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In 7th grade, I had a brutal argument with my English teacher over my spelling of Grey instead of Gray for the color (shade?). It seems I had read too much H.G. Wells...and she had not. I'm 70 and have not yet recovered from the conflict. It's ok. I have good meds now.
Wait... you cannot write 'grey' and 'color' in the same sentence. I teach English as well, and I have to remind my students that it is their choice which variety of English (e.g. AmE, BrE...) they prefer to use, but it is not okay to mix them up randomly. Hence, if you use American English, the words are spelled(!) "gray" and "color", but if you use British English, the words are spelt(!) 'grey' and 'colour'. You need to be consistent in orthography, pronunciation and grammar. With that being said, both spellings are valid - just use them in the correct variety.
@@TheKennethfilm KYM has a lot of possible theories on a specific origin for Karen becoming a meme name (eg. Like the movie Mean Girls), but I think it also has to do with the fact that the name is very common or expected among the "white 30s to middle-aged US suburban mom" type of women who also tend to be ones exhibiting the entitled behaviour described by other people's personal experiences
Born of Fire what zaqareemalcolm said. You can see it in other names as terms, like Becky- because it’s a popular name for white women of the millennial generation. Stacy is much the same. Though as we all know, Stacy’s mum has got it going on!
This is why Americans love spelling contests so much while other countries don't give a shit. In portuguese, for example, it's just not fun. You say it, you write it.
It's also the biggest complaint English speakers have about English. On the other hand, theirs knot many weighs yule get aweigh with righting like this in another language and bee able to make any cents. It certainly throes even native speaker for a loupe, so eye cant imagine watt it wood dew two a novice.
English spelling is seemingly inconsistent because it is derived from at least four root languages. Latin, Old Norse, French, Saxon, and some Flemish. The events of 55 bce, and 43, 536 and 1066 ce have left their linguistic marks.
As italian this sounds so strange to me, with our language you know exactly how to write a word once you heard it for the first time, or pronounce a written word you never seen before
Cuando estaba estudiando Italiano, un sobrino mio me dijo: "Hey, tio, vas a ser una persona muy importante..." Y yo le pregunté: ¿Por qué...? Y me contestó: "Y... porque ahora vas a poder decir todas las malas palabras en Italiano..." No domino el italiano, pero seria algo así como : "É... ¡Perr che agora porrai dire tutte le parolacce en Italano!!!"
Except for the double consonants, z plus zz, and words containing "h" letter. Italians don't really know how to pronounce h, they panic when they see it.
As someone famous said, "English doesn't just borrow from other languages- it chases them down dark alleys, hits them over the back of the head, and goes through their pockets for loose grammar."
This would be a valid if jokey metaphor if vocabulary borrowing involved depriving source languages of their words instead of merely copying their form along with the meaning.
The teaching folks tried that in the country where I live. End result was a barely literate generation. Thankfully they have seen the error of their ways and words are now taught phonetically.
Pliny Elder When you think of it that way, English speakers should have a much easier time learning Chinese languages than speakers of other languages.
The words with 'gh' almost always have a very similar word in German with 'ch', e.g.: Laugh - lachen Though - doch knight - Knecht (servant) light - Licht sight - Sicht brought (to bring) - brachte (bringen) thought (to think) - dachte (denken) to fight - fechten (=fight with swords) tight - dicht night - Nacht ... You get the idea
As Lindy beige explained, English is now like Chinese in that you don't look at the spelling. You look at the shape of the whole word and associate that with a learned sound and meaning.
THAT IS PRECISELY what I wanted to say. Chinese characters originally had only one pronunciation but as the population grew so arise many dialects, so now each character can be pronounced a hundred ways but still written the same. so many the different localized Chinese groups up until 50 years ago can only communicate in writing but not verbally with each other.
@@terrythefatshark Yeah, now that I think about it, why doesn't it's stand for the things possession, like all other words that end with 's. Why is it like this?
@@SoloHen well in Italian it would not make any sense. If a mother tounge hears any italian word he clearly knows how it's written since you pronunce the same it's written
English speakers: Omg I can't believe in China people memorize a pictograph for each word Also English speakers: *HAS TO MEMORIZE THE INFINITE WEIRD AND UNINTUITIVE SPELLINGS FOR EACH WORD*
@@samueltong8061 That is something only people with a sense for language can do, or people who grew up with English. Going with the flow in a language is like having at least 10 years experience of listening, writing and speaking on a near daily basis. Try to think at what age you actually started to speak fluently in English, that's how long it took to go with the flow.
@@mrsqueak4837 True, you raise a good point. However, for me, going with the flow, not thinking too deeply into the grammar rules that do not need to be thought about, really helps me.
When other languages try to make English (as they hear it) more accessible to their language (or vice versa?), things get messier. Like Pinyin, the government-authorized method of transliterating Chinese and English, which seems to have been absorbed. So I was sneered at by New Jersey acupuncturist Dr. Cai's receptionist for asking for Dr. [K]ai. She said, "You American's are so stupid, you can't even pronounce his name right, it's Sigh." I gently explained that "c" before "a" was pronounced like "k" in English. I left her to her notion. I gave up trying to learn Mandarin from a nearby college professor in town because she insisted I learn Pinyin to learn Chinese when I had already had considerable pronunciation success with Wade-Giles, another system. EEEEEE!!! It's a wonder we manage at all!
It's also fascinating how some words shifted their meaning. In German, we still have "Knecht" (which is the origin of "knight"), but it kept its old meaning of "(farm) servant". In Swedish, the word for woman is "kvinna", which became "queen" in English - quite a promotion.
I noticed some more extreme examples. Like the words sea and lake in dutch (zee en meer) and german (meer and see). Exacly the opposite, for example Waddenzee in dutch, Wattenmeer in german. Or the word 'black' in english. Comes from the french 'blanc' which means white. It's quite fascinating to see.
But queen in the gay sublect or whatever is the correct term really is closer to the original Danish borrowing - from what I've read - opera queen, drama queen, etc. There's a story that Queen Elizabeth (the Queen Mother) would say to some of her staff "Will one of you queens get a stiff drink for this tired old Queen."
wcpgw I regret we have never been told at school to pronounce English words as they are spelled - just to guess their meaning (not when speaking). Thus a German speaker could easily know the meaning of many words of Germanic roots.
also think about indo-european root *gʰóstis, "stranger": English guest, German Gast (same meaning); and then you have Latin hostis = enemy. quite a different way of considering the strangers.
I cannot express my love for your content enough! This whole video, within every point you made I found my own critiques, realizations, and issues I’ve encountered with the English language. About 5 minutes in I thought ‘This must be why I feel like I can do whatever I want when writing in English.’ Then! You explained authors simply submitted their works and people with printing presses winged it so whatever they wanted was published! To this day, English has the feature of adapting alongside its speakers and writers! English continues to self-determine who understands with more factors like region, even ethnicity and in-groups, with the learning and participation of non-native speakers, and the creation and adoption of new words. It’s so fun to see discussion and information about the history that brought us communication🥰 Thank you for your hard work!
I = Ai; you = yu; he = hi; she = shi; it = it; we = wi; they = dhei; this = dhis; that = dhat (stressed pronunciation), dhet (unstressed pronunciation); here = hir; there = dhér; where = whér, who = hu; what = whot, whoet; how = hau; not = not; all = ool; many = meni; some = soem (stressed pronunciation), sem (unstressed pronunciation); few = fyu; other = oedher; one = woen; two = tu; three = thri; four = foor, four (depending on pronunciation); five = faiv; six = siks; seven = seven; eight = eit; nine = nain; ten = tén; long = long, loong (depending on pronunciation); heavy = hevi; head = héd; hammerhead shark= hamerhèd shark; short = short; narrow = naro; woman = wumen; women = wimin; men = mén; need = niid; person = poersen; husband = hoezbend; diseases = disíiziz, disíizez (depending on pronunciation); throughout = thruáut; father = faadher; daughter = dooter, dootter (depending on pronunciation); thought = thoot; though = dho; low = lo; now = nau; know = no; knight = nait; doubt = daut; presentation = prezentéishen, priizentéishen (depending on pronunciation); island = ailend; business = biznis, biznes (depending on pronunciation); bury = beri; story = stori, stouri (depending on pronunciation); bird = boerd; world = woerld; fur = foer; does = doez; fruit =fruut; put = put; little = litel, littel (depending on pronunciation); flower = flauer; etc.
@@aarne3187 The deadline is when the printing press arrived in England. Only then do people need to standardize the spelling of a word for their printings.
@@aarne3187 if the spelling changed now, it would wreck havoc on the entire world. Not only would a massive chunk of native speakers suddenly lose the ability to write properly, but it would also destroy the international written presence of the language as those with a second language in English would almost have to relearn it again too This is such an issue as English is the most spoken language in the world and the international language of business
@@AdamW-eo2yq also plenty of different FL accents pronounce the same words with different sounds that often wouldn't work within the same standardised spellings, so plenty of spelling reforms would have to choose which accent is the most valid. the only way for the spelling reform to work would be to basically make each dialect its own language with its own spelling.
A "spelling bee" is a thing in English because you have to memorize the way words are spelled. In languages like German or Spanish where most words are spelled the way they sound, a spelling bee is an exercise in the absurd. And in boredom.
@Mary Contrary I believe that Hindi doesn't have an alphabet, and is more like Chinese with its characters. (That may not be true.) If it is true, perhaps Indian English speakers are already used to memorizing characters, and thus spelling, which works well for them in English.
In Spanish we have troubles with the sounds of s, c, z at least in Latin America because they are too similar the people from Spain makes a different sound to each one a it's easier for them (I apologize if I have a bad grammar my English isn't perfect)
@@Tflexxx02 Hindi has an abugida: the devanagari script. There are letters for consonants and diacritical marks for vowels that follow them. The spelling is mostly phonetic, as far as I can tell.
yeah in spain (mostly) we have the /θ/ (spelt or ) very distinct from /s/ (always spelt ), so a spelling bee can't fool us with "taza", or "tasa", because they're pronounced differently! the problem lies on and making the same sound (sometimes, when isn't pronounced /ʎ/); on and (which both are pronounced /b/) and finally, mute
This stuck out to me: I was in first grade and the teacher split the class in half to do a spelling contest. She asked someone to come up to the class and spell “would”. And me being confident in my spelling, volunteered and spelled “wood”. I lost the contest for my team. I was confused. But had I studied the week’s vocabulary I would’ve known. 😆
That’s why in spelling bees you are able to ask for a definition, origin, and have it put in a sentence. Personally, I think asking for a definition is the best option, especially when there are homophones. Next would’ve origin because a word’s origin heavily affects its spelling.
I remember asking my teacher in primary school why we don't say the 'e' and the end of snake. She said it was because the 'e' is silent, so I asked why it was silent and she just shrugged her shoulders and said "sometimes we just have silent letters"...like, okay.
Late to the game but the silent e does have some use. It usually, not always, shows a change in the vowel sound before it. The vowel sound changes to prety much how you would pronounce it when you pronounce each letter of the English about. Just think ABCDEFJH... cap vs cape pet vs Pete kit vs kite hop vs hope cut vs cute Of course words like "have" don't follow this rule nor do I know if it is even a real tested theory or not. It's just something I noticed.
The language is really interesting and confusing at the same time. As an active English learner , I'd say that English basics give you hope that you will become an advanced chad who doesn't need a translator, but then you can understand about 70-90 percent of English. Also, you always learn new words and other parts of speech, but the percentage isn't really moving; you need to put a lot of effort into pushing it for a bit. Additionally, you're starting to see that there are too many different and similar words, and you have to know academic vocabulary, which isn't really often similar to regular words. Sometimes, when I see a lot of unfamiliar words, I'm becoming sad because I learn new words routinely in order to improve my English vocabulary skills. In the beginning, it was interesting because the word you learned in an app or a textbook was in many sentences, but now it's the opposite; you're not often able to find it again. Anyway, it's only the one side; on the other side, you understand every month more and more, even if you're just surrounded by this language.
@@SM_zzz Depending on your accent, there is no R in "fasard". :D I've come across a few examples where the R in there is used a marker for a long open /a:/ by speakers with a non-rhotic accent.
varana312 bingo, if father=farther then facade=fa-sard Brits and Americans trying to spell phonetically to each other is always hilarious what with aw,o,ah vowel mergers in American accents and non nonrhotic homophones in British. Flaw=floor? Law=La? Don=Dawn? Con=Khan? Drawer=Draw? Depends where you’re from...
Actually, it’s a quadruple Pidgin language too naively arrogant to admit it’s a street urchin, like a homeless orphan wearing a fine but tattered, ill fitting old suit he found as if he were a rich lord. History of the English, really.
Just thinking about that makes my brain hurt. People say German is hard but at least our pronunciation and spelling makes actual fucking sense. Our complicated grammar also follows rules, lot of them to be fair but they are mostly consistent too.
@@DieAlteistwiederda many people also complain about our "long words". like dude. compound words are just words strung together. plus the fact that our pronunciation makes sense helps in pronouncing those "long words".
MarvelousSandstone Altes Englisch hatte drei Artikel und vier Fälle genauso wie Deutsch. Deutsch ist meine zweite Sprache, aber ich wünschte, meine Erste wäre ähnlicher zu meiner Zweite.
Nothing makes me feel more big brained than pronouncing a word correctly the first time I see it just based on what word I assume it shares an origin with.
@@BradleyZS Same, because it comes from the Latin solidare, but just about everyone who uses solder says "saw-dur" and will look at you like you have two heads if you say sol-der.
Internet is actually helping in making spellings more reasonable though. Most people when writing informally in text use spelling which matches the pronunciation.
@@lampku Yes it is, I can't think of an example where it isn't, even though, some people believes it has the "g" sound (like in "game") in words like "huevo" or "chihuahua" (the "u" is pronounced like in "Zeus") but it's still silent. It's just an illusion created by the sound of the "u"
Here is an interesting observation: A a native Dutch speaker and having lived in English speaking countries (currently the USA) I believe I have found an interesting side effect of the inconsistent spelling in English. In Dutch the spelling is mostly consistent and we are taught as children to spell phonetically. I.e. each word is like a string of beads with each letter being pronounced. So when I read I see the individual letters and my brain puts this together to pronounce words. It makes it easy for me to actually remember spelling even in English and simple to pronounce foreign words. I have observed that apparently English readers see a whole word when they read and have great difficulty to imagine how to pronounce foreign names or words they are not familiar with. Also, in the US they have these spelling-bees with children having to guess how certain words are spelled. I don't think such a thing would make sense for languages that have consistent phonetic spelling.
You know English spelling is bad if even Dutch looks logical in comparison. I mean seriously, how did "ij" and "ui" end up sounding like "ai" and "au"? Let's not consider the unnecessary extra vowels in "vrouw" or "nieuw"... "vrau" or "niu" would have been enough!
Actually, it is not only possible to learn to read phonetically in English, it is the best way to learn. “Sound it out” is often said by parents teaching their kids to read, and it does help. There are a lot of exceptions, though.
because English has same-sounding words, like night, knight, might, mite, right, rite, etc. but also has different-spelled words like tough, through, sought, slough, rough, trough, you can easily misread the word or type it, I always break up foreign words into syllables or smaller parts, it's not that hard after reading it again
@@seaeagle8976 Students decode when they read, starting with individual letter sounds. Some can hear the sounds and say the word, while others are told to blend the sounds, or stretch them out to blend them.
"English is a language that lurks in dark alleys, beats up other languages and rifles through their pockets for spare vocabulary" - quote from James Nicoll
This is a really terrible analogy. Firstly, it implies that as soon as a word is borrowed into English, it’s magically forgotten from the original language. The Japanese didn’t suddenly forget how to say “tsunami” once English speakers started saying it. Secondly, there are plenty of other languages that have been influenced greatly by loan words. How silly would it sound to say that Japanese is just a mix of Korean, Chinese, and English?
@@DannyDog27 In terms of vocabulary, Japanese does have significant influence from Chinese, English, and to a much lesser extent, miscellaneous European languages for random loanwords like アルバイト. Korean influence might come in the form of grammar, since the Japanese grammar is very similar, and we know that the yayoi people likely immigrated from the Korean peninsula.
I don't know about today, but when I was in school they taught us the IPA quite early because there is absolutely no way to learn English without knowing any IPA.
@@alexandernoe1619 Pretty sure most native English speakers have not heard of IPA, but are doing fine. 😏 Immersion and repetition can work, too. It does help if you know some Latin, Greek, French, and any Germanic language, but you have to have a sensibility for which one it sounds like (Greek or Norse for example) in order to use the correct spelling rules for that origin.
@@nyx5408French spelling and pronunciation are more straightforward .. I learned English as a 2nd language and French as a 3rd .. I am fluent in English and have no spelling issues at all, yet sometimes I read new English words wrong ! While I am not as proficient in French as English, yet I read and write it more smoothly even if I don't understand well !!
@@alexandernoe1619 when we were learing english we were using our polish spelling in bracket, to remember how to pronouce the english words! (łen łi łer lernin inglisz łi łer juzin ałr połlisz spelin in braket tu rimember hoł tu pronołc de inglisz łords) Its not perfect, as we we have some difftent sounds (no "th" for example), but it worked well enough for bunch of children!
English has so many good things going for it, particularly the simple grammar and absence of gender, but then we go and ruin it all by having such absurd spellings.
Severus Well you must be very smart then. I'm American and I find english grammar pretty complicated, I've studied chinese and korean before and I find both these language's grammar easier than english. (Don't mind the horrible punctuation lol)
Severus I don't really find it hard because it's my naitive langauge but it seems like everyone around me who don't speak English as their native langauge can't get the grammar correct, so I'm assuming it's hard for people to learn it. The people who I see get it wrong tho usually get the plurals and tenses wrong. Also english has way too many homophones.
Isle < Middle English ile < Old French ile (earlier isle) < Latin insula < terra in salo (land in the sea) < salum. Island < Middle English iland < Old English igland/iegland/ealand (water+land) < ig/ieg (water) < Proto Germanic *ahwo < Indo European *akwa (thus Latin aqua).
You are absolutely CORRECT. But what a MAGNIFICENT language it is, the sheer volume of words alone enable English speaker to express themselves in such marvelous and precise terms. I am English but have lived in the USA for 49 years and yes I still say “Tom ar toe” and “ban AR na”. But I also say “ZEE” not “ZED”. We should all be INSULTED when people say that English is a HORRIBLE language, I can think of many languages which are truly HORRIBLE. One commentator said that his wife’s native language was Dutch and she said that English was HORRIBLE. There is a perfect old English expression for that, we would say it was a case of the pot calling the kettle black. If you don’t understand that please let me know and I will explain it. French and Italian are BEAUTIFUL but English is MAJESTIC, POWERFUL, PEACEFUL AND JUST WONDERFUL. Can you imagine the heartbreaking beauty of Shakespeare being written in ANY OTHER LANGUAGE. Have you ever heard Shakespeare in German? It’s almost as bad as Shakespeare spoken with a Glaswegian accent. Sorry guys JUST JOKING. I am a native of the Black Country, the old workshop of the world in the West Midlands of England, if you are not a native then the Black Country dialect can sound as if you are from MARS.
Yep no logic in theses words Donkey-Monkey Daughter- Laughter Break and Steak but Bleak and Streak Horse-Worse South- Youth Memory must be used to remember the pronunciation.
Dyefield Have you ever HEARD any Dutch spoken or seen any examples of the written language? If you have not then any further dialog is a waste of time. However let me give you some background. I am OLD, I was born in 1942, at the end of WWII Europe tried to re-establish some form of coming together to try to help the European countries meet each other on a level playing field. One of those events that I still remember very well was the World Scouting Jamboree that was held in London. Scouts from all over Europe and indeed the world came to attend that event and to travel around Britain, they stayed with British families and several stayed with my family. I was very young at the time but my memories are still good and I have warm happy memories. A young giant of a man stayed with us, he was Dutch and I still remember his name, it was Dav Heymanns he was from The Hague. I remember him tossing me in the air and catching me while my mother watched expecting a catastrophe, but David’s arms were very strong and sure, I adored him as did we all. He came to see us many times in the 1940s and 1950s, he oiled arrive unannounced to the joy of everyone, of course my mother adopted him as she did everyone. Dav spoke excellent English, but he would have us all laughing till we cried when he spoke in Dutch trying to recite Shakespeare or Wordsworth in Dutch. Perhaps it was just the strangeness of the words coming from someone we loved so much. All languages sounds strange if you do not know them, but to say that any language is HORRIBLE IS STUPID AND IGNORANT. There were other scouts from France who stayed with us, I do not remember them as well as Dav and we were far ore familiar with French than Dutch so French did sound as strange to us. We also hosted several young French women who were teachers, one of whom we remained in touch with until she died some years ago. Her name was Therese, and I became her young English brother, we last saw he in Paris in 2000. Another was Mete ho was Jewish, she was in the French resistance and told my father many stories about the horrors of the Nazi occupation, she was from La Rochelle. You see my remarks are not just a display of IGNORANCE.
@@oldedwardian1778 No disrespect was meant from my comment. It's kind of difficult to gauge the implied tone of writing. At least for me. I was legitimately curious as to what you were talking about. I've recently gained an interest in languages and it sounded like you had something interesting to say, and what you did say was somewhat interesting, though not what I was expecting. From what I've heard, dutch can be very guttural, though that could be a different language I'm thinking of. Now, as for that whole thing where I suggested not using all caps, I honestly don't know what I was thinking at that point. So, sorry about that. I do agree that calling a language horrible is ignorant. All languages have their subtle nuances, strengths, and weaknesses. English may have inconsistent spelling, but it also has a smorgasbord of synonyms to choose from. It also shares vocabulary with both germanic and romantic languages. Thanks for taking the time to answer.
One of the truest statements I've ever read in my life: "Early Modern English spelling was an ungoverned mess." Pretty much holds up to Modern English as well if you ask me.
Ironically chinese is more similar to english than you might think. Only my dad really has trouble comprehending sentences longer than basic interaction. Mom just doesn’t get social nuances though that’s probably not much to do with english and more with her nature. I’ve been comparing chinese “rules” to english “rules” in my head since i moved to canada at 5, so maybe I’m just lucky.
@@N00bcrunch3r Thing is, Chinese characters are a lot more straightforward than you might be thinking. 木: Tree 森: Forest 下: Below 上: Above And there are other characters made up of these smaller characters (or parts of them), that combine meaning Its a bit to learn at first, but once you get the hang of it, its ez.
Well at the very least you can more easily look up a word written in English than in Hanzi. But yeah I agree it does kind of go to show that we read on a more macro level than we realize.
Chinese language has over 50,000 characters. If you look in the dictionary, there are about 20,000 to 30,000 characters. If you want to study university or higher, you should know around 7,000 to 9,000 characters. And for daily conversation, it is around 3,000 characters. That is what I know. Well English language is crazy but Chinese language is the whole different level. 😅😅😅
This is such a good video. You're so thorough and pragmatic in your examples and explanations. You're thoughtful and clear, unassuming and unfailingly straightforward. Man, I just...I love you, man.
For me a Portuguese speaker it is very difficult to understand because in my language basically all letters have only one or two different sounds whereas in English a letter can have dozens of sounds. Another problem is: in Portuguese we pronounce all letters each world, at least in a formal situation, but in English many letters are not pronounced, and these things make English complex to learn.
But still German differs from Spanish or Portoguese in that German (like Germanic lamguages) is a consonant heavy language. Spanish is the opposite. This word Herbsts (as in: des Herbsts) is a word with only one syllable with 6 consonants on 1 vowel. You would never find something like that in Spanish :) And it can be difficult for a Spanish speaker to pronounce such words.
Same for me as a Swedish speaker. The vowels "A", "E" and "I" sounds the same in Swedish(with shorter and longer variants). And most of the time all the letters are spelled out. We don't drop letters like crazy like the Danish does, for example (they are known for swallow their words in a way that makes it much harder for us Swedes to understand than English) And in English they sometimes have double vowels, for no reason. Like in "Weird", which sounds the same as beard (another double vowel). Why not spell them "werd" and "berd"? That would have been the Swedish way of spelling them! Same thing with "Where" and "Stair" and "Stare". Three different ways with the same "air" sound in the ending of the words! Talking about "Three". That is also a weird one. Why "ee"? Why not thri? Or even "Fri"? The "Th" instead of "F" is another thing that drives me crazy. Although Swedish has its own problems for foreigners with the "Sh" sounds. They can be spelled with "sh","ch","sch","ti","g","sj","tj","k","si","j"... (I have probably forgotten some) and they also have a thick(more dutch like) and less thick variation in the sound. "Stjärna" for example is star. "Kärna" is "core". Both sound alike except that the "Sh" sound is thicker in "Stjärna" (like the gurgling sound you do before you spit) and not "deep throaty" in "kärna". The problem with the Swedish "Sh" sounds is greatly illustrated here : ua-cam.com/video/IOxYRobDDHM/v-deo.html (A Dutch person probably would have it much easier on this one than the English person).
As far as I've heard with Brazilian Portuguese specifically, there's plenty of vowel reduction and American English tends to give all letters a pronunciation. Also, English has far less forms for some words in comparison to Portuguese. There's the infamous 'Do vs Fazer' image, showing English has 5 forms compared to Portuguese's 59!
Thanks for bringing up this topic. I work as a student assistant at the chair of English historical linguistics and this is my daily life! :-) first time I found something like this on a popular UA-cam channel! 🙃
I'm a mexican in learning process, and something that I always found so crazy about English is its weird spelling. I were in a lot of spelling bee contests that my English teachers organized year to year, but I never understood why the words were spelled the way they had: no patterns that a ten years old mind could understand, no consistency, anything. Don't get me wrong, I like to learn English, but it's pretty weird sometimes.
English has same-sounding words, like night, knight, might, mite, right, rite, etc. but also has different-spelled words like tough, through, sought, slough, rough, trough, they had to figure out how to spell and differentiate them all, very few languages have this problem to this scale, so they had to add or change letters as needed
I’m American but I lived in northeast England for several years, and a fun fact about the local dialects there (Geordie and such) is that they retain many vowels from before the Great Vowel Shift. If you hear a *very* thick native speaker it almost sounds like an old Germanic language, like that barbarian in the opening of Gladiator - “ihr seid verfluchte hunde!” - different vocabulary, but very similar phonology.
My uncle was born in Newcastle c.1910. He had a natural gift for picking up languages, and even the accent of whoever he was talking to. According to him, Geordies and visiting Danish seamen could understand each other. (The Danes may of course have spoken one of the Frisian dialects/languages, which would have made things simpler.) There's a classic Geordie long 'a' in Wallsend; which, as the name suggests, is at the end of Hadrian's Wall. It's close to, though not quite the same as, the 'a' in e.g. 'arm'. I can mostly understand the accent, but cannot speak it.
@@mikesummers-smith4091 : Your uncle was correct. I spend seven months in Newcastle in the early 2000's. Being able to understand Frisian with ease I was really amazed and even shocked how similar Frisian and the language spoken in rural Northumbria were, especially when people spoke about family matters and farm things, using common words that were already in existence when the languages split more then a 1000 years ago.
I’ve always been a good speller, so the fact that others struggle with it makes me feel like I have a superpower-a silly, childish, thoroughly unimportant superpower.
@James The girls names "Sinead" and "Siobhan" are Irish and have an Irish pronunciation. Where there is a "bh" it is pronounced like a "v" sound. Some names are anglicized to help English speakers, for example my surname is "Devlin" but it originated from "Ó Doibhilin".
@@anubisu1024 there are others..but..you make an excellent point! Even with the spelling differences, most of us native English speakers understand each other..we tend to exaggerate them to exaggerate our U.S./U.K. differences. The rest of the world seems to be understand them..even as a second or third language..lol
11:20 I think the background image is the inside of the dome of the Baptistery of St. John, in Florence, Italy, right in front of the Cathedral. That's a perfect choice for Renaissance era stuff, good work Mr. Paul.
I am a native English speaker. When I was a kid, there was a huge focus on spelling (not so much anymore). I struggled. I later learned Spanish. Spelling became so much easier.
As I non-native English speaker, I never struggled with it.. Now, at the age of 17, I am fluent, but any other language (any language that I didn't listen on the radio/TV/music) is much harder to learn.. It all resulted in the major fault of my reading other languages, even if I could understand the grammar, vocabulary, etc. Also, people which have English as their mother language have a big problem, but a big advantage - They learned one of the most confusing languages in the world at the age of 3 or something, but they will never be able to easily learn other languages, due to that de facto wrong pronounciation in English in the first place
When i was a kid, my teacher used to give the word "Rough" everytime during english dictations and I would always write "Ruff". Teacher always marked it incorrect and wrote "Rough" nearby. i wondered why she always writes this word.😂😂 Never realized it was correct spelling of "Ruff".
Because being normal is too easy to learn, how else will you know if you are talking to a non native speaker unless there are traps in the language, hmmm?
@@KielanGaming English has taken it too far though! You now think someone is not a native speaker from their weird pronunciation but then you realize they are just urban british or something like that.
I think . English language has a origin in the dark age of England . It isn't a political whim or cultural from start . Currently , USA has his grammar and orthography . England also .
@@ynntari2775 And here I thought that English speakers were particularly bad at pronouncing Japanese words. Personally, I don't get how people can butcher Japanese, it's one of the easiest languages to speak, very straight forward with very few exceptions. Now learning the grammar and all that, that's an entirely different matter.
It's completely understandable. We don't tend to have the ah sound and the oh sound next to each other in English. And since the oh sound is accented, the ah sound changed to be one that normally works. The other sound changes just changed to fit the spelling. In English, ar is pronounced as in the word carry. The E at the ends of loanwords, become ay (as in day) if it's accented (eg. cafe) or becomes "ee" if isn't (hyperbole). Put all that together, and you get carry-OH-key.
@@Lichfeldian--Suttonian It could even be 'kula'. But the problem with spelling words as they are pronounced is that different people pronounce words differently.
Seeing this, I'm more sure to think that Indonesian is the easiest language in the world: 1. It has a very simple spelling. No exception! You write what you say. With Latin alphabet. 2. No tenses. No verb declinations or conjugations. No noun genders. No noun cases. No tones! 3. This language is "designed" for native speakers of around 720 languages in Indonesia. (Therefore it has to be simple).
Indonesian is still a Level 4 language for native English speakers, for a variety of reasons. If you've had exposure to it as a child for some reason, it will seem significantly easier to you than to a person with no exposure. I once had a whole group of American born Vietnamese trying to convince me that was super easy. I looked it up, and it was a 4-with-a-star, which means it was only slightly shy of a Level 5, the hardest language ranking.
Well, as an Indonesian myself I think the foreigner students will having a bad struggle in (in)formal sentence & Imbuhan (affixes) part. For example: Ajar (to teach) > basic word If we adds imbuhan (affixes), it'll be: Ajari (to teach someone) Ajarilah (asked politely to be teached) Ajarkan (*don't know how to describe this one) Ajaran (*also don't know) Pengajar (teacher) Pengajaran (* I don't know how to describe this) Pembelajaran (*also don't know) Pelajar (student) Pelajari (giving order to study) Pelajaran (the subjects you are studying) Mengajar (teaching) Mengajari (to teach) Mengajarkan (have been teached) Mengajarlah (persue someone to teaching) Mempelajari (studying) Diajar (teached by someone) Diajari (teached by someone) Diajarkan (have been teached by someone) Belajar (study) Belajarlah (persue someone to study) Terpelajar (educated person / people) But don't worry, we don't use all of this in the daily conversations, especially with friends and family. You'll see this kind of words when you're reading or when you should make an Indonesian formal letters by yourself.
An excellent video Paul. I live in France and have been regularly asked about this, knew th broard story of the history of the English dictionary before however the host of extra facts and details on the subject you've provided here should make life easier for me when confronted with this in the future. I'll certainly recommend this video to anyone interested in this subject. As I often do with a number of your other top quality videos. A massive thumbs up as usual.
That was a joy to watch, well put together! It seems that partly due to the vowel shift English became more different from other Germanic languages in speech. I could not help to see more similarity between the older spoken English and what is Dutch nowadays.
One could divide languages to 5 groups based on the regularity of their spelling (degree of phonemicity). They are (from best to worst): 1. Finnish. 2. Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Hungarian, Slovenian. 3. German, Dutch, Greek, Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic. 4. Danish, French. 5. English. Kominek and Black (2006) estimate that English language spelling is about 3 times more complex than German, and 40 times more complex than Spanish (and who know how many times more complex than Finnish). A survey of English spelling (Carney, 1994) devotes 120 pages to describe phoneme-to-letter correspondences, and lists 226 letter-to-phoneme rules, almost all of which admit exceptions. It's no wonder that it takes so long for children to learn to read. The reading level after 1 year of instructions: - Greek, Finnish, German ~ 100%. - French ~ 80%. - Portuguese ~ 75%. - Danish ~ 70%. - English ~ 35%...
That's crazy… I would think Danish is harder to spell. It sounds like people mumble it when they speak it. There is also another episode where he talks about Tibetan being very hard to spell
I don't know how it is in other languages, but here in Finland kids often learn to read home or kindergarten before starting school. How about Korean? They have rather new writing system, and I hear that making it easy was the point. I'm interested in Japanese and Chinese, and oh horror, the amount of symbols and how to read them!
@@Aurinkohirvi & @darkprince56: you're conflating multiple concepts... The issue with complexity in Japanese is multiple simultaneous writing systems, some of which are logographic. I'd imagine spelling in the more phonetic writing systems would be consistent, while the concept is irrelevant for the logographic bits (you can't misspell a single symbol). Spoken Dutch being difficult to understand doesn't mean written Dutch has inconsistent spelling
@@NJ-wb1cz Given that the same language is currently one of the most prevalent on the planet, with strong pressure to adopt & teach it in areas where it is not native; and that this state of affairs is in large part due to how easily it adopts neologisms & loan words, which is a direct contributor to the unfortunate complexity in spelling... I'm gonna actually go with NO, it doesn't suck as a communications tool at all. It just has some functional tradeoffs... easily & aggressively able to adopt new words but as a consequence horribly inconsistent spelling which then increases difficulty to become fluent.
@@hetakusoda2977 Since the beginning of Chinese language. Each word in Chinese is not a combination of sounds, like in European language. It's a combination of syllables, where each syllable has its own meaning. For example, there is a hieroglyph "zhong" (pronounced "jong"), wich means "center" in Chinese. It is one fixed syllable with its own meaning, wich is written with one hieroglyph. You can't just remove, for example, the "n" sound from this syllable and say that we've just made a new syllable without the "n" sound. You won't even be able to write "zhog" (without "n"), because there is no such hieroglyph as "zhog". But if we look at English - we can do whatever we want. We can, for instance, remove "n" from "presence". It's "presece" now. Yesm there's no such word as "presece", but we still can write it using English letters and read it. In Chinese you can't do the same trick with "zhong" - "zhog" Now, let's take another hieroglyph - "guo" (pronounced "goo-oh"). This means "kingdom" in Chinese. We have the same situation here - one syllable, unchangeable, one meaning, one hieroglyph. And now let's put these two words together - now we have "zhong guo". This means "China" in Chinese. Literally - "Central Kingdom". And that's how Chinese language works. You have some words, that consist of one syllable, so they have one hieroglyph. You also have complex words, that have two or more syllables, and each of this syllable can be independent word itself, but when they are put together they make a new big word, like "China" - "zhong guo". But even then none of the syllables lose its own meaning, so "zhong guo" can also be understood as "Central Kingdom" at the same time. And that's what is called syllable system. So yes, Chinese language DOES have the syllable system of writing, while English and other European languages have the sound system. That's why it is stupid to consider English spelling to be something like Chinese system. They are not alike even a bit Let's stop making excuses and just admit, that English spelling is nothing more than illogical, broken, and messed up piece of shit
6.20 - the great vowel shift section. I think many of those middle English vowel sounds, or transitional vowel sounds, can still be heard today in the North East of England.
@@EloNaj The final "ng" sound matching the "n" is what makes the connection clearer. Also, both Japanese and Cantonese used Middle Chinese pronunciation so the pronunciation roots are similar.
I remember it kind of blew my mind when I learned that non-anglophone countries don’t have the concept of a Spelling Bee... Of course it made sense, but it had just never occurred to me before as an American. Most languages aren’t messy in their spelling like this! Of course English is the only one where you can set up an entire competition for schoolchildren around how to spell words!
Omg , the CONFUSION i had as a child when a tv show or cartoon (originally produced in america) had a reference about that "Spelling Bee" game , because i never realised why the fuck is that hard to spell a word Also sometimes they would do language jokes that had no sense when translated in my language
We have spelling contests in Brazil (we speak Portuguese here). The catch is having people with poor education to distinguish when it should be s, ss, sc (before e or i), c (bef. e or i), ç or xc (bef. e or i) for the /s/ sound and other minor spelling traps.
As a non English speaking, I was struggling to pronounce in English words like: Neighbour, Isle, knife, pneumonia until I came across a headline in the newspaper that reads "Bazaar Pronounced Success"
Pneumonia is a Greek word, and "pneumonia" is exactly how it's written in Greek, transliterated to the Greek alphabet of course, but the English messed up the pronunciation.
That's the East-coast pronunciation. The West-coast Canadians have another pronuciation entirely: "hoose" to rhyme with "moose". And you will find "Hoce" sprinkled all over from BC to NL. You can spot the Yankee in Canada by their "Hause".
I grew up in BC, currently live in Ontario, and I favour the second pronunciation. I've noticed that the older/more rural/more blue collar a Canadian is, the rounder the vowels.
I am a spanish speaker. We are taught to read every single letter in spanish. We use more " read my lips" than spelling words. While learning english you go crazy.
@@frankhooper7871 The "x" case occurs mostly in Mexico, where it has 4 ways of pronunciation. But in many other Spanish speaking countries, "x" is only pronounced as "ks", with "México" and "mexicano" being the only exceptions. Yes, without proper education, one person could write "hola" instead of "ola", and "llo" instead of "yo". But if you see "hola", "ola", and "yo", you know automatically how to pronounce them. You could side these monstruosities: "desoxirribonucleico" or "otorrinolaringología" and still know how to pronounce them. With English this is NOT the case. In other words: in Spanish you may not know how to write a word (that is with the letters of same pronunciation, it's pretty improbable to find a person who doesn't know how to write "mañana", "gato" or "toronja" if they listen to them), but you will know how to pronounce a written word always (the Mexican words with "x" are exceptions because in the first place they are not actually Spanish words, but Nahuatl words). In English not only you won't know easily how to write a word you hear, but you won't know either how to pronounce a written word!
My wife's first language is Dutch. She has a favourite chorus when faced with the inconsistency of English spelling and pronunciation, "English is a horrible language!" She sometimes tells it to her students since she is a teacher.
@magpie_girl The French made everything so dirty it was impossible to clean up. It is only right to blame them for everything. Those dirty frog-eaters.
Oh, thanks for the vid, Paul! Very great job you've done here and also big thanks for literature in the description. Just got interested in the English linguistics and its history and here you are with this masterpiece.
I really enjoyed all your videos, learned a lot since I speak english as a second language, I always had trouble with the way english words are spelled. For example: Island, depot, Chandler, pinnacle, etc. and the one you mentioned on the video: "Indicted" I used to pronounce it "indeected" . Thanks again for your nice videos.
I'm surprised that you did not mention Merriam Webster. He made an attempt to standardize English spelling with some success, though only in America. Words such as plow instead of plough, realize instead of realise, neighborhood instead of neighbourhood. color instead of colour; fetus, instead of foetus, et. al.
Noah Webster..I'm not sure where Merriam came along..but being born in the U.S., colour is color, neighbour is neighbor, centre is center..(although theater..is also theatre..the building is a theater..the art is 'theatre') I am now noticing U.S. based autocorrect!..do you have that outside the U.S.? Some make sense to me..but defense vs defence?..we still call a fence a fence..When I see the different spellings, I assume the author is from outside the U.S., as we are taught these spellings from day one. When I first saw the word color spelled 'colour'..I pronounced it 'cul OUR'....
...The problem is, out of those, _plough_ is the only one that's actually screwed up to begin with. The rest are consistent with the (twisted and arcane, but still generally consistent) rules of English spelling.
@@MushVPeets Good point. I was simply trying to point out that some organized effort to make the spelling of certain words match their pronunciation did take place. Many changes did not stick. One example is wimmen rather than women. Two better examples might be tuff rather than tough; ruff rather than rough -- but I think both all are acceptable in American English, but with the latter in each case still widely used. Also, with words like colour, neighbour, favour, the OU is no longer pronounced.
@@NJ-wb1cz But did it? It is more obvious how to pronounce ruff, tuff, color, etc. The script matches the current pronunciation. I see where you are coming from, and it would have been best if the effort for standardisation was more wide-spread in the English speaking world.
This kinda made me think that the French knight's pronunciation of the word "knight" as "k[schwa]-niggit" on Monty Python and the Holy Grail was actually accurate, considering the French in the (alleged) King Arthur Era were supposed to be Normans, and Terry Jones being a historian too.
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All "c"s are pronounced differently in "Pacific Ocean" 😏
Woah
Well I'll be damned!
All the "a"s are pronounced differently in "Australia"
Kate try pronouncing all Cs in the same way, makes the whole thing sound different
The c in ocean is a complete abortion of English pronounciation standards to the extent they exist.
In 7th grade, I had a brutal argument with my English teacher over my spelling of Grey instead of Gray for the color (shade?). It seems I had read too much H.G. Wells...and she had not. I'm 70 and have not yet recovered from the conflict. It's ok. I have good meds now.
She was wrong. You were right. Gray or Grey. Both are correct.
I had the same thing in Japan while teaching middle school students. Fun times.
English is English sir, so grey is indeed grey (color is colour)! 'Two people's separated by a common language' indeed!
Wait... you cannot write 'grey' and 'color' in the same sentence. I teach English as well, and I have to remind my students that it is their choice which variety of English (e.g. AmE, BrE...) they prefer to use, but it is not okay to mix them up randomly. Hence, if you use American English, the words are spelled(!) "gray" and "color", but if you use British English, the words are spelt(!) 'grey' and 'colour'. You need to be consistent in orthography, pronunciation and grammar. With that being said, both spellings are valid - just use them in the correct variety.
Grey is the correct spelling in English. In American English (which is not English), they spell it gray.
English “rules” are like mom: “because she said so.”
The english language is a Karen that spoke to the other languages' managers to get what she wants.
@@zaqareemalcolm I wonder when the name 'Karen' became the typical "where is your manager name?".
@@TheKennethfilm KYM has a lot of possible theories on a specific origin for Karen becoming a meme name (eg. Like the movie Mean Girls), but I think it also has to do with the fact that the name is very common or expected among the "white 30s to middle-aged US suburban mom" type of women who also tend to be ones exhibiting the entitled behaviour described by other people's personal experiences
Born of Fire what zaqareemalcolm said. You can see it in other names as terms, like Becky- because it’s a popular name for white women of the millennial generation. Stacy is much the same.
Though as we all know, Stacy’s mum has got it going on!
French momma is authoritarian .. We all have straight forward moms in linguistics
This is why Americans love spelling contests so much while other countries don't give a shit.
In portuguese, for example, it's just not fun. You say it, you write it.
Haha, very true. A “spelling bee” only works for a language with really weird spelling.
Portuguese can’t have spelling bee bc it doesn’t have homophones and homonyms
@@ibrahimbah1044 It does but it's not crazy like in english.
From the spelling perspective, all languages are like Portuguese, except English and French....
In Latin Spanish 100% of the words would have the letters c, s and z as are spell the exact same way, there are exceptions there c has a q sound
"Why is everything in English said differently than it's written? To make us feel stupid?"
- Javier Escuella (1899)
Rdr 2
yes
It's because the English couldn't come up with a logical spelling system.
"You're asking the wrong man, there, Javier" - Arthur Morgan
LANAHISSE RIVRR
As a non-native to English, this is by far my biggest complaint about English.
Same. But I'm french so I can't make fun of it..
It's also the biggest complaint English speakers have about English. On the other hand, theirs knot many weighs yule get aweigh with righting like this in another language and bee able to make any cents. It certainly throes even native speaker for a loupe, so eye cant imagine watt it wood dew two a novice.
@@SuperLn1991 French spelling is even worse with all those silent letters!!!!!
@@Ulisest91 I know, that's why I said I can't make fun of english ;)
@@SuperLn1991 oh i'm sorry, was trying to reply to vats, i guess i tagged you, je suis desolee lol
English: where the exceptions outnumber the rules, by a lot.
PV1230 yep
It's a lot, not "alot". No such word exists.
English spelling is seemingly inconsistent because it is derived from at least four root languages. Latin, Old Norse, French, Saxon, and some Flemish. The events of 55 bce, and 43, 536 and 1066 ce have left their linguistic marks.
Tibetan hasn't had a spelling reform since _before the Crusades._
@@notoriouswhitemoth *900 CE*
As italian this sounds so strange to me, with our language you know exactly how to write a word once you heard it for the first time, or pronounce a written word you never seen before
Tutte le consonanti se puo doppiare...
Non é tan facile...
I speak portuguese, for me is the same thing
That's only if the Italian person speaks slowly enough to even tell where individual words begin and end. ;-)
Cuando estaba estudiando Italiano, un sobrino mio me dijo:
"Hey, tio, vas a ser una persona muy importante..."
Y yo le pregunté:
¿Por qué...?
Y me contestó:
"Y... porque ahora vas a poder decir todas las malas palabras en Italiano..."
No domino el italiano, pero seria algo así como :
"É... ¡Perr che agora porrai dire tutte le parolacce en Italano!!!"
Except for the double consonants, z plus zz, and words containing "h" letter. Italians don't really know how to pronounce h, they panic when they see it.
I've been living a lie my whole life thinking I can spell English
I’m a native speaker and have been living the same lie :)
不，你不能
@@xtricman
They should have stayed with the pronunciation before the vowel shift. That made a lot more sense ... to me at least.
@@krollpeter History happens and mistakes are made everywhere. Period.
You spelled it correctly: "English"!
👌
As someone famous said, "English doesn't just borrow from other languages- it chases them down dark alleys, hits them over the back of the head, and goes through their pockets for loose grammar."
I’m surprised nobody has made a skit of that yet.
@Karen L
😂😂😂 I laughed really hard at that
XD
LOL - that is the best description I have ever seen for English!!
This would be a valid if jokey metaphor if vocabulary borrowing involved depriving source languages of their words instead of merely copying their form along with the meaning.
Words in English are more like glyphs where you memorize how to say it, rather than actually pronounce them.
Pliny Elder how is (glyphs) pronounced tho?!😂😂
@@ومنالهبلماقتل glyphs is pronounced 'glifs' like cliffs but with a g
The teaching folks tried that in the country where I live. End result was a barely literate generation. Thankfully they have seen the error of their ways and words are now taught phonetically.
Pliny Elder When you think of it that way, English speakers should have a much easier time learning Chinese languages than speakers of other languages.
But the letters are still there to give you clues.
The words with 'gh' almost always have a very similar word in German with 'ch', e.g.:
Laugh - lachen
Though - doch
knight - Knecht (servant)
light - Licht
sight - Sicht
brought (to bring) - brachte (bringen)
thought (to think) - dachte (denken)
to fight - fechten (=fight with swords)
tight - dicht
night - Nacht
...
You get the idea
You've obviously visited Scotland. We still use these pronunciations. Apart from tight- ticht. Dicht means to wipe.
@d R Gaelic is Celtic. Scots is Germanic.
Durch lost the th, while Through lost the gh/ch sound.
A boring day becomes an exciting one when Paul uploads a new video :)
agreed
I completely agree
Yeppe
As a language nerd, I agree😂
In my lifetime, I've seen the spelling of a ring of fried dough go from "doughnut" to "donut" in the US, probably due to commercial branding.
Nawww - it’s the typesetter for the label!
Wow you're lucky, that respelling took place before I was even born
Both spellings are acceptable. Doughnut looks more elegant in print than donut.
Both are used
@@bisoromi2960 it really doesn't
As Lindy beige explained, English is now like Chinese in that you don't look at the spelling. You look at the shape of the whole word and associate that with a learned sound and meaning.
Yeessss!!!.
THAT IS PRECISELY what I wanted to say. Chinese characters originally had only one pronunciation but as the population grew so arise many dialects, so now each character can be pronounced a hundred ways but still written the same. so many the different localized Chinese groups up until 50 years ago can only communicate in writing but not verbally with each other.
The spelled word is more like a pictograph rather than a collection of individual letters that must be sounded out.
That guy yaps too much I'm afraid.a rather odd way of describing words.
@New_Account Not true. Chinese characters are comprised of smaller elements and in some characters those elements indicate sounds.
ah. english. the only langauge that, has an national. competition, about speling it's words correctly,
Wait, other languages don't have a spelling bee? Wow, English is weird.
its*
@@terrythefatshark Yeah, now that I think about it, why doesn't it's stand for the things possession, like all other words that end with 's. Why is it like this?
@@SoloHen well in Italian it would not make any sense. If a mother tounge hears any italian word he clearly knows how it's written since you pronunce the same it's written
@@terrythefatshark Thanks.
English speakers: Omg I can't believe in China people memorize a pictograph for each word
Also English speakers: *HAS TO MEMORIZE THE INFINITE WEIRD AND UNINTUITIVE SPELLINGS FOR EACH WORD*
THANK YOU💯💯💯
I think Chinese is harder, but to be honest, don't overthink English. Just go with the flow
@@samueltong8061 That is something only people with a sense for language can do, or people who grew up with English. Going with the flow in a language is like having at least 10 years experience of listening, writing and speaking on a near daily basis. Try to think at what age you actually started to speak fluently in English, that's how long it took to go with the flow.
@@mrsqueak4837 True, you raise a good point. However, for me, going with the flow, not thinking too deeply into the grammar rules that do not need to be thought about, really helps me.
When other languages try to make English (as they hear it) more accessible to their language (or vice versa?), things get messier. Like Pinyin, the government-authorized method of transliterating Chinese and English, which seems to have been absorbed. So I was sneered at by New Jersey acupuncturist Dr. Cai's receptionist for asking for Dr. [K]ai. She said, "You American's are so stupid, you can't even pronounce his name right, it's Sigh." I gently explained that "c" before "a" was pronounced like "k" in English. I left her to her notion. I gave up trying to learn Mandarin from a nearby college professor in town because she insisted I learn Pinyin to learn Chinese when I had already had considerable pronunciation success with Wade-Giles, another system.
EEEEEE!!! It's a wonder we manage at all!
At first they wanted to call it "the Great Vowel Movement" but then they thought better of it.
Such an underrated comment.
I am really glad I found this gem.
I guess it’s underrated but I dont get the joke bruh
I don't get it either. Please explain
TIAviation vowel movement sounds like bowel movement
It's also fascinating how some words shifted their meaning. In German, we still have "Knecht" (which is the origin of "knight"), but it kept its old meaning of "(farm) servant". In Swedish, the word for woman is "kvinna", which became "queen" in English - quite a promotion.
english word "knight" and the german word "Lands-knecht" have a shared cognate
I noticed some more extreme examples. Like the words sea and lake in dutch (zee en meer) and german (meer and see). Exacly the opposite, for example Waddenzee in dutch, Wattenmeer in german.
Or the word 'black' in english. Comes from the french 'blanc' which means white.
It's quite fascinating to see.
But queen in the gay sublect or whatever is the correct term really is closer to the original Danish borrowing - from what I've read - opera queen, drama queen, etc. There's a story that Queen Elizabeth (the Queen Mother) would say to some of her staff "Will one of you queens get a stiff drink for this tired old Queen."
wcpgw I regret we have never been told at school to pronounce English words as they are spelled - just to guess their meaning (not when speaking). Thus a German speaker could easily know the meaning of many words of Germanic roots.
also think about indo-european root *gʰóstis, "stranger": English guest, German Gast (same meaning); and then you have Latin hostis = enemy. quite a different way of considering the strangers.
I cannot express my love for your content enough! This whole video, within every point you made I found my own critiques, realizations, and issues I’ve encountered with the English language. About 5 minutes in I thought ‘This must be why I feel like I can do whatever I want when writing in English.’ Then! You explained authors simply submitted their works and people with printing presses winged it so whatever they wanted was published! To this day, English has the feature of adapting alongside its speakers and writers! English continues to self-determine who understands with more factors like region, even ethnicity and in-groups, with the learning and participation of non-native speakers, and the creation and adoption of new words. It’s so fun to see discussion and information about the history that brought us communication🥰 Thank you for your hard work!
I = Ai; you = yu; he = hi; she = shi; it = it; we = wi; they = dhei; this = dhis; that = dhat (stressed pronunciation), dhet (unstressed pronunciation); here = hir; there = dhér; where = whér, who = hu; what = whot, whoet; how = hau; not = not; all = ool; many = meni; some = soem (stressed pronunciation), sem (unstressed pronunciation); few = fyu; other = oedher; one = woen; two = tu; three = thri; four = foor, four (depending on pronunciation); five = faiv; six = siks; seven = seven; eight = eit; nine = nain; ten = tén; long = long, loong (depending on pronunciation); heavy = hevi; head = héd; hammerhead shark= hamerhèd shark; short = short; narrow = naro; woman = wumen; women = wimin; men = mén; need = niid; person = poersen; husband = hoezbend; diseases = disíiziz, disíizez (depending on pronunciation); throughout = thruáut; father = faadher; daughter = dooter, dootter (depending on pronunciation); thought = thoot; though = dho; low = lo; now = nau; know = no; knight = nait; doubt = daut; presentation = prezentéishen, priizentéishen (depending on pronunciation); island = ailend; business = biznis, biznes (depending on pronunciation); bury = beri; story = stori, stouri (depending on pronunciation); bird = boerd; world = woerld; fur = foer; does = doez; fruit =fruut; put = put; little = litel, littel (depending on pronunciation); flower = flauer; etc.
Basically we missed the deadline for revising our written language and now we're stuck with modern-speaking and a classic-writing.
What deadline? Whose deadline? We could fix it now if we wanted. It just takes the will to do it. If enough people want change, change will happen.
@@aarne3187 The deadline is when the printing press arrived in England. Only then do people need to standardize the spelling of a word for their printings.
@@aarne3187 if the spelling changed now, it would wreck havoc on the entire world. Not only would a massive chunk of native speakers suddenly lose the ability to write properly, but it would also destroy the international written presence of the language as those with a second language in English would almost have to relearn it again too
This is such an issue as English is the most spoken language in the world and the international language of business
@@AdamW-eo2yq also plenty of different FL accents pronounce the same words with different sounds that often wouldn't work within the same standardised spellings, so plenty of spelling reforms would have to choose which accent is the most valid. the only way for the spelling reform to work would be to basically make each dialect its own language with its own spelling.
hell yeah brother
A "spelling bee" is a thing in English because you have to memorize the way words are spelled.
In languages like German or Spanish where most words are spelled the way they sound, a spelling bee is an exercise in the absurd. And in boredom.
@Mary Contrary I believe that Hindi doesn't have an alphabet, and is more like Chinese with its characters. (That may not be true.) If it is true, perhaps Indian English speakers are already used to memorizing characters, and thus spelling, which works well for them in English.
In Spanish we have troubles with the sounds of s, c, z at least in Latin America because they are too similar the people from Spain makes a different sound to each one a it's easier for them
(I apologize if I have a bad grammar my English isn't perfect)
@@Tflexxx02 Hindi has an abugida: the devanagari script. There are letters for consonants and diacritical marks for vowels that follow them. The spelling is mostly phonetic, as far as I can tell.
yeah in spain (mostly) we have the /θ/ (spelt or ) very distinct from /s/ (always spelt ), so a spelling bee can't fool us with "taza", or "tasa", because they're pronounced differently! the problem lies on and making the same sound (sometimes, when isn't pronounced /ʎ/); on and (which both are pronounced /b/) and finally, mute
It's not true. Hindi has an alphabet.
This is he moment you realise that the pronunciation of Middle English is exactly how you pronounce Dutch.
Frisian is the closest relative to English, so thats no real surprise.
@@albertmutton1687 Dutch ist actually Flatgerman
@@Menxo Low German?
@@Toronto-Brad yeah Flatgerman comes from Low German but it's a own language and not a dialect
@@Menxo Cool! English was originally a dialect of Low German which become its own language. So Dutch and English have something in common.
This stuck out to me: I was in first grade and the teacher split the class in half to do a spelling contest. She asked someone to come up to the class and spell “would”. And me being confident in my spelling, volunteered and spelled “wood”. I lost the contest for my team. I was confused. But had I studied the week’s vocabulary I would’ve known. 😆
She should have put "would" in a sentence so you would know which one! That's what my teachers always had done
That’s why in spelling bees you are able to ask for a definition, origin, and have it put in a sentence. Personally, I think asking for a definition is the best option, especially when there are homophones. Next would’ve origin because a word’s origin heavily affects its spelling.
@@Lizuma Maybe she didn't ask for it in a sentence. She said she got confident so sounds like she never asked.
According to Internet, both are pronounced the same lmao
I remember asking my teacher in primary school why we don't say the 'e' and the end of snake. She said it was because the 'e' is silent, so I asked why it was silent and she just shrugged her shoulders and said "sometimes we just have silent letters"...like, okay.
Haha, It was good to make your teacher mad
At my school, an English teacher asked for examples of words with silent letters. One suggestion was "The silent pee in" bath".
Late to the game but the silent e does have some use.
It usually, not always, shows a change in the vowel sound before it.
The vowel sound changes to prety much how you would pronounce it when you pronounce each letter of the English about. Just think ABCDEFJH...
cap vs cape
pet vs Pete
kit vs kite
hop vs hope
cut vs cute
Of course words like "have" don't follow this rule nor do I know if it is even a real tested theory or not. It's just something I noticed.
If we didn’t have the e there then everyone would think snak(e) is pronounced ‘snack’
@@rik1754 I am not a native english speaker and I also had that theory years ago, AWESOME!!!!
❌English language is damn wired.
✔inglish languaje is dem wiard. 😂
or wyrd
ay no rayt?
U R rait
Confusion Explainer 😂 bt it's not bad for non English speaker. It's nice to spread English language
That's the correct way of spelling 😅
English may not be the easiest language to learn; It can be handily mastered through tough thorough thought, though.
Jaja en inglés solo pones palabras al azar y ya tienes un trabalenguas 🥴
@@santiagocas3683 that is actually 100% correct though
Oh as a english learner, it's very fun rhyme !
The language is really interesting and confusing at the same time. As an active English learner , I'd say that English basics give you hope that you will become an advanced chad who doesn't need a translator, but then you can understand about 70-90 percent of English. Also, you always learn new words and other parts of speech, but the percentage isn't really moving; you need to put a lot of effort into pushing it for a bit. Additionally, you're starting to see that there are too many different and similar words, and you have to know academic vocabulary, which isn't really often similar to regular words. Sometimes, when I see a lot of unfamiliar words, I'm becoming sad because I learn new words routinely in order to improve my English vocabulary skills. In the beginning, it was interesting because the word you learned in an app or a textbook was in many sentences, but now it's the opposite; you're not often able to find it again. Anyway, it's only the one side; on the other side, you understand every month more and more, even if you're just surrounded by this language.
😂 wait until you find out none of the works we know are totally different meanings
A superb video. Thank you !! I've used this in my adult English-as-a-foreign-language classes with great success.
My favorite “English” word is ‘facade’, which lost the cedilla in usual writing but is still pronounced as if it had one.
Fa-sard. Is how we say it.
@@jjwp-ql5rv
I don't think there's an "r" in there.
@@SM_zzz Depending on your accent, there is no R in "fasard". :D
I've come across a few examples where the R in there is used a marker for a long open /a:/ by speakers with a non-rhotic accent.
I think I saw people writing it with the cedilla
varana312 bingo, if father=farther then facade=fa-sard
Brits and Americans trying to spell phonetically to each other is always hilarious what with aw,o,ah vowel mergers in American accents and non nonrhotic homophones in British.
Flaw=floor?
Law=La?
Don=Dawn?
Con=Khan?
Drawer=Draw?
Depends where you’re from...
So basically, English is the language with severe dyslexia XD
DarkLordling I wonder if people in English reading lands report having dyslexia more than others?
No. Lysdexia is not very common in English...
Actually, it’s a quadruple Pidgin language too naively arrogant to admit it’s a street urchin, like a homeless orphan wearing a fine but tattered, ill fitting old suit he found as if he were a rich lord.
History of the English, really.
DYSLEXICS, UNTIE!!!!
@Paul best - do you have a clue what is being discussed?
In "scent!" is it the "s" or the "c" that is silent?
Just thinking about that makes my brain hurt. People say German is hard but at least our pronunciation and spelling makes actual fucking sense.
Our complicated grammar also follows rules, lot of them to be fair but they are mostly consistent too.
They're both pronounced at the same time.
It's like stopped the pp is just p a twice as long as one p
So the SC is the same
@@DieAlteistwiederda many people also complain about our "long words". like dude. compound words are just words strung together. plus the fact that our pronunciation makes sense helps in pronouncing those "long words".
MarvelousSandstone Altes Englisch hatte drei Artikel und vier Fälle genauso wie Deutsch. Deutsch ist meine zweite Sprache, aber ich wünschte, meine Erste wäre ähnlicher zu meiner Zweite.
Nothing makes me feel more big brained than pronouncing a word correctly the first time I see it just based on what word I assume it shares an origin with.
Solder
@edukaeshn
I consider "sol-der" the correct pronunciation.
@@BradleyZS Same, because it comes from the Latin solidare, but just about everyone who uses solder says "saw-dur" and will look at you like you have two heads if you say sol-der.
English is 3 languages stacked on top of each other wearing a trench coat
any bojack horseman fans here?
I did a business!
@@ericolens3 do other languages not also do that?
@@dinosaurusrex1482 but English is downright agressive about it.
I guess thats true
I mean spanish, german, french, malay, indonesian, and some others have similar words with english
"So, the sounds changed. They must have updated the spelling to match the new sounds, right?"
English: *laughs nervously*
Lol
@Mario It was just a light joke. It's not that deep.
You think that's bad at least you're not American like the spelling does not even match what we're saying
Middle English had a reasonable pronuntiation...Today English is crazy
Internet is actually helping in making spellings more reasonable though. Most people when writing informally in text use spelling which matches the pronunciation.
Bilbo hob in Spanish there is no silent letters.😃😀
Hora, Hablar, Hacienda, Hacer, Hidalgo
@@kumaroraon9919 h In Spanish is always silent?
@@lampku Yes it is, I can't think of an example where it isn't, even though, some people believes it has the "g" sound (like in "game") in words like "huevo" or "chihuahua" (the "u" is pronounced like in "Zeus") but it's still silent. It's just an illusion created by the sound of the "u"
Here is an interesting observation: A a native Dutch speaker and having lived in English speaking countries (currently the USA) I believe I have found an interesting side effect of the inconsistent spelling in English. In Dutch the spelling is mostly consistent and we are taught as children to spell phonetically. I.e. each word is like a string of beads with each letter being pronounced. So when I read I see the individual letters and my brain puts this together to pronounce words. It makes it easy for me to actually remember spelling even in English and simple to pronounce foreign words. I have observed that apparently English readers see a whole word when they read and have great difficulty to imagine how to pronounce foreign names or words they are not familiar with. Also, in the US they have these spelling-bees with children having to guess how certain words are spelled. I don't think such a thing would make sense for languages that have consistent phonetic spelling.
You know English spelling is bad if even Dutch looks logical in comparison. I mean seriously, how did "ij" and "ui" end up sounding like "ai" and "au"? Let's not consider the unnecessary extra vowels in "vrouw" or "nieuw"... "vrau" or "niu" would have been enough!
Actually, it is not only possible to learn to read phonetically in English, it is the best way to learn. “Sound it out” is often said by parents teaching their kids to read, and it does help. There are a lot of exceptions, though.
because English has same-sounding words, like night, knight, might, mite, right, rite, etc. but also has different-spelled words like tough, through, sought, slough, rough, trough, you can easily misread the word or type it, I always break up foreign words into syllables or smaller parts, it's not that hard after reading it again
@@seaeagle8976 Students decode when they read, starting with individual letter sounds. Some can hear the sounds and say the word, while others are told to blend the sounds, or stretch them out to blend them.
This all makes me glad to have learnt English before I had to understand *how* to learn it!
And here’s and example between British English and American English. Learnt = learned. Lol
Edit, “an example”
@@jeremyhelquist Lol, when i saw "learnt" i think:
WTF IS THAT?
@@jeremyhelquist Couldn't notice it before reading your comment, as a non-native speaker who is being exposed to both versions of English.
I agree.
"English is a language that lurks in dark alleys, beats up other languages and rifles through their pockets for spare vocabulary" - quote from James Nicoll
enuff
This is a really terrible analogy. Firstly, it implies that as soon as a word is borrowed into English, it’s magically forgotten from the original language. The Japanese didn’t suddenly forget how to say “tsunami” once English speakers started saying it. Secondly, there are plenty of other languages that have been influenced greatly by loan words. How silly would it sound to say that Japanese is just a mix of Korean, Chinese, and English?
@@DannyDog27 wellthatsnofun.
@@DannyDog27 2/10 troll
@@DannyDog27 In terms of vocabulary, Japanese does have significant influence from Chinese, English, and to a much lesser extent, miscellaneous European languages for random loanwords like アルバイト. Korean influence might come in the form of grammar, since the Japanese grammar is very similar, and we know that the yayoi people likely immigrated from the Korean peninsula.
You are doing such a great job, Paul. My congratulations and supports! This video ought to be seen by anyone who learns or speaks English.
To anyone who has to learn English as a second language, you have my respect
I don't know about today, but when I was in school they taught us the IPA quite early because there is absolutely no way to learn English without knowing any IPA.
What is IPA? Also i prefer to learn english a hundred times instead of fucking french
@@alexandernoe1619 Pretty sure most native English speakers have not heard of IPA, but are doing fine. 😏 Immersion and repetition can work, too. It does help if you know some Latin, Greek, French, and any Germanic language, but you have to have a sensibility for which one it sounds like (Greek or Norse for example) in order to use the correct spelling rules for that origin.
@@nyx5408French spelling and pronunciation are more straightforward .. I learned English as a 2nd language and French as a 3rd .. I am fluent in English and have no spelling issues at all, yet sometimes I read new English words wrong !
While I am not as proficient in French as English, yet I read and write it more smoothly even if I don't understand well !!
@@alexandernoe1619 when we were learing english we were using our polish spelling in bracket, to remember how to pronouce the english words! (łen łi łer lernin inglisz łi łer juzin ałr połlisz spelin in braket tu rimember hoł tu pronołc de inglisz łords)
Its not perfect, as we we have some difftent sounds (no "th" for example), but it worked well enough for bunch of children!
English has so many good things going for it, particularly the simple grammar and absence of gender, but then we go and ruin it all by having such absurd spellings.
@Mercedes VenXX No masculine or feminine nouns. Everything is 'the' not el, la, le, der, die, das etc
I can't tell if you're being sarcastic with the "simple grammar"....
Severus Well you must be very smart then. I'm American and I find english grammar pretty complicated, I've studied chinese and korean before and I find both these language's grammar easier than english. (Don't mind the horrible punctuation lol)
Severus I don't really find it hard because it's my naitive langauge but it seems like everyone around me who don't speak English as their native langauge can't get the grammar correct, so I'm assuming it's hard for people to learn it.
The people who I see get it wrong tho usually get the plurals and tenses wrong.
Also english has way too many homophones.
@@yn9229 as a Korean I sit and wonder how you think Korean grammar is easy.
"Isle" and "island" don't share the same etymology? Okay that's it. I'm done. That's insane.
Isle < Middle English ile < Old French ile (earlier isle) < Latin insula < terra in salo (land in the sea) < salum.
Island < Middle English iland < Old English igland/iegland/ealand (water+land) < ig/ieg (water) < Proto Germanic *ahwo < Indo European *akwa (thus Latin aqua).
@@sluggo206 yeah new to me too.
´Island' is a Germanic word (just like its Dutch translation 'eiland'), while 'isle' is of French origin: 'île'
@@sluggo206 indo european conection is insane
Don't yah know? That's what the lookout in the crows nest of those olde wooden shippes would say upon spying land. "Is Land!!!" lol 😁⛵👀🌄
Proves spelling in English is a exercise in memory rather than logic.
You are absolutely CORRECT.
But what a MAGNIFICENT language it is, the sheer volume of words alone enable English speaker to express themselves in such marvelous and precise terms.
I am English but have lived in the USA for 49 years and yes I still say “Tom ar toe” and “ban AR na”.
But I also say “ZEE” not “ZED”.
We should all be INSULTED when people say that English is a HORRIBLE language, I can think of many languages which are truly HORRIBLE.
One commentator said that his wife’s native language was Dutch and she said that English was HORRIBLE.
There is a perfect old English expression for that, we would say it was a case of the pot calling the kettle black.
If you don’t understand that please let me know and I will explain it.
French and Italian are BEAUTIFUL but English is MAJESTIC, POWERFUL, PEACEFUL AND JUST WONDERFUL.
Can you imagine the heartbreaking beauty of Shakespeare being written in ANY OTHER LANGUAGE.
Have you ever heard Shakespeare in German? It’s almost as bad as Shakespeare spoken with a Glaswegian accent.
Sorry guys JUST JOKING.
I am a native of the Black Country, the old workshop of the world in the West Midlands of England, if you are not a native then the Black Country dialect can sound as if you are from MARS.
Yep no logic in theses words
Donkey-Monkey
Daughter- Laughter
Break and Steak but Bleak and Streak
Horse-Worse
South- Youth
Memory must be used to remember the pronunciation.
@@oldedwardian1778 Please explain the whole dutch thing. And maybe less capital letters for emphasize, perhaps you could use italics instead?
Dyefield Have you ever HEARD any Dutch spoken or seen any examples of the written language?
If you have not then any further dialog is a waste of time.
However let me give you some background.
I am OLD, I was born in 1942, at the end of WWII Europe tried to re-establish some form of coming together to try to help the European countries meet each other on a level playing field.
One of those events that I still remember very well was the World Scouting Jamboree that was held in London.
Scouts from all over Europe and indeed the world came to attend that event and to travel around Britain, they stayed with British families and several stayed with my family.
I was very young at the time but my memories are still good and I have warm happy memories.
A young giant of a man stayed with us, he was Dutch and I still remember his name, it was Dav Heymanns he was from The Hague.
I remember him tossing me in the air and catching me while my mother watched expecting a catastrophe, but David’s arms were very strong and sure, I adored him as did we all. He came to see us many times in the 1940s and 1950s, he oiled arrive unannounced to the joy of everyone, of course my mother adopted him as she did everyone.
Dav spoke excellent English, but he would have us all laughing till we cried when he spoke in Dutch trying to recite Shakespeare or Wordsworth in Dutch.
Perhaps it was just the strangeness of the words coming from someone we loved so much.
All languages sounds strange if you do not know them, but to say that any language is HORRIBLE IS STUPID AND IGNORANT.
There were other scouts from France who stayed with us, I do not remember them as well as Dav and we were far ore familiar with French than Dutch so French did sound as strange to us.
We also hosted several young French women who were teachers, one of whom we remained in touch with until she died some years ago.
Her name was Therese, and I became her young English brother, we last saw he in Paris in 2000.
Another was Mete ho was Jewish, she was in the French resistance and told my father many stories about the horrors of the Nazi occupation, she was from La Rochelle.
You see my remarks are not just a display of IGNORANCE.
@@oldedwardian1778 No disrespect was meant from my comment. It's kind of difficult to gauge the implied tone of writing. At least for me. I was legitimately curious as to what you were talking about. I've recently gained an interest in languages and it sounded like you had something interesting to say, and what you did say was somewhat interesting, though not what I was expecting. From what I've heard, dutch can be very guttural, though that could be a different language I'm thinking of.
Now, as for that whole thing where I suggested not using all caps, I honestly don't know what I was thinking at that point. So, sorry about that.
I do agree that calling a language horrible is ignorant. All languages have their subtle nuances, strengths, and weaknesses. English may have inconsistent spelling, but it also has a smorgasbord of synonyms to choose from. It also shares vocabulary with both germanic and romantic languages.
Thanks for taking the time to answer.
One of the truest statements I've ever read in my life: "Early Modern English spelling was an ungoverned mess."
Pretty much holds up to Modern English as well if you ask me.
As a Chinese person being agonized by spelling and pronunciation for over 10 years, I shall curse those publishers in 15th century. 7:05
@@coryjorgensen622 I didnt even find out that wierd was actually spelled weird until 7th grade lol
Ironically chinese is more similar to english than you might think. Only my dad really has trouble comprehending sentences longer than basic interaction. Mom just doesn’t get social nuances though that’s probably not much to do with english and more with her nature. I’ve been comparing chinese “rules” to english “rules” in my head since i moved to canada at 5, so maybe I’m just lucky.
>Chinese speaker
>Calls English writing system hard
@@N00bcrunch3r Thing is, Chinese characters are a lot more straightforward than you might be thinking.
木: Tree
森: Forest
下: Below
上: Above
And there are other characters made up of these smaller characters (or parts of them), that combine meaning
Its a bit to learn at first, but once you get the hang of it, its ez.
@@N00bcrunch3r I really like Spanish spellings The grammar needs more time but seems saving time as a whole
You can't spell slaughter without laughter :/
or therapist without..
@@ビンガム You did'nt!..
@@hipwave When I read this, I thought some music band might have used it. And it did...
manslaughter is many's tragedy and one man's laughter
Like Bot abundance without dance
English people: "How is it possible to memorize Chinese characters?"
Also English:
That’s such a good point tbh. I never thought about it that way. Language is so interesting
Well at the very least you can more easily look up a word written in English than in Hanzi. But yeah I agree it does kind of go to show that we read on a more macro level than we realize.
They're different.
真相
Chinese language has over 50,000 characters. If you look in the dictionary, there are about 20,000 to 30,000 characters. If you want to study university or higher, you should know around 7,000 to 9,000 characters. And for daily conversation, it is around 3,000 characters. That is what I know. Well English language is crazy but Chinese language is the whole different level. 😅😅😅
This is genuinely fascinating - thank you so much for putting this together.
Tough, Though, Thought.
Add one letter and everything changes.
Lugmillord Through
thorough
Taf, tho, thaut
Throughout
This is such a good video. You're so thorough and pragmatic in your examples and explanations. You're thoughtful and clear, unassuming and unfailingly straightforward. Man, I just...I love you, man.
For me a Portuguese speaker it is very difficult to understand because in my language basically all letters have only one or two different sounds whereas in English a letter can have dozens of sounds. Another problem is: in Portuguese we pronounce all letters each world, at least in a formal situation, but in English many letters are not pronounced, and these things make English complex to learn.
I agree with you. I'm a Spanish speaker and it's the same opinion. English pronunciation is stressful as French and German.
@@camilotorroja508 But German is very straightforward to pronounce, the spelling is very consistent.
But still German differs from Spanish or Portoguese in that German (like Germanic lamguages) is a consonant heavy language. Spanish is the opposite.
This word Herbsts (as in: des Herbsts) is a word with only one syllable with 6 consonants on 1 vowel. You would never find something like that in Spanish :)
And it can be difficult for a Spanish speaker to pronounce such words.
Same for me as a Swedish speaker. The vowels "A", "E" and "I" sounds the same in Swedish(with shorter and longer variants). And most of the time all the letters are spelled out. We don't drop letters like crazy like the Danish does, for example (they are known for swallow their words in a way that makes it much harder for us Swedes to understand than English)
And in English they sometimes have double vowels, for no reason. Like in "Weird", which sounds the same as beard (another double vowel).
Why not spell them "werd" and "berd"? That would have been the Swedish way of spelling them! Same thing with "Where" and "Stair" and "Stare". Three different ways with the same "air" sound in the ending of the words!
Talking about "Three". That is also a weird one. Why "ee"? Why not thri? Or even "Fri"? The "Th" instead of "F" is another thing that drives me crazy.
Although Swedish has its own problems for foreigners with the "Sh" sounds. They can be spelled with "sh","ch","sch","ti","g","sj","tj","k","si","j"... (I have probably forgotten some) and they also have a thick(more dutch like) and less thick variation in the sound. "Stjärna" for example is star. "Kärna" is "core". Both sound alike except that the "Sh" sound is thicker in "Stjärna" (like the gurgling sound you do before you spit) and not "deep throaty" in "kärna".
The problem with the Swedish "Sh" sounds is greatly illustrated here : ua-cam.com/video/IOxYRobDDHM/v-deo.html
(A Dutch person probably would have it much easier on this one than the English person).
As far as I've heard with Brazilian Portuguese specifically, there's plenty of vowel reduction and American English tends to give all letters a pronunciation. Also, English has far less forms for some words in comparison to Portuguese. There's the infamous 'Do vs Fazer' image, showing English has 5 forms compared to Portuguese's 59!
Thank you so much for all the wonderfully informative videos that you create.😊
My pleasure!
Thanks for bringing up this topic. I work as a student assistant at the chair of English historical linguistics and this is my daily life! :-) first time I found something like this on a popular UA-cam channel! 🙃
I'm a simple man and when I see a new notification of langfocus channel I immediately play the video
I love Paul for his explanation. He does it thoroughly and perfectly. Thanks Bro. God bless you. From Kenya-Luo
I'm a mexican in learning process, and something that I always found so crazy about English is its weird spelling. I were in a lot of spelling bee contests that my English teachers organized year to year, but I never understood why the words were spelled the way they had: no patterns that a ten years old mind could understand, no consistency, anything. Don't get me wrong, I like to learn English, but it's pretty weird sometimes.
English has same-sounding words, like night, knight, might, mite, right, rite, etc. but also has different-spelled words like tough, through, sought, slough, rough, trough, they had to figure out how to spell and differentiate them all, very few languages have this problem to this scale, so they had to add or change letters as needed
I’m American but I lived in northeast England for several years, and a fun fact about the local dialects there (Geordie and such) is that they retain many vowels from before the Great Vowel Shift. If you hear a *very* thick native speaker it almost sounds like an old Germanic language, like that barbarian in the opening of Gladiator - “ihr seid verfluchte hunde!” - different vocabulary, but very similar phonology.
So true.
My uncle was born in Newcastle c.1910. He had a natural gift for picking up languages, and even the accent of whoever he was talking to. According to him, Geordies and visiting Danish seamen could understand each other. (The Danes may of course have spoken one of the Frisian dialects/languages, which would have made things simpler.)
There's a classic Geordie long 'a' in Wallsend; which, as the name suggests, is at the end of Hadrian's Wall. It's close to, though not quite the same as, the 'a' in e.g. 'arm'. I can mostly understand the accent, but cannot speak it.
@Luke Downey I know what phrase you're talking about in the beginning of the movie, what does it mean?
@@mikesummers-smith4091 : Your uncle was correct. I spend seven months in Newcastle in the early 2000's. Being able to understand Frisian with ease I was really amazed and even shocked how similar Frisian and the language spoken in rural Northumbria were, especially when people spoke about family matters and farm things, using common words that were already in existence when the languages split more then a 1000 years ago.
It's modern German - "You are accursed dogs!"
If a teacher is watching this, please don't punish or shame your students for spelling mistakes after watching this Video. I really mean it.
Now, with the Advent of the internet, we get beautiful words like "yeet" and "lmao"
Walter William Skeet
LOL!
Don’t forget totes m gotes!
yesn't and putting n't at the end of any word is now my favorite thing ever.
LMAO? LMAO!
I’ve always been a good speller, so the fact that others struggle with it makes me feel like I have a superpower-a silly, childish, thoroughly unimportant superpower.
As an ESL teacher, I usually say to my students: "welcome to the English language, where pronunciation makes no sense whatsoever!"
Shouldn’t that be “spelling makes no sense?”
@@seid3366 Still right either way.
@@davidgriffin2770 Le ver vert va vers le verre vert
@@davidgriffin2770 Not a meme, but okay
@D H French can’t be harder than English
The word QUEUE has 80% mute letters
hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
In french it is 99% queue is pronounce khhhh
in poland it would be pronounced like "ku a u ae"
kuoowoo
@@Tuberex æ
English: Even us don't know how to spell some words, but let's use English as an international language!
Me: That's *INSANE*
And WHICH spelling system? The American system or the British system?
Peter Kelly
Not so different, -ise/-ize, -our/-or, do you know any other?
+
@James The girls names "Sinead" and "Siobhan" are Irish and have an Irish pronunciation. Where there is a "bh" it is pronounced like a "v" sound. Some names are anglicized to help English speakers, for example my surname is "Devlin" but it originated from "Ó Doibhilin".
@@anubisu1024 there are others..but..you make an excellent point! Even with the spelling differences, most of us native English speakers understand each other..we tend to exaggerate them to exaggerate our U.S./U.K. differences. The rest of the world seems to be understand them..even as a second or third language..lol
11:20 I think the background image is the inside of the dome of the Baptistery of St. John, in Florence, Italy, right in front of the Cathedral. That's a perfect choice for Renaissance era stuff, good work Mr. Paul.
Before you make fun of somebody’s broken English, be surprised they can even speak it at all.
You mean any Nazi grammar?
@YLR Entertainment Owo.. Rare native good.
Those who do probably don't even speak a language other than English and they don't know the struggle
I am a native English speaker. When I was a kid, there was a huge focus on spelling (not so much anymore). I struggled. I later learned Spanish. Spelling became so much easier.
As I non-native English speaker, I never struggled with it.. Now, at the age of 17, I am fluent, but any other language (any language that I didn't listen on the radio/TV/music) is much harder to learn.. It all resulted in the major fault of my reading other languages, even if I could understand the grammar, vocabulary, etc. Also, people which have English as their mother language have a big problem, but a big advantage - They learned one of the most confusing languages in the world at the age of 3 or something, but they will never be able to easily learn other languages, due to that de facto wrong pronounciation in English in the first place
When i was a kid, my teacher used to give the word "Rough" everytime during english dictations and I would always write "Ruff". Teacher always marked it incorrect and wrote "Rough" nearby. i wondered why she always writes this word.😂😂 Never realized it was correct spelling of "Ruff".
I would have marked "ruff" right as long as you could spell "onomatopoeia" & knew what it meant.
@@sharonjuniorchess Those first English printing press owners from the 15th century most certainly didn't know what it means.
@@herrakaarme I am sure they had homophones then...
Ruff is my mother's maiden name and we pronouce it like rough or roof.
@@neptuneamaru5649 Ah - but how do you pronounce roof? Like "moon" or the "u" sound in "push"?
Everyone: WHY CANT YOU BE NORMAL!?
English: **screams**
Other languages: WHY CAN'T YOU BE NORMAL!?
English: GHOTI!
Because being normal is too easy to learn, how else will you know if you are talking to a non native speaker unless there are traps in the language, hmmm?
@@KielanGaming English has taken it too far though! You now think someone is not a native speaker from their weird pronunciation but then you realize they are just urban british or something like that.
Fr
Don't you mean *Screamb?*
This overview is incredible! Your Great Vowel Shift summary just saved me the time to figure out how to represent the changes. Thank you!
I always thought that writing in English was made by a psychopath. Thanks for the clarification.
Indeed. It was made by many, many psychopaths.
I think . English language has a origin in the dark age of England . It isn't a political whim or cultural from start .
Currently , USA has his grammar and orthography . England also .
İt *was* made by psychopaths....
You do free market with spelling and that's what you get in the end.
Im a native english speaker, and Ive never been so confused in my life.....
If you don't spell it "Willm Shakp" then we can't be friends
Rashid the Trombone
William ShakesWeight
Willy Shakes
Rashid the Trombone wm shakp
Wm Shakp
Rashid the Trombone to be fair, that was shorthand, not actually spelling.
Great channel, host, linguistic history, and breakdowns on language origins, evolution and facts!
It’s amazing how “kara-oke” in Japanese is pronounced “carry oh key” in English.
Consider it an aspirational pronunciation.
Even in protuguese (official destroyer of japanese pronounciation) we pronounce Karaoke correctly
stargasior Some people can’t seem to pronounce ‘sudoku’, it’s like they are intentionally making it difficult. Probably karaoke was the same.
@@ynntari2775 And here I thought that English speakers were particularly bad at pronouncing Japanese words. Personally, I don't get how people can butcher Japanese, it's one of the easiest languages to speak, very straight forward with very few exceptions. Now learning the grammar and all that, that's an entirely different matter.
It's completely understandable. We don't tend to have the ah sound and the oh sound next to each other in English. And since the oh sound is accented, the ah sound changed to be one that normally works.
The other sound changes just changed to fit the spelling. In English, ar is pronounced as in the word carry.
The E at the ends of loanwords, become ay (as in day) if it's accented (eg. cafe) or becomes "ee" if isn't (hyperbole).
Put all that together, and you get carry-OH-key.
I love how the spelling of "standardized" isn't standardised
Good point! lol
It adds “colour” or “color” to the English language!
@@Lichfeldian--Suttonian It could even be 'kula'. But the problem with spelling words as they are pronounced is that different people pronounce words differently.
The z in standardized, realize, civilize, etc. is just in American. The Brits and Canadians use the s.
I think it's better that being shouted at for using a wrong letter.
This is so fascinating, I love it. Thanks for the incredible work Paul
This video is right up my alley!
I always wondered about the various pronounciations in words like
"Superman", "superfluous" or "superior"! :)
English is the Borg of languages. Resistance is futile. All your vocabulary will be assimilated.
All your vocabulary are belong to us.
Bjorn Borg?
@@ferruccioveglio8090
Borgs are an alien species in Star Trek.
@@ferruccioveglio8090 : Yeah, probably him. That's a part of that Norse influence...
French: My vocabulary
English: Wrong! OUR VOCABULARY
Seeing this, I'm more sure to think that Indonesian is the easiest language in the world:
1. It has a very simple spelling. No exception! You write what you say. With Latin alphabet.
2. No tenses. No verb declinations or conjugations. No noun genders. No noun cases. No tones!
3. This language is "designed" for native speakers of around 720 languages in Indonesia. (Therefore it has to be simple).
Indonesian is still a Level 4 language for native English speakers, for a variety of reasons. If you've had exposure to it as a child for some reason, it will seem significantly easier to you than to a person with no exposure. I once had a whole group of American born Vietnamese trying to convince me that was super easy. I looked it up, and it was a 4-with-a-star, which means it was only slightly shy of a Level 5, the hardest language ranking.
Short dictionary, simple verbs and tenses, BUT you have all these things you need to put before and after a word: kirim -> mengirimkan. Etc etc etc
epic
@@hotrodharbor justru hafalin kosakotanya makin mudah
contoh
meminjam : borrow
meminjamkan : lend
Well, as an Indonesian myself I think the foreigner students will having a bad struggle in (in)formal sentence & Imbuhan (affixes) part. For example:
Ajar (to teach) > basic word
If we adds imbuhan (affixes), it'll be:
Ajari (to teach someone)
Ajarilah (asked politely to be teached)
Ajarkan (*don't know how to describe this one)
Ajaran (*also don't know)
Pengajar (teacher)
Pengajaran (* I don't know how to describe this)
Pembelajaran (*also don't know)
Pelajar (student)
Pelajari (giving order to study)
Pelajaran (the subjects you are studying)
Mengajar (teaching)
Mengajari (to teach)
Mengajarkan (have been teached)
Mengajarlah (persue someone to teaching)
Mempelajari (studying)
Diajar (teached by someone)
Diajari (teached by someone)
Diajarkan (have been teached by someone)
Belajar (study)
Belajarlah (persue someone to study)
Terpelajar (educated person / people)
But don't worry, we don't use all of this in the daily conversations, especially with friends and family. You'll see this kind of words when you're reading or when you should make an Indonesian formal letters by yourself.
An excellent video Paul. I live in France and have been regularly asked about this, knew th broard story of the history of the English dictionary before however the host of extra facts and details on the subject you've provided here should make life easier for me when confronted with this in the future.
I'll certainly recommend this video to anyone interested in this subject. As I often do with a number of your other top quality videos.
A massive thumbs up as usual.
That was a joy to watch, well put together!
It seems that partly due to the vowel shift English became more different from other Germanic languages in speech. I could not help to see more similarity between the older spoken English and what is Dutch nowadays.
One could divide languages to 5 groups based on the regularity of their spelling (degree of phonemicity). They are (from best to worst):
1. Finnish.
2. Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Hungarian, Slovenian.
3. German, Dutch, Greek, Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic.
4. Danish, French.
5. English.
Kominek and Black (2006) estimate that English language spelling is about 3 times more complex than German, and 40 times more complex than Spanish (and who know how many times more complex than Finnish).
A survey of English spelling (Carney, 1994) devotes 120 pages to describe phoneme-to-letter correspondences, and lists 226 letter-to-phoneme rules, almost all of which admit exceptions.
It's no wonder that it takes so long for children to learn to read. The reading level after 1 year of instructions:
- Greek, Finnish, German ~ 100%.
- French ~ 80%.
- Portuguese ~ 75%.
- Danish ~ 70%.
- English ~ 35%...
That's crazy… I would think Danish is harder to spell. It sounds like people mumble it when they speak it. There is also another episode where he talks about Tibetan being very hard to spell
You know your language sucks as a communication tool when there are entire contests based on simple basic task of writing words.
I don't know how it is in other languages, but here in Finland kids often learn to read home or kindergarten before starting school.
How about Korean? They have rather new writing system, and I hear that making it easy was the point.
I'm interested in Japanese and Chinese, and oh horror, the amount of symbols and how to read them!
@@Aurinkohirvi
& @darkprince56:
you're conflating multiple concepts... The issue with complexity in Japanese is multiple simultaneous writing systems, some of which are logographic. I'd imagine spelling in the more phonetic writing systems would be consistent, while the concept is irrelevant for the logographic bits (you can't misspell a single symbol).
Spoken Dutch being difficult to understand doesn't mean written Dutch has inconsistent spelling
@@NJ-wb1cz Given that the same language is currently one of the most prevalent on the planet, with strong pressure to adopt & teach it in areas where it is not native; and that this state of affairs is in large part due to how easily it adopts neologisms & loan words, which is a direct contributor to the unfortunate complexity in spelling... I'm gonna actually go with NO, it doesn't suck as a communications tool at all.
It just has some functional tradeoffs... easily & aggressively able to adopt new words but as a consequence horribly inconsistent spelling which then increases difficulty to become fluent.
I think of English spelling as Chinese spelling. Just remember how to read each word. I don't even try to remember all these mutually exclusive rules.
It's stupid to think of English as Chinese spelling, because English doesn't use any kind of syllable system, as Chinese does
@@thedamntrain Since when does Chinese use a syllable system? Are you thinking of Japanese?
50% of English has French loan words, which in turn share similar words with 60-75% of other romance languages.
@@OlafoWaffle Frankish loan words similar to modern French yes.
@@hetakusoda2977 Since the beginning of Chinese language. Each word in Chinese is not a combination of sounds, like in European language. It's a combination of syllables, where each syllable has its own meaning. For example, there is a hieroglyph "zhong" (pronounced "jong"), wich means "center" in Chinese. It is one fixed syllable with its own meaning, wich is written with one hieroglyph. You can't just remove, for example, the "n" sound from this syllable and say that we've just made a new syllable without the "n" sound. You won't even be able to write "zhog" (without "n"), because there is no such hieroglyph as "zhog".
But if we look at English - we can do whatever we want. We can, for instance, remove "n" from "presence". It's "presece" now. Yesm there's no such word as "presece", but we still can write it using English letters and read it. In Chinese you can't do the same trick with "zhong" - "zhog"
Now, let's take another hieroglyph - "guo" (pronounced "goo-oh"). This means "kingdom" in Chinese. We have the same situation here - one syllable, unchangeable, one meaning, one hieroglyph. And now let's put these two words together - now we have "zhong guo". This means "China" in Chinese. Literally - "Central Kingdom". And that's how Chinese language works. You have some words, that consist of one syllable, so they have one hieroglyph. You also have complex words, that have two or more syllables, and each of this syllable can be independent word itself, but when they are put together they make a new big word, like "China" - "zhong guo". But even then none of the syllables lose its own meaning, so "zhong guo" can also be understood as "Central Kingdom" at the same time.
And that's what is called syllable system. So yes, Chinese language DOES have the syllable system of writing, while English and other European languages have the sound system. That's why it is stupid to consider English spelling to be something like Chinese system. They are not alike even a bit Let's stop making excuses and just admit, that English spelling is nothing more than illogical, broken, and messed up piece of shit
elementary school teacher: just sound it out...
But The thing is you can sound it out in many different ways that’s the hard part
Yea i was told that when trying to spell Wednesday
That right there has been going through my head this entire video
6.20 - the great vowel shift section. I think many of those middle English vowel sounds, or transitional vowel sounds, can still be heard today in the North East of England.
A native Cantonese speaker but never knew there was a word ‘kowtow’ in English that originated from it.Very informative!
Another example is Typhoon from the Cantonese pronunciation Dai-Fuong meaning Big Wind.
According to Dictionary.com, it's from "kòutóu," which means to knock one's head!
@@Obscurai Interesting I thought it came from japanese Taifuu (Same Kanji/Hanzi) but this also makes sense.
@@EloNaj The final "ng" sound matching the "n" is what makes the connection clearer. Also, both Japanese and Cantonese used Middle Chinese pronunciation so the pronunciation roots are similar.
@@Obscurai Is Tycoon (CEO businessman) also from Cantonese? And is its meaning wind related? Like a person so rich they are powerful like a big wind?
Pretty great that this became the Lingua Franca and everyone has to go through this awful spelling
Well at least it's better than French...
@@matth3908 French has lots of silent letters but the rules that govern French pronunciation are largely consistent
True. C'est vrai
There is the loanword dompter before pronounced donter but now by hypercorection is pronounced with the p
But in compter the p isn't pronounced
I remember it kind of blew my mind when I learned that non-anglophone countries don’t have the concept of a Spelling Bee... Of course it made sense, but it had just never occurred to me before as an American. Most languages aren’t messy in their spelling like this! Of course English is the only one where you can set up an entire competition for schoolchildren around how to spell words!
Spelling is easy...
Omg , the CONFUSION i had as a child when a tv show or cartoon (originally produced in america) had a reference about that "Spelling Bee" game , because i never realised why the fuck is that hard to spell a word
Also sometimes they would do language jokes that had no sense when translated in my language
We have spelling contests in Brazil (we speak Portuguese here). The catch is having people with poor education to distinguish when it should be s, ss, sc (before e or i), c (bef. e or i), ç or xc (bef. e or i) for the /s/ sound and other minor spelling traps.
A US citizen would fail an English English spelling test. Especially if the examiner knew they were American.
@@peterleadley7103 I am fine with most differences between American and British English but I can’t stand tire, lion, and tiger with a “y”
I ate a middle English dictionary for dinner and it created a great bowel shift.
As a non English speaking, I was struggling to pronounce in English words like: Neighbour, Isle, knife, pneumonia until I came across a headline in the newspaper that reads "Bazaar Pronounced Success"
And you probably thought "what the Hell?"
Pneumonia is a Greek word, and "pneumonia" is exactly how it's written in Greek, transliterated to the Greek alphabet of course, but the English messed up the pronunciation.
Canadians still pronounce house the second way 6:39
That's the East-coast pronunciation. The West-coast Canadians have another pronuciation entirely: "hoose" to rhyme with "moose". And you will find "Hoce" sprinkled all over from BC to NL. You can spot the Yankee in Canada by their "Hause".
I grew up in BC, currently live in Ontario, and I favour the second pronunciation. I've noticed that the older/more rural/more blue collar a Canadian is, the rounder the vowels.
people shift their own vowels depending on the accent they want for themselves
*see scottish english*
Ontarian here and yes most people here use said sound :)
Sees a notification from Langfocus, turns off the adblocker, enjoys the quality content. Thank you and have a nice day too!
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Good idea. You've made me feel ashamed. I'm going to rewatch with adblock turned off. This is quality content!
I am a spanish speaker. We are taught to read every single letter in spanish. We use more " read my lips" than spelling words. While learning english you go crazy.
It does help to start when you're a baby. But yes, you're exactly right. This statement is completely true, even for native speakers.
@@frankhooper7871 you mention only three inconsistencies. I wish i could say the same in English.
@@frankhooper7871 The "x" case occurs mostly in Mexico, where it has 4 ways of pronunciation. But in many other Spanish speaking countries, "x" is only pronounced as "ks", with "México" and "mexicano" being the only exceptions.
Yes, without proper education, one person could write "hola" instead of "ola", and "llo" instead of "yo". But if you see "hola", "ola", and "yo", you know automatically how to pronounce them. You could side these monstruosities: "desoxirribonucleico" or "otorrinolaringología" and still know how to pronounce them. With English this is NOT the case.
In other words: in Spanish you may not know how to write a word (that is with the letters of same pronunciation, it's pretty improbable to find a person who doesn't know how to write "mañana", "gato" or "toronja" if they listen to them), but you will know how to pronounce a written word always (the Mexican words with "x" are exceptions because in the first place they are not actually Spanish words, but Nahuatl words).
In English not only you won't know easily how to write a word you hear, but you won't know either how to pronounce a written word!
Hands down, this is THE BEST linguist channel. I especially enjoyed this video as it answered many of my questions. Thanks!
My wife's first language is Dutch. She has a favourite chorus when faced with the inconsistency of English spelling and pronunciation, "English is a horrible language!" She sometimes tells it to her students since she is a teacher.
frankly i agree with her.
@@MusicalRaichu Also Brits where to lazy to update their spelling (like normal countries do), and now say 'blame the French'.
Yes, Dutch is quite nice in comparison to English. But maan, theese loong vooweels and "v" instead of "f" are kinda confusing
I agree with your wife.
@magpie_girl The French made everything so dirty it was impossible to clean up. It is only right to blame them for everything. Those dirty frog-eaters.
Oh, thanks for the vid, Paul!
Very great job you've done here and also big thanks for literature in the description. Just got interested in the English linguistics and its history and here you are with this masterpiece.
I really enjoyed all your videos, learned a lot since I speak english as a second language, I always had trouble with the way english words are spelled. For example: Island, depot, Chandler, pinnacle, etc. and the one you mentioned on the video: "Indicted" I used to pronounce it "indeected" . Thanks again for your nice videos.
I'm surprised that you did not mention Merriam Webster. He made an attempt to standardize English spelling with some success, though only in America. Words such as plow instead of plough, realize instead of realise, neighborhood instead of neighbourhood. color instead of colour; fetus, instead of foetus, et. al.
Noah Webster..I'm not sure where Merriam came along..but being born in the U.S., colour is color, neighbour is neighbor, centre is center..(although theater..is also theatre..the building is a theater..the art is 'theatre') I am now noticing U.S. based autocorrect!..do you have that outside the U.S.? Some make sense to me..but defense vs defence?..we still call a fence a fence..When I see the different spellings, I assume the author is from outside the U.S., as we are taught these spellings from day one. When I first saw the word color spelled 'colour'..I pronounced it 'cul OUR'....
...The problem is, out of those, _plough_ is the only one that's actually screwed up to begin with. The rest are consistent with the (twisted and arcane, but still generally consistent) rules of English spelling.
@@MushVPeets Good point. I was simply trying to point out that some organized effort to make the spelling of certain words match their pronunciation did take place. Many changes did not stick. One example is wimmen rather than women. Two better examples might be tuff rather than tough; ruff rather than rough -- but I think both all are acceptable in American English, but with the latter in each case still widely used. Also, with words like colour, neighbour, favour, the OU is no longer pronounced.
Yeah.. and by doing so created even more confusion while not actually solving any problems.
@@NJ-wb1cz But did it? It is more obvious how to pronounce ruff, tuff, color, etc. The script matches the current pronunciation. I see where you are coming from, and it would have been best if the effort for standardisation was more wide-spread in the English speaking world.
This kinda made me think that the French knight's pronunciation of the word "knight" as "k[schwa]-niggit" on Monty Python and the Holy Grail was actually accurate, considering the French in the (alleged) King Arthur Era were supposed to be Normans, and Terry Jones being a historian too.
Except you do not need a schwa between the K and the N to pronounce [kn]. (Unless too much anglophony stops you pronouncing it otherwise)
Émile Duvernois the character in the movie pronounced that though.
@@yorgunsamuray .I do not doubt it. He must have been English. 😉
In Dutch there is 'knecht' (servant) which is how 'knight' woul've been pronounced but with a different vowel
Émile Duvernois indeed he is. He portrays a French knight who speaks English in an “outrrrrageous” accent.
This is a really good summary of how English spelling developed over the centuries. Great video!