3 ms·
I realize there are many, many factors that contribute to English spelling being so weird, but doesn't the Norman invasion account for the lion's share of them?
by HideousKojima 3y ago
I realize there are many, many factors that contribute to English spelling being so weird, but doesn't the Norman invasion account for the lion's share of them?
- thaumasiotes 3y agoThat would be strange, since the same phenomenon - linguistic drift away from ancient spellings - is observed in every language. The reason you see other languages as having spelling that is "less weird" than English is not that English is different from those other languages - it's that the spelling of those other languages is much more recent than the spelling of English is. The Norman contribution to the split between tough, through, and dough, for example, is zero.
- Electricniko 3y agoI recommend the Youtube channel RobWords for those kinds of explanations: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j07f-cKWRtk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j07f-cKWRtk