4 ms·

Also (unusually?) English retains some semblance of the original spelling of words borrowed from numerous other languages and dialects

toasterlovin 8y ago
The crazy thing about English is that some of the various crazy spellings were decided on a long time ago as a way to distinguish the linguistic origin of words (Greek vs. Latin vs. French, basically) for a reading audience that was highly educated, and in the 800 years since then nobody ever engaged in a systematic campaign of spelling reform. In some ways, I think this reveals a lot about Anglosphere culture.
- dorchadas 8y ago
  To be fair, several people actually have tried to reform English spelling [1]. Perhaps the most famous of these, at least in America, was Noah Webster (of Webster's Dictionary fame) in the 1800s. He's actually the reason Americans use 'color' over 'colour' and 'center' over 'centre'. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-language_spelling_reform#19th_century https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-language_spelling_refo...
- nerfhammer 8y ago
  You're forgetting Webster, responsible for American spellings like colour vs color, centre vs center, gaol vs jail.
BerislavLopac 8y ago
Not just that -- in some cases spelling of original English words was changed to align with certain political requirements. My favourite example is "queen": it was originally a perfectly norman Anglo-Saxon (i.e. Old English) word, "cwene" (pronounced more or less kweh-neh). When the French-speaking Normans conquered England, they accepted the local word for political reasons, but their scribes used the French way of spelling this group of sounds, that is using "que" like in Latin.
- dorchadas 8y ago
  A few fun examples of mine on this: debt [1]: Originally spelled 'dette' in Middle English; the <b> was added to make it more Latin-like. isle [2]: Originally spelled 'ile, yle', the <s> was added to make it more Latin-like. Funnily enough, in this case, the <s> was also added to the native English word 'iland', under influence from the new <isle>. [3] [1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/debt https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/debt [2] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/isle#Etymology https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/isle#Etymology [3]https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/island#English https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/island#English

toasterlovin 8y ago

The crazy thing about English is that some of the various crazy spellings were decided on a long time ago as a way to distinguish the linguistic origin of words (Greek vs. Latin vs. French, basically) for a reading audience that was highly educated, and in the 800 years since then nobody ever engaged in a systematic campaign of spelling reform. In some ways, I think this reveals a lot about Anglosphere culture.

dorchadas 8y ago
To be fair, several people actually have tried to reform English spelling [1]. Perhaps the most famous of these, at least in America, was Noah Webster (of Webster's Dictionary fame) in the 1800s. He's actually the reason Americans use 'color' over 'colour' and 'center' over 'centre'. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-language_spelling_reform#19th_century https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-language_spelling_refo...
nerfhammer 8y ago
You're forgetting Webster, responsible for American spellings like colour vs color, centre vs center, gaol vs jail.

BerislavLopac 8y ago

Not just that -- in some cases spelling of original English words was changed to align with certain political requirements. My favourite example is "queen": it was originally a perfectly norman Anglo-Saxon (i.e. Old English) word, "cwene" (pronounced more or less kweh-neh). When the French-speaking Normans conquered England, they accepted the local word for political reasons, but their scribes used the French way of spelling this group of sounds, that is using "que" like in Latin.

dorchadas 8y ago
A few fun examples of mine on this: debt [1]: Originally spelled 'dette' in Middle English; the <b> was added to make it more Latin-like. isle [2]: Originally spelled 'ile, yle', the <s> was added to make it more Latin-like. Funnily enough, in this case, the <s> was also added to the native English word 'iland', under influence from the new <isle>. [3] [1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/debt https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/debt [2] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/isle#Etymology https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/isle#Etymology [3]https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/island#English https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/island#English