We all know about the ridiculous varying pronunciations of cough, tough, bough, through, and though, which are all spelled alike but cannot be made to rhyme successfully. It's just one of the many ways that English is thoroughly weird, and very hard to master if it's not a language you learned in early childhood. How did our language get this way? To begin with, English is a mishmash of other languages, constantly changing over the centuries. When the spoken language began to be a printed language, there was no authority over spelling, like a bureau of language standards. Words were spelled whatever way the printer wanted, usually to give some idea of how they were pronounced. But pronunciation changes over time and place, and the printed word, for the most part, stays the same. (via Laughing Squid)
What we need is metric spelling, not this cockup that the English have given us.
ReplyDeleteIt's the same cockup the Pilgrims took to America.
ReplyDeleteYou've had several hundred years in which to have improved it, but until the advent of the Internet progress has been slow.
Now I often have to translate American into English.