The Random Comic Strip

The Random Comic Strip

Words to live by...

"How beautiful it is to do nothing, and to rest afterward."

[Spanish Proverb]

Ius luxuriae publice datum est

(The right to looseness has been officially given)

"Everyone carries a part of society on his shoulders," wrote Ludwig von Mises, "no one is relieved of his share of responsibility by others. And no one can find a safe way for himself if society is sweeping towards destruction. Therefore everyone, in his own interest, must thrust himself vigorously into the intellectual battle."

Apparently, the crossword puzzle that disappeared from the blog, came back.


Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Foh-Net-Icks

Thuh yoose uv foh-net-icks kewd grate-lee improov kom-mewn-ick-ay-shuns.

Ok, maybe that's a little extreme. But some words are difficult to pronounce when you first see them because of accepted spellings. Some of this is due to the fact that the English language absorbs words from other languages. Some of it is due to the retention of traditional spelling for a word.

When I was a lad in school (during the Dark Ages, I believe), first learning to read and write, we did use phonetics. The teacher would encourage us to "sound it out." We didn't need to spell words like telephone yet so it worked most of the time.

Well, except for counting...

One (pronounced "wun")
Two (pronounced "too")
...
Eight (pronounced "ait" or "ate")

Only one of those three has a rule involved. 'i' before 'e' except after 'c' or when sounding like 'ay' as in 'neighbor' or 'weigh'.

I am often surprised I remember that. I think that is because I wondered about the 'gh'. It could be an "ff" sound in some words and a silent "y" in others. It's a good thing we were so young. It's easy to tell a small child that it's "just the way it is... remember it."

They gave us a few rules for spelling that helped but most of the hard words required that you to just remember how something was spelled.

Hmmm... if you recall something it's called "remembering", if you forget it it, is it "dismembering"? Wait, that falls under vocabulary, not spelling.

People think it is just English but it happens in other languages. It just happens English is the only one I know well enough to converse in.

And now texting is tossing out all the rules...

[1381/1382/1251]

6 comments:

The Jules said...

It's a strange language thruff and thruff.

Steven said...

speaking of absorbing words, here's a factoid I learned yesterday: the word "trek" is one of the few English words borrowed from Afrikaans.

Neo said...

trek as in travels and venture? been around a long long time
They say english is of the most difficult languages to learn, that and russian
i before e I do remember but don't remember the ay part... makes sense though

Neo said...

shoot misread that about trek

Steven said...

While in Greece, I said something about English being hard to learn, and was quickly corrected that Greek was harder.

Don't know if it's true or not, but Greek has had a very long time to evolve and muddy up and change pronunciation and whatnot. Slavic languages seem like they'd be harder than English, as do the east Asian languages...

But what do I know, the most I can muster of any other language is "beer, please."

Neo said...

trek as in travels and venture? been around a long long time
They say english is of the most difficult languages to learn, that and russian
i before e I do remember but don't remember the ay part... makes sense though