English is amusingly weird

Languages
#1

I have always thought that the irregularities in its pronunciation and spelling is both maddening and hilarious at the same time.

Like how these words are pronounced differently despite having similar (or the exact same) spelling:

tough, though, through
blood, good, mood
bomb, womb
meat, steak
howl, bowl
heart, heard
to read (present), to read (past)
wind (noun), to wind (verb)
tear (noun), to tear (verb)

The last mystery and quite possibly not English: why is the name Shawn and Sean are pronounced the same, but the state Kansas and Arkansas are different?

I mean, if a room full of language geeks is not the exact right place to discuss this, I don’t know where is.

Would be delighted to see more examples of how amusingly weird English is as a language, or maybe some answers to the mystery!

7 Likes
#2

English is exceedingly weird, I feel mostly because it has so many influences from a variety of root languages.
Like the idea that the animal comes(mostly) from a germanic root, while the meat of said animal comes(mostly) from a French/romance root.
A lot has to do with what the common man was speaking versus what the aristocracy speaking. There are many words that have rules, we just don’t know them/ aren’t taught them.
The syllable stress to determine whether a word is a verb or a noun is fascinating.
E.g. récord - noun, recórd - verb
Énvelope - noun, envelópe - verb
The spelling is all over the place because print is a relatively new technology. And depending on the root language and the time period when we adopted the word determines the spelling. American English tended to drop letters, say the u from color(colour), because printers had to pay per letter.
I could go on, but I feel this is sufficient for now.

5 Likes
#3

Using some of the English spelling rules, you can spell ‘fish’ as ‘ghoti’.

3 Likes
#4

My Spanish teacher showed this in high school.

1 Like
#5

I’ve never understood that example. It requires mashing parts of words from other languages to make it work. Aside from plurals and newer verb conjugations, English doesn’t really Frankenstein its words; it just steals them (a lot of them) and garbles the pronunciations.

1 Like
#6

I agree. We don’t necessarily make anything up, words are just is “borrowed” from other languages and given the English pronunciation. I think the point of the “ghoti” exercise isn’t so much about the word, but about how there are no solid rules to pronouncing each letter or letter combination. Whereas, in other languages the letters have very specific sounds associated and if they change it has a rule or diacritic mark to indicate as such.
Is there any letter in the English alphabet that doesn’t have more than one way to pronounce it? And follow up with are there any solid rules as to when we pronounce letters different?

#7

I love the fact that the letter removals were done by Americans for efficiency reasons. So maybe Americans just like everything quick and efficient, including, correct me if I’m wrong
 the founding of fast food? :joy:

Also would you by any chance know the answer why Kansas and Arkansas are pronounced differently? Or Shawn and Sean?

1 Like
#8

I have no good answer for Kansas vs. Arkansas. I think the Shawn/Sean is, once again, about the roots of the language that it originally came from. I had a friend in school named Shaughn, which was short for Shaughnessy.

1 Like
#9

From what I found, it is because the name derives from the Algonquian term for the Quapaw tribe, Akansa (with the prefix ‘a’ which is used for ethnic groups). Various spellings were used, but the State legislature officially adopted the French pronunciation in 1881. In French, you don’t pronounce the ‘s’ in the plural.

3 Likes
#10

Thank you for the explanation Bando. I was wondering about that.

1 Like
#11

Thank you for the explanation. It crossed my mind if it may be influenced by the Native American language, so I guess now it is clear that this is somewhat unrelated to English. I always liked how Arkansas is pronounced!

1 Like
#12

Here’s a fun video that dives into the strange spelling of English words.

5 Likes
#14

This is so interesting and weird at the same time hahah :laughing:

#15

This one is not about spelling but also demonstrates why I feel lucky to be a native speaker of English.

image
image1024×390 125 KB

9 Likes
#16

Omg I never thought that this word order existed hahaha so funny

#17

This is something I’ve come across when I worked as a typesetter/editor. “Green great dragons” can exist, but the word order implies that there is a special type or species of dragon called the “great dragon” (as a two-word noun) and that there is a green one of those.

A lot of animal names in particular use size, color or origin (region), and if you’re not careful to compartmentalize the name as a single unit, trying to then follow this word order can get confusing fast!

4 Likes
#18

English is such a mixed bag of a language, I’m sure we should really call it a Creole :slight_smile: