>The fact that "bough" and "trough" are spelled the same is not a fact about the English language so it doesn't prove anything about whether English is irregula

>The fact that "bough" and "trough" are spelled the same is not a fact about the English language so it doesn't prove anything about whether English is irregular or not. It is a fact about the writing system commonly used to represent English. I understand your separation of concepts here. Let me try to go meta and explain what many people are talking about: umanwizard : English _aural_ is totally separate from English _visual_ ; in this division, "inconsistency" makes no sense; (English aural would be like Linux and English visual is like Windows) others: "English language" is _both_ the aural+visual together. The aural & visual evolved together and influenced each other. Therefore, inconsistencies _can_ be identified. It doesn't matter if there was an "English spoken" before "English writing". The context for many people saying "English is inconsistent/irregular" is to say that "English aural+visual is inconsistent". I'm not saying you must agree that "English language=aural+visual". I'm informing you that the combined unit is what they're talking about. The combined concept enables those meta poems to exist. It also means that when you tell a linguist that "English is inconsistent", the linguist knows what you're talking about. Likewise, when a linguist mentions that "English is inconsistent", _we_ know what he's talking about. >, you make it sound as if writing was invented in some earlier stage of evolution No, that wasn't my intention. Just repeating the commonly held assumption that vocal grunts and pointing fingers at objects to communicate happens before systematic writing.