I’m just sick and tired of silent letters. Ever wonder who put them there and why? Since the whole point of a letter is to represent a sound, if a letter is silent it’s kinda completely pointless, isn’t it? Basically, if a letter is silent, that just means there was no reason to put it there in the first place. Would you pronounce “sience” any different from “science”. So are the silent letters just there for decoration?
“I like ‘nat’ okay and certainly makes it clear how to pronounce it, but it’s just missing something. Don’t you think it would look better if we threw a ‘g’ in front of it for no reason?”
Who are the people who came up with these spellings and what was their problem? Why didn’t someone stop them? I guess there were less literate people back them so you had this elite just going crazy coming up with words and probably constantly smoking opium or something.
The absolute worst offender is the French sound “eaux”. To make an ‘o’ sound, they take almost every single vowel other than ‘o’ and then throw in an ‘x’ for some reason. Why? What would possess someone to do such a thing? It’s like we put sociopaths in charge of coming up with how to spell our words.
I’m not saying we should change all our spellings, but we should at least vow that if we make a time machine we’ll go back and make the people responsible pay. People use these words for important things like business and talking; this isn’t petty vandalism.
You see, English came about because a bunch of Norman soldiers were trying to screw Saxon wenches.
So in other words, you can blame either the Germans or the French.
I would blame the French, their language is full of silent letters.
Marquis for instance is “marky” not “markis”.
Shouldn’t that be sienc if you dropped ALL of the silent letters? Why do you need the ‘e’ at the end? Isn’t it silent?
And what about sound-o-nyms, those words that sound alike but spell themselves differently? Did the same opium smokers come up with boor, bore, boar and Boer? Was there some sort of spelling argument that only ended in compromise? Did things really come to a head when they couldn’t decide whether something right be spelled right, wright, rite or write? Did seamen and semen get different spellings just so they could be the source of endless adolescent humor?
Well, it certainly wasn’t the Germans, Veeshir, as they practically have no silent letters. German is almost phonetically perfect – if you like flem in your throat all the time. Und, you vill like it!
It goes back to our brethren from the past using stupid Hebrew and Greek and then Latin upon which English is loosely based. I studied Latin for 4 years and the only phrase I can remember is Sigum Meum Penum… And I don’t even know what it means anymore but I think it’s feminine!
It’s all done so that English Majors can feel useful. What else would they do if they can’t correct my grammar and absorb the impact of my punches with their bulbous noses? Die lonely virgins, thats what.
Frank, it’s quite probable that all those weird spellings were created by early Liberals. So, really, what you’re advocating is “Death to Liberalism!”
On the other hand, since we have more vowel phenoms than we have vowel letters, why don’t we completely reinvent our alphabet??
Another problem is how people from the East Coast bastardize their pronunciations of so many words… (OK, bring it, East Coasters!)
It’s always bothered me that “phonetically” isn’t spelled phonetically. And that the word “abbreviation” is so blasted long. Can we take care of the people who invented these words, too?
I think Jimmy was referring to my problem with silent letters. Even though I’ve been in Texas for most of the last 40 years, I was born and raised near Boston.
“I used to pahk my cah in the Hahvid Yahd”, etc. A native Texan once explained the difference between a “Yankee” and a “Damn Yankee”:
A Yankee is someone from up North. A Damn Yankee is one who comes down here and stays.
Hehe. I’m still trying to imagine ussjimmycarter speaking Latin. Ut mare nos vadum reverto, ussjimmycarter.
Yeah, Enemy… Boston. I had a Bostonian for an 11th-grade trig teacher. It took a while before we all understood what he meant by “compress.” And of course, this was in the State of “Warshington” back in the 1800’s.
Only Latin I know is “Semper Fidelis.” I kinda associate this with a redneck cousin that used to be in the Marines and snapped and killed a pit bull and a bubba. He shouldn’t have killed the dog. The bubba deserved to die. He was acquitted . Ah, Texas! What a country!
Excuse my rotten grammar. I meant, a redneck cousin who used to be in the Marines. Heck, why would I want to silence letters permanently when I can’t even write on an elementary level? Sigh.
Framk, this post explains so much! Now I understand why you so hate the second, silent “M” in Flemming.
I really like the silent letters, myself. They allow me to explain to others that, for example, “right” is derived from the German “recht”, which is one of the reasons that it’s spelled that way. Other reasons are to distinguish it from the words “rite” and “write”. People usually go away when I start explaining things like that, which makes me happy.
ussjimmycarter, sigum meum penum, whatever it means, is almost certainly not feminine. “um” endings are either neuter (if in the nominative or accusative singular) or masculine (if in the accusative singular), and belong to the second and fourth declensions.
I think “sigum meum penum” is in whatever language Tonto spoke.
You can tell by the “um” ending.
Jimmy, I “learned” German in high school. I forgot all of it, but I still love it.
Zer ist eine hund in sie kitchen essen meine bratwurst!
Jimmy, I did not know you said Warshington out there. Here in PA, I must, by Garsh, do the warsh before I head to the zoo in Warshington DC.
That’s only because of all those nasty immigrants from Boston, Marko. They’ve come fah in their cah in order to pronounce the ‘r’ in Warshington. I’ve never understood it. (btw, I habe Deutch fier un halbe Jahren studiert, aber Ich weiss nichts!!)
I blame good ol’ England for all the weird tongues back there on the East Coast. But not the Irish nor the Scots. and you can’t blame the Welsh because they’re inbred and have six fingers and toes.
I hav alwäz inkúrijd fonétik speling, but hwen wun raits Þis wä, it luks laik a kros betwin Hungärian and Aislandik.
Cis wud koz meihem in ce klasrum.
Just as a point of note, the Norman are decedents of the Norse. Pretty much Vikings who decided that the west of France held enough resources to keep them from needing all that pillaging and plundering.
To state the unpleasant but obvious, “sigum meum penum” sounds like bad pseudo-Latin for “suck my penis”.
Best part? That last word is already real Latin. It’s been double-Latined.
It certainly is the fault of the English, Jimmy. Most of the first settlers here in Central Pennsylvania were the Scotch-Irish, who left Scotland and then Ireland because of the bloody English. Then came the Germanic speakers – Moravians, Swiss, Dutch, but mainly Germans. So, the Germans learned their English from people with Scottish background who spent some time in Ulster.
Disaster – pronunciations of Lancaster as “Lank-uhh-stir” ensued. Thanks, England
I like silent letters, they make the stupid people easier to spot, especially the ones who claim to be really really smart, like what’s his name, the alleged president who’s apparently never heard of the Marine
CorpseCorps.Frank
Don’t mess with the American language!
Burmashave
What about the guy that got a job on a fishing boat. He started out as an apprentice baiter. After 4 years he became a Journeyman Baiter. Then 10 more years and he came to be a (you guessed it) Master Baiter.
Xutup!
Complicating language with archaic unintuitive rules was often done as a way to divide the classes.
Its complicated foolishness blocked those who could not afford the time, cost, and focus on inane trivialities from fitting in with the ruling classes and their useless offspring. A form of class pasteurization if you will.
Ivan, that’s the same guy who drove his car to Alaska and blew a seal…
1-If you remember during the primaries where Obama kept saying “Pakistan” in a stupid way. Or if you watch “How I Met your Mother” the way Barney would say “Nicaragua.” Are great examples of this pretentious exclusionary tactic. Early America largely ignored all over these along with a lot of other games from old Europe used to solidify the classes. So yes you grammar nazis are artifacts from aristocratic euro-weenies in my book.
2-If you are fixing flaws in the Engrish language we have to fix the do-not-dont-do not. Where you cant say do not without saying do. The way the brain processes language and the static interference from modern communications make this a permanent source of unnecessary confusion.
What we need to do is create totally separate words. For “do” we create a word like “Zork” and for “do not” we use “Pang.” Cell phone static is not going to interchange those two words.
3-Remember like an old computer on a dial up connection the human brain, especially the conscious part, has very limited resources. For instance peoples short term memory if you tell them random numbers in a row they can remember between 6-9 numbers and then if you keep giving them more the short term brain starts dumping the memory of the first few to keep up.
In practice the more brain resources that is spent on language and grammar overhead the less that is available to create something interesting, funny, or useful in immediate conversation.
http://www.lemondrop.com/2010/08/06/twelve-words-you-didnt-know-youre-mispronouncing/
Arugula didn’t make their list? Huh?
Queue is the worst. 5 letters to spell what could be done as cue or even better just Q. Why use 5 when 1 makes the same sound. So I intentionally mis-pronounce queue, if you want me to say it correctly spell it Q.
I’ve been out of the IMAO loop for a while. In honor of this fantabulous post, I shall try to explain why using ONLY silent letters.
You see,
…..Hope that explains it.
“Eaux” is actually a double offender, because in addition to using three vowels to make one sound, the ‘x’ is silent. The word would be pronounced exactly the same way without it (but would be singular instead of plural). Supposedly this developed in medieval French as a digraph of the ending ‘-us’ (the pluralization of words ending in ‘u’).
Words have silent letters for the same reason humans have junk DNA – to give nerds something to do.
Frank J, were you not present at the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy meeting a few years back when we decided to fill the language with silent letters in order to oppress the Hispanics? I thought all of us were in on it.
I’m afraid that your first example – science – is a bad one. Spelling it ‘sience’ (or ‘sienc’ as a later commenter suggested) leaves the pronounciation uncertain… Is it pronounced ‘sci-ence’ or ‘seens’? Personally I don’t know why it isn’t spelt psyence or why psychology isn’t spelt ‘scichology’…
iym going too hav too goe with ‘syenns’ or ‘syence’. Thu rools like ‘ce’ mayks an ‘s’ sound don’t bother me too much. In fact, eeven the rool ubout 2 vaowls seperayted by a consoenent caus thu first vowwel too pro-nouns its naem seem OK as long as it’s aplied consistently. So thu word ‘rule’ would bee OK insted uv ‘rool’, but ‘vowel’ shuld bee spelld ‘vaowl’ insted uv being an exepchun too thu rool.
After unsuccessfully attempting to write that last entry phonetically I’m going to have to agree with whomever said our alphabet is missing vowels. Why can’t we have 40 letters? Would that be too much? Frank-ly, I think our children would learn to write much more quickly with more letters and less rules, and exceptions to those rules, which change the sound of certain letters based upon context. If every letter had one, and only one, sound, we could spend more time teaching kids how to properly form sentences and less time on spelling. Spelling Bees woud be a thing of the past, and I’d get less incoherent emails from my software developer peers who were raised in India.
Agrede.
EuroEnglish
The European Union commissioners have announced that agreement has been reached to adopt English as the preferred language for European communications, rather than German, which was the other possibility.
In negotiations, certain compromises had to be made. For instance, Her Majesty’s Government has conceded that there is some room for improvement in English language spelling and has accepted a five-year phased plan for what will certainly be known as EuroEnglish (Euro for short). In the first year, “s” will be used instead of the soft “c”. Sertainly, sivil servants will resieve this news with joy. Also, the hard “c” will be replaced with “k.” Not only will this klear up konfusion, but typwriters kan have one less letter.
There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome “ph” will be replaced by “f.” This will make words like “fotograf” 20 per sent shorter.
In the third year, publik akseptans on the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkorage the removal of double letters, which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of silent “e’s” in the language is disgrasful, and the would go.
By the fourth year, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing the “th” by “z,” and “w” by “v.” During ze fifz year, ze unesesary “o” kan be droped from vords kontaining “ou,” and similar changes vud of kors, be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.
After zi fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubls or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech ozer.
Ze drem vil finali kum tru.
There you go, Frank. Spellings that make sense. I did not come up with this on my own. Got it from funnycleanjokes.com