Comment on What's the weirdest thing in english?
luthis@lemmy.nz 6 days ago
I vote for standardisation. So it’s ‘wierd.’ I before e. It’s more Germanic that way too. Food, moon, and good all pronounced the same way. Etc
The wierdest thing? That it’s used in so many places instead of good, solid, consistent Latin
zikzak025@lemmy.world 6 days ago
English was screwed by the advent of the printing press.
From the beginning of the renaissance up to the 1700’s, English underwent a vowel shift which saw a lot of words change pronunciation. When the printing press arrived in England in the late 1400’s, there was a push to set standard spelling. But because the printing press arrived while the vowel shift was still ongoing, the new pronunciation of some words was revised with updated spelling (consistent with other words at the time) but other words would receive new pronunciations after their spelling was already set in stone.
If a language undergoes a vowel shift after its spelling is standardized, the phonetic rules remain mostly intact because they will trend towards changing consistently. If a language completes a vowel shift before its spelling is standardized, then the new spelling will just reflect its current phonetics. English was unlucky enough to be locked in time during its blunder years.