English spelling seems so irregular because it preserves history instead of matching sound. Early on, this Germanic tongue absorbed Norse and French influences from invaders, and in the late 1400s, printing helped standardize early spellings just before pronunciation shifted dramatically in the Great Vowel Shift. Vowels changed; spellings tended not to. The result is a mismatch between what is seen and said. In addition, unlike some other languages, English lacks a central language academy to impose reform, and pronunciation varies widely across regions. Gabe Henry recounts the long history of attempts to simplify English spelling in Enough is Enuf: Our Failed Attempts to Make English Easier to Spell (Bookshop|Amazon). This is part of a complete episode.
In English, you can express skepticism with the classic saying when pigs fly. In Tagalog, a similar sentiment is expressed with a phrase that translates “when the crow turns white, when the heron turns black,” and there’s a Hungarian phrase that...
Dax in Santa Cruz, California, wonders: Now that we’re into the 21st century, when will people stop saying that initial 20 when referring to a year such as 2028 the way we dropped the 19 in the term 1980s and just started referring to the ’80s? This...
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