Why Is The English Language Stupid?

[Seil]

Seriously, why do we have silent letters and words that change the context of a sentence that look exactly the same?

Today, I saw "daughter" as I had written it on the page. I knew that was how it was spelled. I just... I guess "noticed" the 'g' there. Why is there a 'g' in daughter? Or "through?"

Also, a year or two ago I read the sentence "The soldier wound the bandage around his wound." in a Reader's Digest as an example of how tricky English is to learn, and I thought "Why? Why have a word look exactly the same as another but have completely different meanings?"

[Loyal]

I figured it's because English is basically a mishmash of every other Romantic language on earth and probably has trace amounts of various other languages as well.

[bluestarultor]

English is a hodgepodge of pretty much every language on Earth to some extent. Most other languages only incorporate bits from other languages in their vicinity, so regional French dialects pull from things like Spanish and Italian based on proximity. English, on the other hand, already started out as a mutt. Originally, it was basically half German and half French and used as a pidgin language until it eventually grew. It kinda went downhill from there.

[Meister]

Wish I'd stuck with English longer than I did, then I'd likely know an actual academical answer. As it is I can only make an educated guess that careful planning isn't a very big element of the natural development of communication, and also that anglophone speakers aren't much for phonetic spelling.

The Wikipedia article on English orthography seems to be a good read, though: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_orthography

Also, there's an old phonetic parlor trick often attributed to George Bernard Shaw that consist of letting people guess how the word "ghoti" is pronounced.

"Fish." gh as in tough, o as in women, ti as in nation.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

While we could discuss the "textbook" answer- which it is the results of mishmashing of language (though American spelling was part of a dedicated effort based on linking english to alchemical truths) the real answer is we want to show how much smarter than foreigners we are.

[bluestarultor]

Originally Posted by Meister

"Fish." gh as in tough, o as in women, ti as in nation.

While that's certainly an interesting take on it (seriously, that's pretty awesome XD), it totally ignores the exclusive placement of phonemes.

On phonemes, this is a pretty interesting read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoneme

[Meister]

Of course, that's the point!

Phonetics is a very interesting subject. Probably the one I still know most about.

[A Zarkin' Frood]

The Chaos
Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.
Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it's written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.
Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.
Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation's OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.
Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.
Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.
Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.
Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.
Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.
Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.
Pronunciation (think of Psyche!)
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won't it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It's a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.
Finally, which rhymes with enough,
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!

I like how several of that poem's rhymes come from the mispronunciation of french words. Something the average english speaker pronounces as "ay".

[krogothwolf]

I always thought it was because they enjoyed making English class as horrible as possible. And to make little boys ask questions.

But yeah it's pretty much because the English language is giant train wreck of languages and somewhere along the line people got lazy.

[Lyaer]

From what I understand, it is a Germanic language with a pretty heavy French influence. That might help explain some of the irregularities in spelling and pronunciation, since your joining different families, and French especially seems to have a pretty convoluted spelling system (though I have heard it is pretty logical once you understand it). British empire probably subjected itself to an above average number of sources for loanwords, too. And you have the old elites' obsession with Greek and especially Latin. My anthro professor also told me that English is more flexible than a lot of other languages (probably related to above?), which will also lead to irregularities.

But the fact is, this sort of stuff happens in every language. I was taking Japanese a while back, which phonetically is a lot more uniform than English, but there are words like "haku" for instance. I think that's the one. I think it means both "bridge" and also "box" or something (different kanji). Might be off. But I remember that the two meanings have slightly different pronunciations that are in no way indicated by their phonetic spellings. Also things like the "ha" particle pronounced "wa" and all that. It's because you have a lot of different people in different communities making up words, borrowing them from other languages, developing their own abbreviations, linguistic styles, et cetera. Even if you start with a perfect language invented by computers, it is going change over time, and as it does, it will inevitably lose some degree of internal consistency.

EDIT: Oh gees that's a lot of preemptions. There were no replies when I started.