vaseline sounds like it should have been spelled vasilene but the i and the e got switched as a funny prank and it stuck.
Use the International Phonetic Alphabet.
/rɛːd/, /riːd/
/ˈlɛd/, /ˈlɛd/Or make everyone switch to a language that is orthographically transparent, like Finnish, Serbo-Croatian, and Spanish.
English has no rules, we should all revel in the chaos rather than having our language be stringently defined.
I’ve always found it funny how single vowels are pronounced in English, e.g. when you say the alphabet.
Any other language:
A, E, I, O, U
English:
Ayy, I (as in “mirror”), Eye, Ouu, Yuu
Letters in English are pronounced differently from their phonetics, oddly enough
It’s not just English. Afrikaans: Ah, 'ere, ee, <the diphthong in “whip”>, <not present in any English words>
This is why I had a problem with “phonics” as a teaching philosophy.
You have “ph” sometimes teaming up to cosplay as a freaking “f”. And that’s one of the easier rules. It’s all broken from the get-go.
My favourite word is pterodactyl
It’s got a silent letter at the beginning, and then a silent o in the middle, and an invisible a, which you pronounce but don’t type, and then a silent c, before going back to some sort of sanity for the last three letters. Who decided that’s how it should be spelt?
We already had the word Terra so why did they have to go spell this version Ptero
Posts like this are so ignorant because they’re based on the false premise that English was made to be the global language, when it’s not. It was made as a result of the mixing of Germans, Scandinavians, Celts, and French people on a gloomy isolated island in the corner of Europe for thousands of years. It’s a language that was evolved by those people, and thus it contains a lot of their linguistic quirks coming together.
Every single language has quirks like this. For example, I also speak Arabic, and people are always shocked when I tell them that an Arabic speaker from Iraq and an Arab speaker from Morocco cannot understand each other because Arabic dialects are basically different languages. THey’re only unified by standard Arabic, which most Arabic speakers don’t use in their day to day lives. It’s basically a language that’s only used to communicate with other Arabs.
English only got to where it is because of a unique situation in history where the language was used by not one, but two global hegemons. Not only that but those hegemons happened to be the most of the powerful in history, and they ruled back to back. That’s what spread and cemented English into the global language it is today.
I still don’t understand though why Europe so many languages, a good chunk of it was in the Roman empire so you would have thought that they would all have a single unified language as a result of that but even in the Mediterranean there’s different languages.
I mean all the romance languages descend from Latin. The reason why that language splintered into a bunch of other languages is isolation. When Christianity came to Europe, the empire splintered into a bunch of smaller empires and kingdoms and stayed that way for centuries. That led to a lot local variations that eventually turned into full blown languages.
You didn’t address a single thing from the original post.
It was highlighting how English is a very quirky language. You can explain it, obviously there are reasons why, but it doesn’t change the factual observation that English is a uniquely inconsistent language.
Most languages have some sort of academic body that dictates the correct usage of the language, and occasionally push for adjustments that resolve these inconsistencies. English does not, it’s a crowd sourced effort with the results being what we see today.
Many countries and languages share similar backgrounds to English - invasion by foreign peoples, large migrations, etc - yet they’ve settled most of their background into a consistent ruleset - there’s always exceptions and irregularities, but not to the level of English.
One of the largest sources of inconsistencies was the “Great Vowel Shift”, along with the invention of the printing press at roughly the same time, which standardized a spelling that didn’t reflect the massive ongoing changes in pronunciation.
This is a fascinating topic, but accusing others of ignorance for pointing out something that is a fact, is in itself ignorance.
This is complete nonsense. All languages are organic and evolve naturally. There’s no academic body that controls any langauge, that’s not how languages work. What exists is institutional bodies that try to break down and explain languages into rules and patterns, they don’t actually dictate the direction of the language. English also has such institutions by the way. This idea that English is uniquely inconsistent or uncontrolled is not true. Arabic, for example, is just as quirky, inconsistent, and uncontrolled. That’s just human speech.
You’re just elaborating and expanding on a part of what I said, while being an abrasive jerk, and ignoring everything else that didn’t suit your argument.
To the point in question, I never said academies invent the future of a language, only that they gatekeep the rules, which can include pushback against popular usage (the french academy is notorious for being very against english neologisms).
There have been cases where the changes are very substantial, like the Portuguese and French changes that happened (coincidentally) in 1990, for example, that push the languages in certain directions.
Take a cup of tea and relax a bit, and try not to argue the voices in your head.
Edit: I missed this point, let me address it:
All languages are organic and evolve naturally.
Have you heard of Esperanto, for example, or the concept of auxiliary languages?
What about artistic or fictional languages, like Tolkien’s Elvish or Star Trek’s Klingon or Dothraki or High Valerian from Game of Thrones?
None of them are “organic”, and as for evolving, it really depends but a language like Esperanto, assuming it is regularly used by a community, is very unlikely to differ from it’s textbook definition because it was specifically crafted to avoid the inconsistencies that we’re discussing and that arise from evolution.
As someone who speaks 3 languages, I can confirm english is a weak ass language.
It’s strong point is that daily and normal speech and formal writing or speech are almost the same. Thats not the case with most languages, specially the older and more complex ones.
I kind of like how it’s ever changing and evolving, I know that sours some people’s pickles but I think it’s neat. I like how it incorporates and is built on so many other languages. I enjoyed reading a short story posted here a while ago that progressively walked backwards in time as a language and it was really neat to me. I’m an idiot though so most other languages probably do this also.
American English has never be bashful about filing the serial numbers off a word and then claiming it as our own. It can lead, (lead/lead/led?) to confusion even among us native speakers. At least until we sort it out.
Personally I blame the French, (for no reason other than I can), for all the ills in the English language.
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That’s the indication of a healthy and alive language.
English has the most speakers and is the scientific and professional language of the world currently. So it is the most up to date and alive one currently.
Do u happen to speak german? I’m studying it rn and it’s making me very grateful we live in an English speaking world :/
While german is hard and weird, but it’s not far harder than english.
I used to know german but never used it and lost the muscle.
I speak Persian(Farsi), Arabic and English. I tried to learn Japanese and Chinese (mandarin) for a while but I just gave up.
I’m glad we’re not speaking Mandarin as our common language. It’s one of the least interesting languages and objectively the hardest languages I’ve seen. At least Japanese has it’s beauties, but I couldn’t find them in Mandarin.
So? Eminem makes all the words in the English language rhyme so balance is restored in the world
comb bomb tomb tome come
only two of these rhyme.
English-language spelling reform now.
But let’s only do it in some English speaking countries and not others! I am joking, but this is one of the reasons why American English has diverged from British English.
Relevant xkcd:
Speling Reeforma
What? Speak English.
I genuinely read that as ba-se-lin-e
do u mean
bejslajnorbaseliin?the 2nd one, but “base” has two syllables.
thats what i mean, thats not a “but”
not like the word “base” which is pronounced
bejs
English can certainly be difficult! It can understood through tough thorough thought though throughout the learning process.
If y’all ain’t get the gist of it y’ain’t thunk it thru enuff.
This was the easiest sentence to parse out for me…
I’m a fan of the phrase “before was was was, was was is”"
I’d guess this sentence would be just as flashy in any language really, not just in english
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.
A real English sentence.
Yeah I never understood that one myself
Unless I’m missing something it’s supposed to be Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.
Bison from the city of Buffalo bully other bison from the city of Buffalo.
Buffalonian bison [who] Buffalonian bison bully [also] bully Buffalonian bison. Eight is correct!
Dang!
Ah got it, thanks!
No. It’s shit
English is the most adaptable language in the world. England got colonised something like seven different times up until the mediaeval age. The language that came out of the end of that process is precision designed to accommodate unfamiliar words and grammar. There’s no better language to put a loanword into. And it’s really easy to invent new grammar for English, which is why English has the most neopronouns.
English has sacrificed its logic and structure to grow fluidity.
He said in English.
Do you speak other languages tho?
Yeah lol
Reading that gave me a tough hiccough.
Adultery is not the opposite of infantry; whimsy is not an adjective; you can live together in an apartment; and the Midwest is in the Eastern US.
“flammable” and “inflammable” mean the same thing
What a country!
Bye, everybody! *dies*
"Inflammable means flammable, what a country! "
Dr. Nick
Edit added end of quote
the Midwest is in the Eastern US.
That actually makes sense because it’s from the point of view of Europe.
Just as middle east and western Asia are the same region
As an Asian, “Midwest” always feels off. Only now I realized this is the same shit as “Middle East” (which I forgot to give second thoughts as an adult). Now both terms really sucks to me!
It is from the POV of the original colonies.
‘Jam’ can mean a fruit preserve, to play music, a stuck door, traffic, to cram something into something else, a tense situation, or to block a radio signal. All spelled and pronounced the same.
Just wait until you learn about ‘set.’
Also door jambs
Jim should shim the jamb.
Why can I be overwhelmed or underwhelmed, but not perfectly adequately whelmed?
Nobody’s stopping you using “whelmed”. You can just start using it whenever the opportunity arises.
I use it occasionally, though normally not seriously, along with words where you have an “un” or "dis’, but no positive equivalent, e.g. “gusting” as a positive “disgusting”
English lacks a “gusting” word, but romance languages don’t.
e.g. in Italian “gustoso” is the opposite of “disgustoso”
That’s a brilliant fact, and perfect example if anyone disagrees with me, thank you :)
lol I love “gusting.” Next time I eat someone else’s cooking, I’m throwing that out there.
Whelm and overwhelm are synonyms.
The way I learned it, is that people have a tendency to emphasize, so when became overwhelmed. You see the same thing with ‘good’, ‘great’, and 'epic’meaning the same thing within certain contexts.
If you want to get technical, I believe “whelm” originally came from waves hitting the hull of a ship, overwhelmed was when the waves crashed over the side and onto the deck.
the Midwest is in the Eastern US.
This explains some of my US geography confusion over the years…
Midwest is not a place, it is a People.
Maybe start with the fact that not all words in use in English are English words.
Or that people in different parts of the world say/spell words differently and we inconsistently applied it:
Kernel and Colonel were the same rank but we took the pronunciation of the first and the spelling of the latter.
My brain got fired while reading this. 🗿
In the ever so pretensious words of Walt Whitman…
“English is the greatest language ever!! It’s as great as life itself! Also death!”
Great podcast.
