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obviouspornalt@lemmynsfw.com ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

Fucking French. ‘we’re never, ever going to say this ‘h’ character, but you still need it to spell words correctly because fuck you, that’s why.’

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Deconceptualist@lemm.ee ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
English isn’t exactly innocent there. See knight, plumber, mnemonic, pterodactyl.

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- weker01@sh.itjust.works ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Well those are words descendent from Latin and Greek.
  
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  - Deconceptualist@lemm.ee ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Yeah but the spelling ‘normally’ would have been updated to match English pronunciation. That’s what happens in most languages. As I understand there were two issues:
    
    Some dictionary writers (ca. late 1400s IIRC) wanted spellings that seemed fancier like French and Latin, which is why e.g. the silent B in plumber was added ‘artificially’.
    
    The printing press was invented right in the middle of the Great Vowel Shift so old spellings got “locked in” even though spoken English continued to change significantly for a long time afterward.
    
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