What about similar oddities in English?
(This question is inspired by this comic by https://www.exocomics.com/193/ (link found by BunScientist@lemmy.zip)) Edit: it’s to its in the title. Damn autocorrect.

  • givesomefucks@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    6 months ago

    It’s because the people who set the rules for the English language, could barely speak it.

    The first guy to popularize the printing press was Dutch, so the guy who bought England’s first one didn’t know how it worked and neither did any English speaker

    So he hired a bunch of Dutch who knew how to operate it.

    And they got a bunch of handwritten books and were told to mass reproduce them.

    Sometimes it was a mistake in the original, sometimes the typesetter made a mistake. Sometimes the writer just disagreed with how it should be written, and sometimes even the typesetters who couldn’t speak English made choices to change it

    No one gave a fuck about accuracy, it was about pumping out as many books as possible. Because just owning a book was a huge status symbol still from when they were handwritten and crazy expensive.

    But all those books eventually got read, and the people who learned to read them were very proud that they could read. So they insisted that all the random bullshit was intentional and had to be followed to a T by everyone forever.

    Most other languages had a noble class who kept it sensical, but for a long ass time only peasants spoke English, the wealthy in England all spoke French, cuz they were French.

    Anyways, that’s why English doesn’t make any sense. There was also a natural thing happening where vowel pronunciation was changing. So when the typecasters solidified everything, it was already in a state of flux. That’s why pronunciation doesn’t line up with spelling.

  • afk_strats@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    6 months ago

    The Chaos by Gerard Nolst Trenité (1922)

    https://ncf.idallen.com/english.html

    Dearest creature in creation
    Studying English pronunciation,
    I will teach you in my verse
    Sounds like corpse, corps, horse and worse.

    I will keep you, Susy, busy,
    Make your head with heat grow dizzy;
    Tear in eye, your dress you’ll tear;
    Queer, fair seer, hear my prayer.

    Pray, console your loving poet,
    Make my coat look new, dear, sew it!
    Just compare heart, hear and heard,
    Dies and diet, lord and word.
    …

    Very long. Highly recommended