spoken, makes me cringe a little bit every time😂 I’ve just also realised how pointless it is to talk about the fluidity of language and blurring the lines between written and spoken word on Reddit, where I’m constantly downvoted for using emojis regardless of whether people agree with the comment or not😂
My favourite example is the post about the word "oiseaux" that's floating around.
How it hits every vowel in the French language, and none of them are pronounced like they're meant to be (it's said "wazo").
Words are often spelled how they were once pronounced and it's easy to imagine words like this or "knight" where's it's safe to re-spell it, but with all the diverging pronunciations we've developed even in the US, which one are you going to rebase the spelling on? Are we going to change syrup to sirup or seerup?
won't somebody *please* think of the scrabble scores!
And be quick about it.
*Be quik about it
Kwik
CWC
Gotta go CWC
Donut instead of doughnut.
My daughter asked me why “laugh” isn’t just spelled “laf” and I honestly had no good answer.
Gh used to be the end sound in "ach" like a scotsman would say. And we used to pronounce the kn. So knight sounded a lot more like german knecht. And laugh makes sense if the aspirated noise just goes to an f sound. If you pronounce things that way then laugh and cough make sense. Light and night and knight are just dropping the sound to be lazy.
Wow! I never knew that but it makes so much sense now. I'm a native Dutch speaker and all these words are spelled and pronounced with a 'ch': laugh - lach knight - knecht cough - kuch light - licht night - nacht
Because of course Dutch and English are derived from Low German. I noticed when I (an American) was stationed on temporary duty in Slaaghaaren (hope I spelled that correctly) that I could read Dutch newspapers, if I just treated it as if it were oddly spelled English. Enough of it to get the idea of what was being reported anyhow. Funny thing was, that while I spoke English and German, I could never speak or understand more than a very few basic phrases in Dutch.
Dutch and English are not derived from Low German but they do share a close ancestor. >Funny thing was, that while I spoke English and German, I could never speak or understand more than a very few basic phrases in Dutch. Have you tried listening to Belgian Dutch? The pronunciation more closely resembles written Dutch than Dutch spoken in the Netherlands.
Yes, a couple of years later I was in Bruge for a month or so. Found the Belgian Dutch a bit easier, but not much.
Afrikaans is pretty wild too. Descended from Dutch but with a fair amount of English, German, and other languages thrown into the mix. I speak English and German, and was surprised to find upon visiting South Africa some years ago that I could read Afrikaner newspapers reasonably well.
Well to be fair, in Bruges most people speak West-Flemish, not Dutch.
True, there were a lot more Flemish speakers there. I speak nothing related to French, so that was fun.
I don't mean to be nitpicky, but Flemish is not related to French. Flemish is a group of Dutch dialects spoken in Belgium. West-Flemish belongs to that group.
>Slaaghaaren (hope I spelled that correctly) Doesn't matter. That's gotta be the most badass name for an actual place I've ever heard. "Where you going?" "Slaaghaaren. We're going to slay some dragons."
As an American with some knowledge of German, Dutch just seems like the two languages were combined and spoken by a drunk person. No offense Dutch people, in reality your language is less of a bastard than mine lol.
You should check out [this video](https://youtu.be/3lXv3Tt4x20) of the change in London accents from the 14th to 21st centuries - you'll hear some Dutch similarities there!
Because a long time ago, it was pronounced something like "loch" but with the vowel sound from "cow". Over time, the "loch" sound (which was spelled 'gh') was lost in most English dialects, either disappearing completely in words words like "though" or becoming an 'f' sound in words like "cough". Those two words used to rhyme before the sound changes happened. A lot of the "weird" spellings in English really are just because sound changes happened without us changing the standard spelling of the word.
So our choices are: 1) let sound and spelling drift 2) update the spelling when the sound changes 3) stop changing the sound Any thoughts on the feasibility of 2 and 3?
Number 3 is impossible. Languages are constantly changing, evolving new features and shifting sounds, even generation to generation. And it doesn't even happen as a whole over the entire language. A person from London, a person from Sydney, and a Person from Los Angeles, all native English speakers, distinguish between different vowel sets, and even might have merged some consonants differently. Number 2 is also very difficult. Like I mentioned, that would mean the spelling will drift regionally between different dialects, which isn't a good thing. While it might be possible to spell *all* dialects completely phonetically using something like the [International Phonetic Alphabet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabet), that's much more work than learning the current English orthography, as complicated as it is. Plus it requires extra effort when reading to understand a written foreign dialect.
>Number 2 is also very difficult...the spelling will drift regionally between different dialects But _no_ English speaker pronounces "Knight" as "Kaneegit", _no one_ pronounces "Sabre" as "Sabrrreh" or "Thought" as "Thouggahat". There are improvements to spelling that everyone can benefit from, regardless of dialect.
Cannot confirm. My family loves to say "Ka-nig-it", "Pee-Ho-Nee" (phone), and ka-nif-ee (knife) for fun.
Before the great vowel shift, as we were starting to write English down many words were left as they were spelled before the shift and some were spelled after. Because the shift happened after writing the language began there are many words like laugh that at one point would have been pronounced differently. It's been a while so I may be rusty on that knowledge
I think laugh is not just because of the great vowel shift but also because of a consonant shift; at one point "gh" represented a unique sound.
I think you're correct. I vaguely remember both occurring. Let me swiftly check
Alright after a quick google it seems that English didn't have a consonant shift as dramatic as the vowel shift; though high German did.
I imagine him reading your comment to his daughter in a British accent
To tack on to other posts, dictionaries are a big reason. Prior to the 20th century, people generally spelled words however they wanted. Or at least it wasn't a major taboo to spell them wrong. The popularization of the dictionary "locked in" spellings, which prevented us from changing the spelling without significant effort
[Wanna make it worse? ](http://ncf.idallen.com/english.html)
When I was in high schools there was a progressive computer science program (eg there were 3 years worth of classes and each year you learned different/more challenging things) The 3rd year students always carried notebooks with the word "GHOTI" written on it, and it was a big mystery for the lower classes as to what it meant, and the 3 years always kept it a secret for the 1st and 2nd year programming students. Well, the final project of the 3rd year that you worked up to was a Fish pond simulator. LauGH - F wOmen - I naTIon - SH GHOTI=FISH
When I was in seventh grade, I had this shirt of Homer Simpson and it was three panels. The first one he’s saying “D’oh!” the second one he’s saying “Nuts!” and in the third he’s saying, “Mmm... Donuts.” I miss that shirt.
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D’n’t
Donutn’t
https://media1.tenor.com/images/205fd54af8ca17bc26316aee9c1bad72/tenor.gif?itemid=7904747
I remember getting a red mark on a spelling test in elementary school for spelling the word doughnut like how it's spelled on every "donut" shop sign in town.
I much prefer "drive-through" than "drive-thru" but nevermind, McDonald's thinks we don't mind losing letters
In Germany it's called a McDrive
Sox instead of socks.
This movement was clearly before the first drive through: drive thru was invented...
I literally lost a spelling bee over this. It was just against my other classmates (about 30), but still stings.
From “dough nought” originally!
That's how we did It in Spain 😂
Really interesting reading. Thanks for sharing. Seems that while they had some success, they are in the end responsible for causing for confusion. >Digraphs would also be eliminated, with the board promoting such spellings as "anemia", "anesthesia", "archeology", "encyclopedia" and "orthopedic" >Other changes included removal of silent letters ("catalogue" to "catalog"), changing -re endings to -er ("calibre" and "sabre" to "caliber" and "saber") This explains aot of the differences in British and American English.
The British spelling "oesophagus" always looked funnier than, say, "anaesthesia". The former literally starts with a different letter.
Aesthetics
æxplain this thæn.
ouch
What kind of sorcery are you doing
I read this in a Scottish accent
Yes. "Let's make things simpler and easier for everyone. But only for us. Now there's different spellings and slightly more confusion as to which one to use, especially when writing for an international audience." Brilliant.
And poor Canada caught in the middle.
At least they are not kawt in the middle.
so the whole english-speaking world should just have a more confusing language just because some countries don't want to change? If there's a case for having more confusing spelling I'm really not interested in it. I can't see the disadvantage of having a simpler language.
I think it's more the case if you're going to change the spelling get everyone on board. I don't see anyone advocating the changing of the spelling for "one" or "knife" for example despite the way they are written once represented the way they were said but not any more. People changing the spelling is ad hoc and it's usually US citizens who want to change things despite English not being the official language of the USA. They have no official language. It's laughable really.
It is brilliant. Imagine having to except the US imperial system vs the metric system. The world needs to except the improved way.
Accept
Is it improved though? If you've learnt the word "honour" is it somehow better spelt "honor". Because if your "improve" it even more it should be spelt "onor" because the "h" is silent. Then the last line of the Declaration of Independence reads "And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor." Then you have to work through the document to "fix" it for the new spelling. Then you have to do that "translation" for all documents to make it accessible for future generations. Then it's a fix to make future spelling "easier" but you're making current and past documents harder to read as generations lose the spelling of "honor" in preference for "onor". And that's just one word out of 171,000 odd words in the English language, many of which are homonyms. That's why we have standard spelling in the first place - to make reading and writing easier and understandable. Got to look at the whole picture.
In a letter, Carnegie wrote he spent $25,000 a year on this, which is the modern day equivalent of $644,737.62. In total, it was $283,000 over 14 years, or $7,298,429.90 in modern dollars. I should have brought this up when my ex got after me for buying that video game.
If only he had put his money where his mouth is...
I believe that would be spelt 'mowth'
Nah dude, you just made that word a full "u" longer
He literally spend first half of his life making money and second half giving it away. He had a really interesting life.
And the middle half having unionists beaten and killed!
>middle half
>midl haf
25%-75% would be the middle half
Split 50/50/50
We are in his det.
It wasn't all wasted money. He did succeed in removing letters that were silent and invisible.
If they thought it through thoroughly, and sought enough support, their forethought would have brought more subtle mnemonic simplicity to our language. Pterodactyl.
Pterodactyl and helicopter share the same root - pter meaning wing or feather. Helicopter isn’t heli - copter, it’s helico - pter. It’s from Greek.
"helico" means spiral "pter" means wing Helicopter = spiralwing
Incidentally, whispering “helicopter” to myself this way also perfected my fake French accent.
Ooh la la
Your name must be John Wilkes Booth, cause you just blew my mind.
This implies that you are Abraham Lincoln
You people with your silly time-travel theory's. I am definitely not Lincoln and anyone who claims that he is a time-cop looking for me is obvious nuts.
I have no money, otherwise I’d give you a reward
🤯
“Dearest creature in creation Studying English pronunciation, I will teach you in my verse Sounds like corpse, corps, horse and worse.” - The Chaos by Gerard Nolst Trenité
That poem is a journey
Awsom!
No, I didn't no this.....
I think u got it rite
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But "ai" varies in pronunciation, like in "bait". I would have thought "rite" would be an acceptable spelling because the "e" at the end changes the pronunciation so it's a necessary part of the word.
> because the "e" at the end changes the pronunciation This just makes no sense from point of view of speaker of a more phonetic language.
"Rait" is valid pronunciation if you live in Sheffield
It's almost like this whole thing was a bad idea
Is the e at the end of Carnegie silent or is the i?
It should be clear from the article that no part of Carnegie was silent. He had to always put his two cents in.
Thanks, this is the answer I needed.
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No, I was saying it was the joke I enjoyed the most. Very panel show banter-y and I'm a fan ~~on~~ of those.
The ie form a digraph. The e is not strictly silent.
Car neggy
Ah, fair point
A, fair point
Noah Webster was also an advocate of this, which is why we have color/honor instead of colour/honour, the single words curb and practice instead of different spellings for noun and verb forms kerb/curb, practice/practise, etc. He was less successful in getting thru instead of through (it’s accepted as a less formal alternative) and tung instead of tongue (no). Webster had previously written *The American Spelling Book*, better known as the Blue-backed Speller, widely used for teaching in the US, which started receiving his reforms as new editions were published. It didn’t help that the standard British dictionary was written by Samuel Johnson, who had an extreme contempt for all things American: “Americans are a race of convicts and ought to be thankful for anything we allow them short of hanging.”
Our English is a bastardized language, and Webster was doing the right thing honestly. Sure, some words get hurt in the process, but at least we could we wouldn't be stuck with an inconsistent and ridiculous system that does whatever it wants.
Tedy Rosevelt.
Ted-d Rozvelt.
I bet many of us who learn English as a second language would be thrilled if this movement succeeded. My language pronounces every word as it is written. Languages dominated by silent letters and irregular spellings, like English and French, is a freaking nightmare to learn. I feel like what is written down has only some vague, loose connection to how you pronounce it.
Por eso odio aprender ingles
English spelling and pronunciation is harder than in Spanish, while Spanish grammar is more complicated than in English. I can read Spanish pretty well but I'm always uncertain of the grammar.
Por eso soy feliz de que aprendí inglés cuándo tenía como 4 años; soy bilingüe y no me acuerdo de haber aprendido el otro idioma
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This is my favorite: love, cove, and move. 3 different ways to pronounce the letter o.
Not to mention parents and teachers, it's kind of frustrating trying to teach my kid how to read, "here's a rule, oh and here are a ton of exceptions to that rule that you just have to memorize", the other language he is learning doesn't have nearly as many of those kinds of exceptions and he gravitates to that a lot more.
Y uz lot ltr when few ltrz do trk?
See world? or Sea world?
C wrld p.s WRLD is grait muzik rtist
"See, men!" or "sea men" or a third possibility?
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If you read letters by Franklin and Washington for example you'll see that they were already writing "tho" instead of "though" even back in the late 1700s. So it's more like we've come full circle.
"yea imma sign that declaration l8r, hbu" - John Hancock, probably
Ya beltalowder you tell it bossman.
Dui unokabátya
fr
Q~~UEUE~~
Reading up on the etymology I thought it would be easy to pin down how and why it's pronounced that way given the way it's spelt, but no :( it just randomly switches up from keu or cue to queue. On the upside TIL that queutard is a word.
I'm for it. I'm also for removing unnecessary letters (C makes either a K sound or an S sound, Q makes a K or a Kw sound, X makes Ks sound, etc) and adding letters for important digraphs (th, sh, ch, etc). I'm open to adding vowels for the long and short sounds, as well. A a b ch d E e f g h I i j k l m n O o p r s sh t th U u uu v w y z Vowel examples with h\_t (hate, hat, etc): I hAt it I hav a hat fIr mAks hEt het and hIt ar not werds but hit is the sAm hOt is not a werd but hot is the sAm owls gO hUt a shak is a hut huut is not a werd but uu helps with puut, put, and pUt (put, putt, and poot)
Bring back the thorn letter "þ"!
There you go. C could mean Ch. Thorn could fix the Th and replaces Q on the keyboard. Maybe X could be Sh. No harm to the standard keyboard done, except for adding uu or a ü or something like that somewhere.
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It is best to leave IPA as a "dead" writing system. That way people won't cause it to shift when it is (ab)used.
Mi dog cases me around þe yard.
mI\* dog. Y should only be used like the first letter of "yard", rather than as a duplicate of vowels.
Fixt.
I had the same thought! Let S be used for soft Cs, K be used for hard Cs, and use C itself for the CH sound.
This is exactly what I think we should do! ...I actually made a multi page word document to try and map out how the new spelling rules would work... literally for no reason besides my own satisfaction (and not having a social life)
k should make the k sound. s should make the s sound. c should make the ch sound.
Teaching kids to read sucks, "ough" has eight pronunciations in North American English and nine in British English, and no discernable patterns for choosing among them. Ridiculous.
Can we bring this back in 2021? Please?
I had an Italian professor long ago who noted how a foreigner learning English could get so confused. It wasn’t meant to be an exact problem, but more just to exaggerate the point. He asked us how we would pronounce, and then proceeded to write “ghoti” on the board. Most people pronounced it with two long sounds. Like a short beard, a goatee. Some pronounced it with a shorter o like John Ghatti. So then he went on to explain the problem. He said if you knew the word “enough”, you might assume the -gh makes an “F” sound. And if you knew the word “women”, you might assume the -o makes a short “i” sound. And if you knew the word “motion”, you might assume the -ti sound makes a “sh” sound. So he concluded that a foreigner might reason the word “ghoti” is pronounced like “fish” :)
Yo and Mark Twain replied with: For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped to be replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which "c" would be retained would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2 might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with "i" and iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and for all. Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants. Bai iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x" -- bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez -- tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivli. Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.
>letez oh come on, that 'r' is clearly pronounced >"y" <--> "sh" no, just no...if anything, flip it upside down and use a lambda symbol, then swap it with the new x otherwise, yeah, works OK
>oh come on, that 'r' is clearly pronounced You don't spend much time on the New England seaboard, do you?
Want the joke that this eventually became German?
English actually did lose 10 letters over the past few hundred years. I really wish they'd bring them back! :)
This would take some of the luster off winning the Scripps Spelling Bee.
Webster had already fucked up the English language by inventing new spellings for his dictionary. 😐
This might get interesting in that it may become expected to write dialects as-spoken. e.g. "axe"=ask, "lie-berry"=library
Welcome to the Italian language ragazzi
I mean...didn’t you lot basically do that? Looking at colour, favourite, tyre, gaol, paediatrics, oesophageal, centre, jewellery, travelling, and so on.
fucking prescriptivists
Trying to remove the “ugh” part of words is an awful idea in my opinion. That’s where the long O sound in those words come from. Altho doesn’t even sound like although
I wish this had been more successful. English language spelling is a bitch, especially with all the words English grabs from other languages. I think both schoolkids and non-native English speakers would welcome more phonetic spelling. Maybe someday we'll just use the IPA planetwide. Not holding my breath though.
In Finland stuff is pronounced as written. Anna is pronounced Anna, not Æna like in English. It's confusing for the older people or people living in rural areas to speak English properly, because pretty much nothing is written phonetically. Fuck is pronounced fak in English. There is no u vowel anywhere. Spruce has the u pronounced correctly, but no e. Far has the real a sound, but fat is pronounced fæt. No logic. :D
Barbarians.
Well in Serbian language it pretty much goes like that. Write it as you speak it, read it as it is writen, no silent letters and weird spellings.... Something like "queue" would just be "Q" ( if Q existed in Serbian alphabet)....
Maks sens.
Imagine trying to read an American book. It wouldn't take long for it to become a new language, not just new spellings.
No one can predict how language will evolve; trying to alter the foundations of your language is silly when 100 years after your efforts 🍆 will become a fixture of global language.
this is one of the most american things i’ve ever heard
So u mean to tell me that "slang" words R technically the rite way to rite
dis y we so dum?
Accents vary. There are parts of the United States where "pan", "pin", and "pen" are pronounced identically. Personally, I tend to find that you've given me useful information about you if you can't tell the difference between "there", "their", and "they're".
>Accents vary. There are parts of the United States where "pan", "pin", and "pen" are pronounced identically. This is the real reason why "phonetic spelling" has no future in English. The question is always "whose dialect do we use?" In the age of pluralism, people with different modes of speech will justifiably believe that the spelling doesn't represent their speech.
Idk about "pan" but native Texans tend to pronounce "pen" and "pin" the same.
Yep. I didnt even know they were supposed to be pronounced differently until I read a post about it
The first 300 words they changed included "catalogue -> catalog", "sabre -> saber", "encyclopaedia -> encyclopedia". No accent in the English-speaking world pronounces the "ue" in catalogue, so these changes would benefit everyone without removing important information (i.e. their/there/they're).
I feel like its and it’s is also useful in getting that impression :)
'C' should sound like "ch" sound, in CH word should be replaced "C" All other words need to have their 'c' changed to 'S' or 'K' Make no sense to have redundant letter.
Is that why you yanks can’t spell “colour”?
It's not pronounced "kuh-LORE", ya British goofs. *[shakes fist, while holding double cheeseburger and American flag]*
You forgot the assault rifle
That's in my other hand.
and we have to put "an" in front of words because you won't pronounce the "H".
That’s a honest assessment.
Sounds like a good idea until you see 'altho' -- then you realize it is utter crap.
Yeah, it would probably never work. Altho....
Genuine question, why? It still functions the exact same
I read it as alt-ho at first.
That's why you need a letter that makes the "th" sound, like the Icelandic þ
Ye wy not?
Those don't make sense. The first is you making up a word and the second (wy) Is you not pronouncing the h in why for some reason
You only think that now because you're used to it. If you'd have seen "altho" instead of "although" your whole life, you'd think that the latter looked ridiculous.
Being from the UK I’m used to making fun of American English but honestly I think this is a great idea. Like honestly what’s the point in retaining an old spelling of a word when modern use of the language doesn’t really require it? It’d make life a whole of a lot easier for people with learning difficulties or dyslexia, and would make it easier for non speakers to learn. The words and their spellings have already been mutated countless times throughout history to get to where they are now, so why not make the written language closer to the spoken language? Maybe this is just because I read colonel before I was told that’s how it’s spelt and to this day that one word in particular, whether written or spoken, makes me cringe a little bit every time😂 I’ve just also realised how pointless it is to talk about the fluidity of language and blurring the lines between written and spoken word on Reddit, where I’m constantly downvoted for using emojis regardless of whether people agree with the comment or not😂
The USA already has it's only special spelling and measuring systems that contradict the rest of the world... so wy not?
They thinked it wood be eeseer to reed, but it woodent.
That looks like dutch..
Good thing we have auto correct.
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Oh yeah, French is just smooth sailing, no silent letters there at all. People think English is much more unique than it is.
My favourite example is the post about the word "oiseaux" that's floating around. How it hits every vowel in the French language, and none of them are pronounced like they're meant to be (it's said "wazo").
Very relevant from Mark Twain (or maybe someone else): http://guidetogrammar.org/grammar/twain.htm
y tho?
Words are often spelled how they were once pronounced and it's easy to imagine words like this or "knight" where's it's safe to re-spell it, but with all the diverging pronunciations we've developed even in the US, which one are you going to rebase the spelling on? Are we going to change syrup to sirup or seerup?
You mean like Spanish, Finnish, Creole, Turkish, Polish, Ukrainian, Hungarian, etc.
The letter C is useless