Just need to vent...

English is one of the most complicated languages, and often makes no sense.
I was recently thinking about how we pronounce: bowl, bowel, cowl, dowel, fowl, foul, howl, jowl, towel, vowel.

 

English pronunciation is one of the most difficult, that's for sure.

First, we write with 5 vowels, but then add another double-o as a vowel, then give those 6 vowels long and short versions, which isn't actually all their versions, and then sometimes they are pronounced and sometimes not.

Spanish: 5 vowels: a, e, i or y, o, and u
Italian: 6 vowels: a, e, i, long-o, short-o, u
English: +13 vowels: ā, ă, ē, ĕ, ī, ĭ, ō, ŏ, ū, ŭ, ōo, ŏo, ə, and sometimes why.

 

It's what happens when a language is made from smashing several other languages together.

 

Don't forget 'ghoti', which should be pronounced 'fish'. Doesn't break any English pronunciation rules.

 

Not really. Spanish is Latin plus Greek plus German plus Arabic, and on our continent, a lot of Aztec smashed into it, and it still only has 5 vowels.

 

Took Greek in school. It's still all Greek To Me

 

'Misled' was one of the favorite miscues of a fifth-grade teacher I used to go out with; she said most of her students would pass through 'MIZZeld' at first and that showed her everything was going right, because that's a totally plausible pronunciation based on the way it's written.

You know it's miss-LED as soon as you recognize it's 'led' with prefix mis- but that comes when you've learned the word's morphology, which is another thing to learn.

 

typo.

 

Years ago, we got a cute little chihuahua puppy. I've always liked the golfer Chi-Chi Rodriquez and my Aunt used to have a chihuahua named Chi-Chi so suggested it as a name to my wife and daughters and they loved it....named him Chi-Chi!

A few years later, my daughter brought over a school friend who was Hispanic and spoke Spanish at home. Her eyes got real big when we told her the dog barking at her was named Chi-Chi. She took my daughter aside and asked if we knew what "Chi-Chis" means in Spanish....we did not so you can look it up, yourself.....big OOPS! (No, we never changed his name.)

 

My bad. MIZZəld.

 

Can a doctor have patients but no patience?

 

Spanish still has gendered words. As does German, which English developed from an early form of. Meanwhile, English doesn't have gendered words. They got loss with all the influences on it.

Since it started with a germanic language, that is where English is placed. It, however, saw more influence from romance/latin languages than other languages in its assigned group. English was likely seen as a pidgin language for part of its history. There was much invading of the island; Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, and Normans.

History of English - Wikipedia It is..complicated compared to the likes of Spanish.

 

Spanish was also invaded by Germanic speaking tribes and then occupied for quite some time by an Arabic speaking nation until they were driven out, much like England was occupied by the French.

Still, there are a lot of things that who knows why they affected the language that much. English, for an example, went through the Great Vowel Shift that nobody knows for sure why it happened.

Great Vowel Shift - Wikipedia

I think one of the greatest reasons why English has so many sounds and pronunciations is that the spelling was never kept up to date. In Spanish, and especially in Italian, the spelling was altered as pronunciation changed, by an official group. But, while allowing for pronunciation changes, has at the same time made more people stick to a standardized pronunciation for the most part. So, when the F was dropped from many words in Spanish they substituted it with a silent H. So, while some people still say "fierro" instead of "hierro," the spelling definitely has influenced the great majority to accept "hierro" as the correct spelling and pronunciation. Only in certain circumstances has there been enough pushback that the RAE eventually allowed certain words to be "misspelled" or "mispronounced." Take, for an example, "México" and "mexicano" that the RAE refused to accept for years saying that they should be spelled "Méjico" and "mejicano" respectively, since the original pronunciation of "México" (May-she-co) was changed. But due to patriotic reasons, Mexicans never accepted the RAE's spelling and eventually the RAE gave in.

interestingly, for the most part, when regional variations of Spanish have different pronunciations, they usually have the same pronunciation changes for the same written letters. A few examples are: pronouncing the C and Z as and S instead of a "th". Pronouncing y-vowel, i-vowel and ll-vowel as "J" or "Sh". Pronouncing V like the English V instead of like Spanish B. Pronouncing the S after a vowel like a soft English H. Pronouncing the R as an L or RR like the French rolled R. Ch pronounced like "Sh". The spelling is exactly the same: you just change the pronunciation of each of those letters for the same exact pronunciation in all words. The only places that seem to be more like English are certain parts of Northern South America where they will tend to switch the P, T and "K" sounds randomly per word (opción sounds like okción, apocalipsis sounds like apocalitsis, etc.).

English, on the other hand, is kind of like Chinese in that the letters don't have much to do with the pronunciation. There was some spelling reform by people like Webster, like dropping the u in words like "flavour" and "colour." But those were more for nationalist reasons instead of trying to bring pronunciation and spelling together in perfect harmony.