For some words, we have adopted the pronunciation but modified the spelling: galosh (from French galoche), strange (from French estrange). In English, though, we wear our battle scars proudly. Many other languages, therefore, fully adapt words they borrow: Norwegian turned chauffeur into sjåfør and Finnish turned strand into ranta. What does this have to do with spelling? When we “borrow” words, they often come from other Latin-alphabet spelling systems, but have sounds different from the sounds we make in English. The British also did business with everyone else and took words as they went – something we call “borrowing,” even though the words were kept. With each new colony, Britain acquired words: hickory, budgerigar, zebra, bungalow. Once the English tossed out the French (but not their words) a few centuries later, they started to acquire territories around the world – America, Australia, Africa, India. Then the Norman French conquered in 1066 – and replaced much of the vocabulary with French, including words which over time became beef, pork, invade, tongue and person. Starting in the 9th Century, Vikings occupied parts of England and brought some words (including they, displacing the Old English hie). The Romans invaded Britain in the 1st Century AD and brought their alphabet in the 7th Century, the Angles and Saxons took over, along with their language. In its broadest strokes, these problems come down to people – including you and me, dear readers – being greedy, lazy and snobbish.įirst, the greed: invasion and theft. So what happened with English? It’s a story of invasions, thefts, sloth, caprice, mistakes, pride and the inexorable juggernaut of change. But from Tlingit to Czech, many other languages that sound nothing like Latin do well enough with versions of the Latin alphabet. Building a spelling system for English using letters that come from Latin – despite the two languages not sharing exactly the same set of sounds – is like building a playroom using an IKEA office set. The problem begins with the alphabet itself. But no, our spelling came to be a capricious mess for entirely human reasons. If some evil mage has performed vile magic on our tongue, he should be bunged into gaol for his nefarious goal (and if you still need convincing of how inconsistent English pronunciation is, just read that last sentence out loud). Eight hundred.Īttempting to spell in English is like playing one of those computer games where, no matter what, you will lose eventually. In its fullest version, the poem runs through about 800 of the most vexing spelling inconsistencies in English. Sounds like corpse, corps, horse and worse. You may have seen a poem by Gerard Nolst Trinité called The Chaos.
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