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> I like English spelling. I grew up in the UK and prefer British-English to American-English, both in terms of spelling and pronunciation. That said English

> I like English spelling. I grew up in the UK and prefer British-English to American-English, both in terms of spelling and pronunciation. That said English has terrible spelling compared to other languages, it's impossible to know how to pronounce a word just looking at the spelling. I don't need to give examples, as it is well-known already. I benefit from the fact that many people I've met around the world speak English, but it's almost unfortunate that one of the harder/more inconsistent languages "won".

nl 4y ago
If you are interested, there's a good reason why English spelling is so weird. The pronunciation of vowels shifted between 1400-1700 and depending on when a specific word's spelling was "standardised" decides which version of the pronunciation was used. If it's the old vowel pronunciation the spelling will make no sense, whereas the new vowel are mostly ok. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift is pretty good, and include sound files of the old vs new pronunciations.
- TRiG_Ireland 4y ago
  And the great vowel shift happened very shortly after the introduction of the printing press to Britain and the standardisation of English spelling.
thaumasiotes 4y ago
> I benefit from the fact that many people I've met around the world speak English, but it's almost unfortunate that one of the harder/more inconsistent languages "won". English is not one of the harder or more inconsistent languages in the world. It's one of the simpler and more consistent ones. This is a general pattern with languages that go through a phase where they are learned by large numbers of adults.
- stevekemp 4y ago
  English is very inconsistent, not that this necessarily makes it harder of course, compared to languages such as Finnish which has very regular grammar and no ambiguity with pronounciation. ("I could have read the red book, because I like to read." is just one example of inconsistent pronounciation. Spelling is non-obvious to people learning the language, again as a result of unusual and inconsistent pronounciation.)
  - jwestbury 4y ago
    Comparing to Finnish is... a choice. Finnish is known to be one of the most difficult languages to learn because of the incredibly variation in cases. Different languages have different features which make them harder to different populations. A better description of English would be: English is one of the languages to learn. English has no complex case system. We do not have grammatical gender. Our use of grammatical number is limited and consistent (except in certain loan words). There are exceptions to these, but they are largely words which are so common as to be part of the foundational learning -- pronouns, primarily, where we preserve gender and where case goes beyond "add an apostrophe-s." Because case is not especially important, word order is important, which can be challenging for people from cultures with a different standard word order. Spelling is challenging due to both the vowel shift and the number of languages which have acted as input to English (at a minimum: native Celtic languages in Britain; Anglo-Frisian and its antecedents; French, both Norman and more southern dialects; and Latin and Greek pulled in by the early natural philosophers of the early modern period). English does have an unusually high number of irregular verbs, which, combined with the spelling and pronunciation, can make it seem inconsistent; but there are many other ways in which English is startlingly simple compared to highly-inflected languages.
    - stevekemp 4y ago
      I moved to Finland, which is why it comes to mind. Finnish is definitely difficult, for native English speakers due to the grammar. But Finnish is easier than English in the sense that pronounciation is 100% regular and predictable - that's the metric I've been using in this thread to say "English is hard". (I understand the reasons behind that, the mixture of influences, loan-words, and voewl shifting.) In a lot of ways English is easy, and even bad English is understandable.
- GoblinSlayer 4y ago
  Inconsistency of English is high compared to basically every other language.
- justsomehnguy 4y ago
  > It's one of the simpler and more consistent ones. floor cooperation coop

nl 4y ago

If you are interested, there's a good reason why English spelling is so weird. The pronunciation of vowels shifted between 1400-1700 and depending on when a specific word's spelling was "standardised" decides which version of the pronunciation was used. If it's the old vowel pronunciation the spelling will make no sense, whereas the new vowel are mostly ok. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift is pretty good, and include sound files of the old vs new pronunciations.

TRiG_Ireland 4y ago
And the great vowel shift happened very shortly after the introduction of the printing press to Britain and the standardisation of English spelling.

thaumasiotes 4y ago

> I benefit from the fact that many people I've met around the world speak English, but it's almost unfortunate that one of the harder/more inconsistent languages "won". English is not one of the harder or more inconsistent languages in the world. It's one of the simpler and more consistent ones. This is a general pattern with languages that go through a phase where they are learned by large numbers of adults.

stevekemp 4y ago
English is very inconsistent, not that this necessarily makes it harder of course, compared to languages such as Finnish which has very regular grammar and no ambiguity with pronounciation. ("I could have read the red book, because I like to read." is just one example of inconsistent pronounciation. Spelling is non-obvious to people learning the language, again as a result of unusual and inconsistent pronounciation.)
- jwestbury 4y ago
  Comparing to Finnish is... a choice. Finnish is known to be one of the most difficult languages to learn because of the incredibly variation in cases. Different languages have different features which make them harder to different populations. A better description of English would be: English is one of the languages to learn. English has no complex case system. We do not have grammatical gender. Our use of grammatical number is limited and consistent (except in certain loan words). There are exceptions to these, but they are largely words which are so common as to be part of the foundational learning -- pronouns, primarily, where we preserve gender and where case goes beyond "add an apostrophe-s." Because case is not especially important, word order is important, which can be challenging for people from cultures with a different standard word order. Spelling is challenging due to both the vowel shift and the number of languages which have acted as input to English (at a minimum: native Celtic languages in Britain; Anglo-Frisian and its antecedents; French, both Norman and more southern dialects; and Latin and Greek pulled in by the early natural philosophers of the early modern period). English does have an unusually high number of irregular verbs, which, combined with the spelling and pronunciation, can make it seem inconsistent; but there are many other ways in which English is startlingly simple compared to highly-inflected languages.
  - stevekemp 4y ago
    I moved to Finland, which is why it comes to mind. Finnish is definitely difficult, for native English speakers due to the grammar. But Finnish is easier than English in the sense that pronounciation is 100% regular and predictable - that's the metric I've been using in this thread to say "English is hard". (I understand the reasons behind that, the mixture of influences, loan-words, and voewl shifting.) In a lot of ways English is easy, and even bad English is understandable.
GoblinSlayer 4y ago
Inconsistency of English is high compared to basically every other language.
justsomehnguy 4y ago
> It's one of the simpler and more consistent ones. floor cooperation coop