Actually, silent 'B' and 'K' were added to many words to make them score more in Scrabble . Similarly, we need to add silent Q to words, so 'back' becomes 'bacque'

@dragonusmolamola4140

Жыл бұрын

more points in scrabble is the only reason i will accept for lots of silent letters

@cjmacq-vg8um

Жыл бұрын

i did it with my name. its not spelled "mack" but "macq." and, no, the "q" isn't silent. the q in macq is no more silent than the k in mack.

@tonynorris9139

Жыл бұрын

Utter Bollocks, or should that be Bollox?

@milanstevic8424

Жыл бұрын

@@cjmacq-vg8um how about mackqueauxeaur for a gigantic solemn silence after your name, one that would make any typesetter shudder?

@cjmacq-vg8um

Жыл бұрын

@@milanstevic8424 ... it would make my brain shudder too. you have it written with a "k" and a "q." a little redundant i'm afraid. thanks but i think i'll stick with my spelling. a lot of people use the word "mac" or "mack." i'm the only one to spell it "macq."

As a non-native speaker, I often do pronounce those silent letters by accident, wrongly assuming other people not doing so could perhaps be a dialectal variation, later to realise that it's just how the English language works. Most other languages have a stronger connection between phonetics and orthography. English has way too many arbitrary rules like "add this silent letter to look more fancy/Latin-like".

@aylen7062

Жыл бұрын

@Lucky Joestar Yes, great意思，但是also该有多大weird 办法s，也 a mix的both。这样，你就该学limited汉字s也latin字s。 /s

@I_Have_The_Most_Japanese_Music

Жыл бұрын

English is fucked up; I blame French most of the time.

@carultch

Жыл бұрын

@Lucky Joestar Is Romanji at least used in a consistent way of representing the Japanese language?

@Leo-uu8du

Жыл бұрын

Also German had such a fancy period. E.g. the y in Bayern (Bavaria) and Meyer (Surname) is purely aesthetic, while in Steyr (City in Austria) it is from actual Latin "Styria" via "Styra". In German there is also the 'ie' which represents the long 'i' (English 'ee') with the intention of looking like the Alemannic-Bavarian/Middle High German 'ie/ia' diphthong and hence forcing a continuation from Middle High German that doesn't exist. E.g. compare Bavarian 'Liacht', "i siach", "Schmid", "(P)fluign" and "khriacha", to German "Licht", "ich sehe", "Schmied", "Fliege" and "kriechen" ("light" , "I see" , "fly" and "crouching/creeping"). And then there is the thing with the v, which can either be pronouced like f in Germanic words or like w (English v) in words of Latin and Greek origin.

@danielantony1882

Жыл бұрын

@Lucky Joestar Except the different readings change the meaning and are solely there for that reason and also poetry. Well, not that you would get it.

I'm French and studied linguistic in university and we learned that the same thing happened to the French language! In the middle ages words were spelled like they were pronounced so for example "longtemps" (a long time) was spelled lontan. BUT then the Renaissance happened and with it a revival of interest for ancient Rome and Latin in Italy, which increased the soft power of Italy making the Italian language, culture and lifestyle very popular in France (apparently young nobles added Italian words to their sentences to sound cool the same way nowadays young people of non English speaking countries add English words to their speech). And French scholars saw this rise of Italian culture and that trend of going back to ancient roots and thought oh let's do that too with the French language! So the French Renaissance started and they went back to Latin and did exactly what you said in this video. Like, they realised that words like "lontan" came from Longus Tempus and they thought "oh we must show off the Latin roots so let's write it longtemps but we say that the g, p and s are silent so that people can continue to pronounce it as usual." But they didn't stop there, they thought "Italians went back to Latin roots, we're gonna do even better! We're gonna go back further in time to ancient Greek! And how did the Greeks spell the sound f ? they wrote ph ! So now when you need to buy medication you don't go to the farmacie, you go to the PHARMACIE !! You don't study filosofie, you study PHILOSOPHIE !! Take that Italians!!!" And that's just a few example of all the spelling changes that were done to the French language. And that's why nowadays French is written so weirdly and everyone who tries to learn French has a mental breakdown trying to figure out the pronunciation of everything.

@reachandler3655

Жыл бұрын

I wondered why so many words with a 'f' sound were spelt with 'ph'. We have this problem in English too.

@bkdarkness

Жыл бұрын

French is still much easier to read than English. Yes there are silent consonants in some words (almost always terminating consonants without following vowels), but at least vowel sounds are consistent unlike in English.

@Cloudipy

Жыл бұрын

@@bkdarkness that's interesting, where are you from?

@bkdarkness

Жыл бұрын

@@Cloudipy canada

@wd1534

Жыл бұрын

@@bkdarkness if you are a native French speaker, yes. But if you learn French as a second language and you are for example Chinese or Japanese and you discover that E + A + U is pronounced "O".... 😂😅

Thank you for this. As a non native English speaker I have struggled all my life with spoken as well as written forms of English. The word "Debt" is a triggering one for me as my English teacher had mocked, ridiculed and severely punished me in front of the whole class for pronouncing it wrong.. of course with the cute little "B". The 14 year old non English speaking me was traumatised, but gladly I never ended up hating the English language, literature or culture.

@louisavondart9178

Жыл бұрын

Most teachers are useless academics who couldn't get a real job. They know this and take their envy and self loathing out on their pupils.

@asdf3568

Жыл бұрын

That's messed up

@RyanHellyer

Жыл бұрын

Sounds like you had a really crappy teacher. But without a doutte, your English looks perfect now 😀

@DiggyPT

10 ай бұрын

your english teacher should be fired

@Seth9809

8 ай бұрын

I was born speaking English and many of us almost pronounce the b, just the tiniest bit. We also have "debit cards" not Debt cards.

I lay 100% of the blame at the feet of the group of dictionary writers in the 1800s who standardized spelling and could have gone with whichever spelling they wanted, but chose these spellings. Until that point, spelling was not standardized and you could spell thing in various ways, some more phonetic than others.

@penismightier4303

Жыл бұрын

Yew kan stil spelle werds houeva yew lyke. Thair arrarnt enny grammer puhleece wot iz gonna giv mee ah fyne forr speling mye werds lyke thiss. Norr eeven stopp mee frum dooing itt weareva ande wenneva iye pleez.

@SeattlePioneer

Жыл бұрын

> Mark Twain opined that it was a frightfully uncreative person who couldn't imagine more than one way to spell a word.

@searose6192

Жыл бұрын

@@SeattlePioneer It does make you wonder why a few of the most common spellings couldn’t be included in the early modern dictionaries. It would have semi standardized spelling while still allowing some flexibility.

@emerson-biggons7078

Жыл бұрын

The fact 'Though' had been systematically re-spelt as 'Tho' gives me hope that eventually we will correct the unnecessarily stupid way of spelling things in time.

@emerson-biggons7078

Жыл бұрын

@@penismightier4303 the one time being Dyslexic made reading no harder for me than anyone else

"Salmon" is another one. It comes through Latin "salmo," meaning to leap, but by the time it got to English through French it was saumon or samon. Latin scholars put the L back. Oddly, the L is pronounced in "Salmonella" which is named after someone named Salmon. I have no idea if he pronounced the L in his name.

@danyboy86

Жыл бұрын

So the L in "salmon" is silent?

@coloursoftherainbow8399

Жыл бұрын

@@danyboy86 yes

@danyboy86

Жыл бұрын

@Prof. Spudd And is the L in "Solomon" silent as well? Serious question. This is quite hard for us non native english speakers, caus we think we are pronouncing right, but we generaly learn only from reading or listening to other non native english speakers.

@deewesthill1213

Жыл бұрын

Even though I know it's "incorrect", from earliest childhood i have always chosen to pronounce the "l" in "salmon", just because to me it sounds so much more elegant than "sammun". I also pronounce the "l" in "alms", "balm", "calm", "palm", and "psalm" because they sound better than "omz", "bomb", "cahm", "pom", and "sahm".

@davidjacobs8558

Жыл бұрын

why Brits pronounce L in Solder, but not Americans ?

Let's just admire the fact that there were English scholars who thought that French derived words needed *more* silent letters

You somehow manage to make these linguistic topics, that would normally be interesting to a specific group of people, so interesting and appealing for all! Well done! Really nice work and presentation!

The s in island had a disastrous consequence for me once. As a pupil in Germany, during a written exam in English, I confused insula in peninsula with island, without noticing, what I had written. The teacher was very happy to share the result with the whole class … .

@DoodleDoo

Жыл бұрын

I don't know which leader/dictator will have the balls to simplify languages and make them great again. German for one needs massive reformation. As a German, I can say many of our words are too long, difficult to pronounce and full of grammar nonsense like three the's (die, der, das) and noun genders.

@RallenCaptura

Жыл бұрын

@@DoodleDoo Grammatically yes, German needs some form of simplification because all I know about building sentences I learned from hearing my parents talk as a wee lad and not because of my extensive knowledge about the different cases and whatnot. In my eyes, pronounciation is a completely different thing and I have to hard disagree with you there. The problem isnt that German is hard to pronounce, it's actually super straight forward with the exception of a few words and words we borrowed from other languages. What's getting in the way of proper pronounciation when learning German are often the little rules, like silent letters, other languages have when it comes to that part of speaking a language. We barely have any of those rules, there are some, yes, but they don't get as much in the way when learning how other languages are pronounced as much as it does the opposite way. Hence why the French have comparatively much more trouble with pronouncing other languages, even other Roman languages. That's a more extreme example but the same goes for most other languages too. Obviously the German accent is a thing and many people keep it despite their extensive knowledge in other languages but statistically it is much more likely that we understand how a word is supposed to be pronounced in English or Spanish even if actually saying it might be a bit rough at times.

@DoodleDoo

Жыл бұрын

@@RallenCaptura I don't care how hard you disagree because most Germans I talked to also agreed that German is unnecessarily complicated and needs to be simplified like English.

@valeriy8502

Жыл бұрын

😂

@uwu_abhi

Жыл бұрын

What a dick move

The rule of "don't end a sentence with a preposition" also comes from scholars of that time. One day, a scholar sat down and suddenly thought 'Wait, Latin doesn't end sentences with a prepositions while English does. But Latin is the superior language, so English shouldn't.' It sounds absurd but it's true.

@mquietsch6736

Жыл бұрын

@@erictrombini8519 Wait a moment, you could say something like "vado scholam ad"? I mean, a preposition is put (position) in front (pre) of the noun, so how could you have a legitimate sentence ending in an preposition? Could you give a real-world example?

@Anonymous-df8it

Жыл бұрын

Oh, so that's where the rule came *_from!_*

@E4439Qv5

Жыл бұрын

I say we throw them out.

@meisterpatch849

Жыл бұрын

@@erictrombini8519 Case and declension are one thing, but frankly there are (were) too many forms of Latin on which to base controlling, authoritative rules -- particularly with regard to syntax, word forms and grammar -- so the scholars who assert the superiority of a particular approach need to explain why and how the period and register they've selected as "superior" establishes the proper grammatical form. Otherwise, I consider them suspect.

@meisterpatch849

Жыл бұрын

Yet IMO it's still always wrong to end a sentence in Latin with a preposition.

One of my brothers used to work in tech support, and tried to make a list of unhelpful letter enunciation aids, like "G as in gnome", "T as in tsunami", "K as in knight", or my favorite: "E as in eye". Scary that the English language is so helpful with this type of mischief.

@paper2222

Ай бұрын

to be fair, the t in tsunami was a result of directly loaning "tsunami" from japanese, in which, japanese people do indeed pronounce the t in tsunami

Came here from search after some comments on DW. Learned something new. Subscribed! 💚 You have a great comments section, as well! 🍀✌️😎

As a Thai, this is somewhat similar to how we anglicize names to English in ways that would preserve the words' Sanskrit roots. A prime example would be Suvarnabhumi Airport. It's pronounced "Suwannapoom" but written (both in Thai and English orthography) in a way that reflects its etymological roots. Addendum: Now that I think more of it, even the way we write a lot of proper nouns in Thai is very Sanskrit-influenced as well. Thai words have a ton of orthographic oddities and silent letters and we are just used to them.

@Nabium

Жыл бұрын

Yeah I was thinking about this as well while watching the video. It's very similar to Thai.

@rais1953

Жыл бұрын

I found that when I was living in Thailand for two years, especially in place names. "Nakhon Si Thammarat" represents Sanskrit "Nagar Sri Dharma Raja" and the Thai spelling is closer to the Sanskrit than to the Thai pronunciation.

@clarencewatson8366

Жыл бұрын

Thai spelling can be difficult to learn for a native English speaker ;-) I have read that the Thais are proud of the Sanskrit roots of much of the language, so that certain letters of Sanskrit origin are left in, although phonemically they are redundant.

@anujmchitale

Жыл бұрын

As an Indian able to speak Hindi and Marathi, we would pronounce Suvarnabhumi as - (soo-were-na-bhoo-me) "land of gold", "Golden land" would be the rough translation.

@77thTrombone

Жыл бұрын

Poor Thai people. Native English speakers feel your pain.

This was a big part of my childhood. I loved math and science because those made logical sense. I hated language classes because none of my teachers were able to explain why these stupid things are done.

@tazika2988

Жыл бұрын

@ColonelRuiz These things are not stupid, but your teachers were. Or: more ignorant then stupid. If they would just tell you that English language is Latin that's lazily pronounced, would it help? They could also add the fact that you can understand all European languages: Roman, German & Slav once you know Latin (or English spelling) - well, except Hungarian and Finnish. They could open window of understanding so many languages to kids, but they didn't. I really wonder WHY?

@2m7b5

Жыл бұрын

Yeah English is a mess. It's such an inefficient language.

@searose6192

Жыл бұрын

@@2m7b5 I am not sure I would describe it as inefficient, however the unique part about English is that it has the ability to describe nearly everything with incredible finesse and specificity. Add to that, that whenever there is some other language that has a useful word English absorbs it. Language is a creation of the culture it comes from and it reflects the culture that uses it. The English were curious, creative metaphorical and yet rational thinkers with a penchant for exploration and colonization. The English language is the same. Does it suffer in efficiency in comparison to a language that is very blunt and simplistic? Yes! But it gain a lot with those inefficiencies.

@PavelSayekat

Жыл бұрын

@@tazika2988 It's like bringing back the dead and turn it to a zombie!

@eugenec7130

Жыл бұрын

If native English speakers find it irritable to have a language which is not based on logic and reasoning, then what more it is to the non-natives. I have learned Chinese. Contrary to what many English speakers are saying, I find that Chinese is much more logical and easier to learn.

I actually like these silent ‘B’s and ‘K’s etc. it adds a charming and sophisticated character to the English language. Compare it to Spanish, a language with no quirks, where all words are pronounced how they’re spelt, and everything is bog -standard. It’s so dull compared to English.

They did it in France, too. The Latin word for twenty was viginti. In Old French, it was vint. French scholars made it vingt for much the same reason as English scholars perpetrated the annoyances that are the bane of every English learner.

@julienf2301

Жыл бұрын

A famous example is also "sçavoir" as an early modern spelling of savoir (to know). But this was eventually rolled back and we only remember that as a joke: those people thought that savoir came from scio/scire while it actually came from sapio/sapere, which obviously has no "c" (the etymology is pretty clear if you just have a look at the Spanish/Portuguese/Catalan and then the Italian form, with Occitan seating indecise in the middle).

@keedt

Жыл бұрын

same with 'doigt (DWAH): finger' which was spelt just 'doi', but then the extra letters were added to make it look more like digitus, the Latin word for finger.

@julienf2301

Жыл бұрын

@@keedt At least the 't' is somewhat useful, and used to be pronounced in some dialects (for 'vingt' it is even still pronounced in some northern varieties of modern French). It's the 'g' which makes no sense: it disappeared between classical Latin and low Latin, so that no Romance language have it, not even Sardinian.

@keedt

Жыл бұрын

@@julienf2301 don't forget about Romanian.😉 Un deget. Addendum: the 't' in 'vingt-et-un' or in 'vingt élèves' is pronounced everywhere, is it not? Liaisons which make the 't' of doigt appear don't exist as far as I can tell (in standard French).

@julienf2301

Жыл бұрын

@@keedt Ahah, you got me, I forgot one Romance language. But that's the weird kid of the family. Regarding the "liaisons": indeed you're right again, the silent 't' often makes a comeback in the liaison, although I'm not fully sure whether I would naturally say "vin-T-élèves" or "vin-Z-élèves". For doigt, I had to scratch my head to search for examples and eventually I found one where the t preceedes a vowel. In the expression "au doigt et à l'oeil", no one would never make a liaison with a pronounced t, it would just sound weird. Where the t of doigt is more useful is in derived words such as in "avoir du doigté".

I'm an English teacher out in Vietnam and my students always ask me why we have so many silent letters in our words so this series is superb.

@rais1953

Жыл бұрын

If you teach in Thailand they won't ask that question. Thai spelling is full of silent letters especially in loan words of Sanskrit origin. A hint from a former fellow teacher: Thai, like Vietnamese, is tonal. My Thai students tended to get the stressed syllables wrong in English because they were unfamiliar with the idea of stressed syllables coming from a language that is mainly monosyllabic. But I noticed that some of their tones resembled (to me) English stresses so I asked them, as an experiment, to listen for Thai tones in polysyllabic English words. They did, and it helped them to get the syllable stresses right.

@georgetsokanis3542

Жыл бұрын

Why can't you hear a pterodactyl urinate?. Because it's P is silent. Kid joke

Great - a lovely video which I can use with my English language students, who find this bewildering. Understanding why something is the case makes it easier to remember. The graphics, illustrations, and the fact he speaks very clearly means that it is accessible even to B2 level, maybe even B1 students could handle this. Also the length of the video - not too long for in-class use. Perfect.

These videos are so helpful for my Dyslexic students who often express their frustration with English spelling. Great videos !

I found this video very interesting. and sent it on to my English-teacher mother. She liked it too, but replied that the examples in the videos do have related words where the so-called silent letters are pronounced. Receipt - Reception, Doubt - Dubious. Another example not in this video is Bomb - Bombard. Maybe the letters were added to make morphological families more obvious?

@thatLukeKneller

Жыл бұрын

Well it depends on the root. If English started using it from French rather than directly from Latin... etc

@gunarsmiezis9321

Жыл бұрын

This is nonsense, we latvieši dont add any silent letters to show that audzināt (raise) comes from the root augt (grow) and yet we all know it does.

@suprememasteroftheuniverse

Жыл бұрын

Gunars, your entire existence is nonsense.

@suprememasteroftheuniverse

Жыл бұрын

The ignorance in all Rob's videos were not so blatant like in this video and certainly it's not a bliss.

@LunizIsGlacey

Жыл бұрын

That was indeed the case for phlegm. The silent “g” there makes the sudden appearance in “phlegmatic” to be less … weird and confusing and arbitrary-seeming. Although, many people now pronounce phlegmatic without the g anyway though…

Watching this video I now fully appreciate the DUMB LUCK we had in the Croatian language, which was unfortunately castrated in the 1830's by a fellow named Ljudevit Gaj. He decided to undertake a language reform (to counter Hungarian becoming official after Latin stopped being so) and had chosen one particular form of Croatian, namely Shtokavian, as a basis. In doing this he ignored the other two main forms actually spoken by the majority, namely Chakavian and Kaikavian, and they are now not used in any media or schooling, thus rendered into "local old people accents". One might think, well yes, we had to choose one so even if any of the other two had gotten chosen the same would happen bu now to Shtokavian. The problem though was also that the same fellow Gaj was not a native Croatian speaker at all! In his home they spoke GERMAN, only his mother used Kaikavian (!) talking to the household staff or neighbours... Gaj himself was a very vain man that constantly tried to prove his "nobility" and failing to do so decided to reform the language. The problem was, he was a bad law student and had absolutely no linguistic education. Did that deter him? Of course it didn't as he was vain as a peacock, writing the proposed reform in ONE year of "linguistic" study! What then happened is that, since Shtokavian is much much closer to Serbian than either Kaikavian or Chakavian were, the Prince of Serbia Milan Obrenović saw a great opportunity to put a wedge between Croats and Hungarians/Germans binding them to Serbs, and invested a lot of money to Gaj's project, his printing press. Thus, with funds galore and his printing press on, Gaj managed to persuade the blind Croatian nobility and quasi intellectuals that Shtokavian is Croat and Croat is Shtokavian. He even invented an "Illyrian" root as a common south Slavic root, calling the people that identified themselves "Croat" as actually Magyars! You might think now where is that dumb luck I mentioned? All this above seems pretty bad... Well, one thing that he did correctly (sic?) is that he accepted the main rule of spelling as you pronounce (which the Serbs used too, only in Cyrillic) and THAT is the sheer dumb luck that makes writing in Croatian easy as a pie (although the language itself is very hard to master). BTW the Serbian language reformer Vuk Stefanović Karadžić also used the "write as you speak" rule, but he was NOT a friend of Prince Milan at all...

@RobWords

Жыл бұрын

A fascinating read, thank you!

@elainechubb971

Жыл бұрын

How very interesting. Similar things have happened in other countries where the language of one region became the standard. In England, the southern Middle English spoken in the triangle of London (capital) and Oxford and Cambridge (universities) became the standard. In France, Parisian French did, with northern French (the language of "oui" for "yes") prevailing. The southern French language of "oc" for "yes," which actually gave the name of the area, Languedoc, lost out, as did the separate Provencal language. I read a post just a few days ago on a site with a number of Scandinavians commenting, that said a particular dialect of western Norway was chosen for the standard when the country finally gained its independence. But I think in most cases this was either a consensus decision or just an evolution, not the decision of one guy with an inflated ego!

@z000ey

Жыл бұрын

@@elainechubb971 well it was a "consensus" decision as a final decision, but that one guy's work tilted the scale towards Shtokavian so heavily that it stuck. This is the distribution of the 3 dialects now: hr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kajkavsko_narje%C4%8Dje#/media/Datoteka:Croatian_dialects.PNG Bosnia (the white empty space in the middle) is wholly Shtokavian thus green not white ;) and this was at the start of 16th century, before the migrations: hr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kajkavsko_narje%C4%8Dje#/media/Datoteka:Loncaric_historical_borders_of_kaikavian_dialect.png

@z000ey

Жыл бұрын

@@RobWords you're welcome! Thank you for the awesome channel!

@z000ey

Жыл бұрын

@@RobWords funny thing is that at present times you often come up to discussions about the very existence of the Croatian language. Usually it is Croats/Montenegrins/Bosniaks claiming they have an original language, and Serbs claiming it is all Serbian language (or Serbo-Croatian as it used to be called during Yugoslavia). The discussion doesn't even care about linguistic issues, it becomes a political issue right on. I, as a Croat, actually am in a minority among Croatians when I do admit we do not have a Croat language any more, since we "merged" it into the Serbo-Croatian and managed to render our original specific language dialects (which are much more different than Serbian, bordering unintelligible) quite close to extinct. In a generation or max two there shall (very unfortunately) be no more native speakers of these dialects if we continue this way.

It's interesting how the silent letters have this history. My focus is currently on the Korean language. The pronunciation of Hangul is a challenge for anyone trying to learn, but the Hangul pronunciation is generally more consistent than English especially when it comes to silent letters.

Amazing! I really thought that at some point of time these silent letters were actually pronounced !! For example Carlisle, which is same as Carlyle but is tricky to pronounce unless you already know how to say it.

It may be interesting to note that the S in isle, in a way, is still there in French. French dropped quite some S's back in the day and replaced them with accents circonflexe (those little hoods on a vowel). So estre became "être" and isle became "île". Same for côte, forêt, hôpital and others. In the case of those last three examples, English did retain the S in spelling and pronunciation, though (coast, forest and hospital, obviously.)

@JishinimaTidehoshi

Жыл бұрын

He made a video about your last point

@ilyasovich

Жыл бұрын

Long time french speaker, and now that I read this comment I'm telling myself WHY THE HELL I NEVER NOTICED THIS!!!! 🤣🤣

@enterprise1954

Жыл бұрын

@@ilyasovich I told a French friend this and he wasn't aware of it. He had not been taught at school about the circumflex replacing 's'.

@ilyasovich

Жыл бұрын

@@enterprise1954 Usually I'm good at spotting this kind of little things, but this one, I never noticed it

@Tomm9y

Жыл бұрын

An 's' is far better than a circumflex.

Plombier has the b pronounced in French. Plomb is the French word for lead, from which water pipes were unfortunately once fabricated. Also the French word île as a circumflex accent above the 'i' to indicate that there was once a letter 's' in the pronunciation. Hence 'hôpital' was once pronounced in French just as it is in English, with the s sound.

@Person01234

Жыл бұрын

The latin word "Plumbum" being the root of the french word and also where the chemical symbol Pb comes from.

@Unpopularity

Жыл бұрын

The silent letters are actually extremely important in my opinion, for example the word doubt is etymologically the equivalent of “double think”. I think there’s a point where etymological respect is better in the long run.

It's probably already written below, but "subtle" in French still has a b - "subtil". Same for "plumber" - "plombier".So for French spealers, English spelling of both words is rather easy :) "Isle" also had an "s", but this has been replaced by a "^" as you explained in another video.

@robertbrandywine

Жыл бұрын

I've seen a video that said French spelling was also screwed up by scholars, and for the same reason.

@louisavondart9178

Жыл бұрын

..but those are not silent letters...

@TheYeetedMeat

Жыл бұрын

@@louisavondart9178 they are.

@hankkingsley9300

Жыл бұрын

Isle is still a perfectly cromulent English word.

@beakfordclakington1337

Жыл бұрын

yeah, but for some or no reason, he was harking to old english. i guess

Amazing. As a second-gen American I was the chief translator for many a visitor and had to answer all kinds of questions about the peculiarities of English. I was pretty good about some of my explanations, but I had no idea about the root of this one!

There is an island off the west coast of Scotland called Islay, pronounced /aye-la/. This befell the same case of adding letters. In Scottish Gaelic it is called Ìle, and throughout history it has had many different spelling variations including Ili, Yla, and Ilay. It wasn't until the early 19th century that an 's' was added to make it seem more similar to the word 'island'!

@alkante2962

Жыл бұрын

Excellent whisky there!👍

@israellai

Жыл бұрын

Haha I'm reading this from Islay, it's inane

@mquietsch6736

Жыл бұрын

@@alkante2962 Just what I wanted to say!

@dougaltolan3017

Жыл бұрын

Don't mention Rhum....

@alkante2962

Жыл бұрын

@@dougaltolan3017 Why? Is that its reputation really?

Silent Letters have the useful benefit of relating to words of similar origin and/or meaning that still use the letters: Debt | Debit Sign | Signal Receipt | Recipient

@yokelengleng

Жыл бұрын

That's a great way to see things

@beatrix1120

Жыл бұрын

Why do those words need to be spelt similarly though? It's not like it's hard to understanding that they're related.

@blinski1

Жыл бұрын

@@beatrix1120 But with similar spelling it's more vivid and it's easier to memorize.

@Carewolf

Жыл бұрын

The g in sign is not silent, it just a soft g.

@ajs11201

Жыл бұрын

@@Carewolf That's not universally true. In many American English dialects, the "g" in "sign" is completely silent. When spoken, "sign" and "sine" are indistinguishable.

what a nice discovery. I love the English language since i was a little boy, and since back in Portugal, movies are not dubbed but subtitled, English has been present thought out the years. Thank you for these pearls. New subscriber. Note: I fully understand the relation between French and English since i speak a bit of both, so its really nice to see these little details that mean and tell so much about a language and the History o those countries.

In Old and Modern Catalan which is in the same family as French and Spanish (and is spoken in the regions between Spain proper and France), the "b" and "p" in "doubt", "subtle", and "receipt" still appear terminal as in _dubta,_ _subtil,_ and _recepta._

English is my 5th language . I'm using it the last 45 or so years mainly because I live in the US. For my brother, it was his 7th language. We both learned English well past our childhood or even teenage years. His business makes him to live and move around the world. When we talk to each other obviously we use our mother tongue. However, anytime we need to SOLVE some problem to a conclusion we seamlessly quite often in the middle of the sentence switch to English, not even thinking about it. Then when we reach an agreeable conclusion we finish the conversation back in our native language. Weirdest thing. Wonder if you can have some outlook to this phenomenon Rob. I just found your channel and I'm impressed by the content.

Interesting. Etymology is fascinating. However, no B in "doute" in French, but the letter is kept in "doubtful" => "dubitatif". As well for dette : débiteur (debtor) By my side, the good question is not why there is a b in those words, but why there is no more in French. There was a S in île (island) in French too. But as you know, the ^ accent replace this old S. (btw, isla in Spanish)

@cyrusol

Жыл бұрын

Indubitably!

@hydorah

Жыл бұрын

I'm thinking this video is hokum

@bwenluck9812

Жыл бұрын

@@hydorah OK, brainiac!

@meisterpatch849

Жыл бұрын

@@hydorah Now THAT (hokum) is an EXCELLENT word!!!

@xxxBradTxxx

Жыл бұрын

But in Spanish the s is pronounced. Like in Florida they have Islamorada pronounced “eeslah-more-ah-dah”

As a Norwegian I always pronounce silent letters in English. Its fun and sounds hillarious.

@JohnSmith-hq6fl

Жыл бұрын

as a joke? it would be quite weird if all the silent letters are suddenly pronounced xd

@Zizwizwee

Жыл бұрын

Yeah I definitely use “Skissors” and it drives my wife crazy

@emerald764

Жыл бұрын

I like your attitude.

@jorriffhdhtrsegg

Жыл бұрын

Doesn't Norwegian have a lot of barely pronounced Gs and things? I figured maybe that's same root as some of our Gs that are unprpnounced? Like 'Heugesund' i heard ev-ge-sun? Or sognefjord is 'song' with the letters backwards and more of an unprpnounced G

@vermontvampyre

Жыл бұрын

As an English person I wouldn't dare try to pronounce anything in Norwegian. Be afraid to summon something :P

I tutor a young girl and every week she brings a new spelling list from school. Most of this week’s list looks like it came straight out of your video, so I think we will start the lesson by watching your video so that when she gets frustrated, she will know that it is not because she’s silly and she will know who’s to blame. Thank you.

By the way, Rob, I stumbled into your channel, and really appreciate such a nice, concise lesson. I have subscribed so I shan't miss new videos.

I've heard the hardest part of English is not all the silent letters, it is actually the inconsistent vowel sounds. We have like 14 of them represented by 5 and 1/2 letters, and maybe 20+ combos. Russian vowels carry one sound per letter, (except O sometimes) and there are no combos.

@vladimir.moskva

Жыл бұрын

And E sometimes. And not just sometimes, all the time when it's not stressed. Also almost half of the vowels carry an additional "j" in front of them unless they go after a consonant in which case they just make it softer. But I agree all of these can be formalized as rules, whereas in English there's no logical way to explain why "creature" and "create" are pronounced differently, one just needs to remember it.

@erinmcdonald7781

Жыл бұрын

I've been on a disorganized campaign of one to bring on the "schwa," the upsidedown "e" that stands for the "uh" sound so common in American English.

Thank you! Late in life I have taken up writing. I was the worst speller in my year at school but my English teacher said I had the best comprehension. The only way I finally taught myself to read, aged around 9 or 10, was by word recognition. I have lately become interested in the roots of English. I find all of it fascinating, especially as I come from one of the Danish Ruled boroughs. And yes, I have often suspected the same people who sometimes look down on people struggling with its idiosyncrasies, probably created this mess in the first place.

@elainechubb971

Жыл бұрын

Be proud of yourself! And cherish any dialect forms you have in your vocabulary, because they keep a variety of "Englishes" alive in a world where a bland uniformity in language and culture can get very boring. I've inherited odd words and phrases from family in or with ancestors in (among other places) London, Lincolnshire, the Midlands (where my aunt worked, becoming fascinated by the local idioms), and Wiltshire, I think. I imagine most people have similar stories.

@highpath4776

Жыл бұрын

Seeing words written before the letter insertions I find really difficult to mentally read , takes me quicker to read a whole sentence as one with letter shapes to known words than go word by word in something printed from Chaucer

@SA-de4lc

Жыл бұрын

@@highpath4776 Just a tip for pronouncing those "DouBtful words: 1. Please don't pronounce the alphabet that comes immediately after the vowel. For example, douBt. ReceiPt.iSland 2. When two consonants come together, leave the first one. For example, Knight, Psychology. Hope these tips might be helpful for non native english speakers. It would be highly appreciated if you please share any other tips. Thanks.

My elementary school taught reading/spelling using phonics. I have always been able to figure out how a word is spelled just by sounding it out. However, I can remember at a very early age thinking that whoever decided how some words should be spelled should get a swift kick in the pants. I still try to use those spelling rules: “ I before E except after P & sometimes W & Y” and so on. But those rules don’t alway work.

Mr. Words, you are undoubtedly my favorite You Tuber. I am forever in your debt.

French scholars did this too. Isle is an example of that (the hat over the I represents an s). Vingt for twenty is like the S in island - it is a false back form from latin.

@helengournay2377

Жыл бұрын

The circumflex in French was introduced in the 1600s to replace the ‘s’ as I recall, by which time words such as « crest, coast » had already come into English from Norman French with the ‘s’ still there. The ‘b’ in doubt comes from Renaissance scholars too, as does the fake etymology of ‘poids’ (thought to be from ‘perdre’, but probably from ‘pesum’) The ‘u’ and the ‘l’ are clearly from French scribe traditions where a script ‘u’ replaces an ‘l’ or an ‘ls’, as in ‘chevaux’. I love this subject. Spent hours on it, sorry! In fact in the 13th C French was pretty phonetic, and then was messed up by « scholars » in the Renaissance just like English.

As a homeschool parent, I so appreciate this video! When teaching certain spellings, there’s always the question of, “Why is that letter there? Why is it silent?” Followed by, “Well that’s dumb”. Now I can just blame the old renaissance scholars. 😏 Thank you! I will be saving this video for our next spelling venture! 😊

@Liz-pc3dc

Жыл бұрын

Yes, it's kinda dumb... But kinda makes sense when thinking of other related words, like dubious, the b is there, and its true in French too. Like dette / débit. I won't get into each and every one because I think it should be (especially when teaching) make into a fun game : '' Can you find a related word that helps you remember that pesky silent letter'' ?

@mikemondano3624

Жыл бұрын

Sounds like you need a qualified teacher for the homeschooling.

@davidsturm7706

Жыл бұрын

Hilarious pun using "dumb" with its silent b! Note that when adding -y it's spelled "dummy" not *"dumby". . But then there is "dumbo"! . But the b is silent again in "dumbass"!

@freethebirds3578

Жыл бұрын

@@mikemondano3624 Sounds like this person IS a qualified homeschool teacher. And since I work with many "qualified" teachers, and I am one also, this problem comes up every time you teach spelling to kids who refuse to just accept nonsense.

@VinhPrag

Жыл бұрын

Year what about that b in dumb and dumber?

Howdy from Texas!! 1:52 is a great example of American / Canadian vs. British English. In American and Canada, the past tense of spell is spelled - both in written and spoken form. In England, both spelled and spelt are acceptable; however, to my American ears, it hurts to hear. Great video content and the most interesting comments section ever typed!

Your videos are so interesting. Thanks for sharing. I love learning the origin of words and phrases.

Thanks to those renaissance scholars that I found French easier to spell and read than English. At least, French is pretty more regular. In English, there are too many inconsistencies that the safest way to learn the pronunciation is by opening the dictionary by each new word you encounter. I'm not a native English speaker, and that is the pain we need to endure when we learn your language.

@elainechubb971

Жыл бұрын

I studied French for seven years, and actually I think it's as complicated to spell as English. There are so many silent letters, for a start. Then there are the accents, which may have little to do with pronunciation but simply indicate where a letter has been dropped from a former spelling, such as the circumflex accent over the "e" in "foret," to show it used to be "forest." Then there's the fact that some words spelled similarly have diverged in pronunciation, such as ville, village.Sometimes a sound can be spelled with different letters--compare the "s" sound in sans (first "s") and cent! (Now, there are two simple words with tricky spellings.) I learned when doing the classroom exercises where the teacher slowly dictated a passage to us and we had to write it down correctly, even though some of the words would be unknown, that you could make a reasonable guess that could still be wrong. I grant that it may be a bit easier to read than English, but when you read a word you don't know, you may still be at a loss about how to pronounce it. It's certainly much harder than Italian and Spanish. I think French and English both suffer from being two of the earliest languages in Europe to be written down, so spellings became fairly fixed while pronunciations was still changing considerably, meaning a correspondence between the written and spoken language. became strained.

@I_Have_The_Most_Japanese_Music

Жыл бұрын

I feel your pain and English is the only language I know.

@HepCatJack

Жыл бұрын

@@elainechubb971 the monk scribes would sometimes draw the s of forest above the e in order to save paper as paper production was expensive. In time the ~ above the e became ê. In french family names such as Laforest the s kept its original spelling.

@elainechubb971

Жыл бұрын

@@HepCatJack Thank you for your post--very interesting. I believe this sort of shortcut was quite common in the Middle Ages. The English (Anglo-Saxon) scribes used to draw a horizontal line above a vowel to stand for a following 'n" and if I remember aright, this lasted into the early modern period. I think they had similar ways of marking a "th" symbol (thorn or eth) as an abbreviation for "that (thaet)," and maybe "than." By the late Elizabethan age (if not earlier) a whole system of shorthand had been invented. Some early pirated editions of plays by Shakespeare (and probably other playwrights) were produced by men who surreptitiously took down the words in shorthand as they were spoken--like hiding a recording device in a concert venue nowadays, only less accurate! Writing systems got quite sophisticated quite early. And I wonder how future generations will think about the various techniques people who post on the Internet adopt to disguise their vocabulary and avoid being censored!

@florencecousin5577

Жыл бұрын

@@elainechubb971 I agree about the fact that it is very difficult to spell French. But if you understand the rules, reading a word you never encountered is almost always possible (there are few exceptions). The silent letters always appear in the same context (plural, verb conjugation...) On the contrary, reading English is a pain in the ass... you never know how to pronounce the words. Fun fact : for my job, I used to read a lot of English, I learned a lot of new words, but I had no idea of the pronunciation of these technical words (that was when Internet was very expensive, VOD films difficult to see, and DVD were not yet invented). Now when I watch KZread videos, I am sometimes very surprised...

It’s quite interesting watching this as a Dutch speaker. We have the b and p in many of our cognates too, but only if they are actually pronounced: receipt - recept (has a different meaning) debt - debit (only used in the context of bookkeeping) subtle - subtiel and: island - eiland Dutch has had some similar interfering, though. For example, the difference between “hen” and “hun” (both translate to “them”) is completely artificial, and done in an attempt to make Dutch look more like Latin. Which means people now have to check if they’re using it in a dative (hun) or accusative case (hen), except when used after a preposition (hen). The fact that “hun” is also the possessive form (their) does not help at all.

@tobbiganz4215

Жыл бұрын

And Dutch (and German) are actually the languages where England got the words from.

@smoothjazz2143

Жыл бұрын

@@tobbiganz4215 They got it from saxon man

@JohnSmith-hq6fl

Жыл бұрын

This is a bit unrelated but in German the pronouns for "she", "they" and "you" (polite form) are the same in nominative and accusative. There are other pronouns that simply coincide and you have to rely on context, but I find this all quite annoying sometimes. :/ In my native Bulgarian they are all different pronouns and it makes more sense to me.

@juilescieg

Жыл бұрын

same for german. Rezept, Debit (not commonly used), subtil and Insel. The Island think confuses me until today. Because there is the island called Island and then there is the english word island for island, but spelled ai land.

@telocho

Жыл бұрын

And those words are Latin and came to Dutch via lower German/Saxonian. And did not lose the B/P in their journey, where as in French it got silent and eventually lost them. Old and Middle English is a mixture with close ties to saxonian, but I suppose any spelling was not fixed until very late in time.

I got put out of so many English classes for asking these questions or correcting the teachers so thank you for this I think I'll look up some old teachers to send them a link.

You're the guy from DW that has the Princeton finance/econ guru on. Love you guys!

To me, English is relatively normal because I have had to learn it at school since age 5, but I have met a lot of German-speaking people who think English spelling is crazy!

@RobWords

3 жыл бұрын

The more I look at English, the more bewildering I find it. But it would be a shame if it were any other way!

@user-lt4kh9ot1y

3 жыл бұрын

English spelling is hell. German spelling is better but it's close to hell :) I'm a Russian and we pronounce every letter we write. There are several exceptions but they are minor. When I was a child I saw a game on TV where children spell every word. I thought what a stupid game. You just have to pronounce sounds and they are letters. When I started to learn English I understood that for English the game makes sense :)

@brittakriep2938

2 жыл бұрын

Old german joke : How to speak ,Wie bitte'?- Hä?

@user-yy5di3qg5u

2 жыл бұрын

​@@user-lt4kh9ot1y But certain Russian words also have letters that we usually don't pronounce (like the T in Russian word for stairs "лестница" - les(t)nitza). But Russian has strong root words in grammatics that we knowing, so it saves the situation.

@illogical1421

Жыл бұрын

I agree as non native speaker myself, the spelling is insane mess, it's pretty much a like logography, you have to memorize how every single word is spelled and it's not an easy task, I've speaking English for 20 years and I still don't know how to spell some words, let alone misspelling some other words I know how to spell all the time.

I love it when both the video and the comment section are incredibly interesting and informative. Kudos to all!

As both a linguist and an ardent follower of world politics, I found that your videos here are far more fascinating than your works in DW. Thanks for producing them!

I have been wondering about this for the past five years… Thanks so much! *thumbs up* indeed P.S. What about the silent Ws? Maybe another video lined up there. ^_^

I like your style and your take. I am a professional linguist, and on top of it also an academic and a scholar AND I fully endorse your disdain for my profession.

I always thought that plumber came fairly directly from Latin as one who works with lead (plumbum). Just as we call a construction weight for finding vertical a "plumb bob" since they were often weighted with lead, though these days they are normally simply steel or brass.

@susettemclachlan8765

Жыл бұрын

Otherwise known as a plumb line

@ononearts

Жыл бұрын

@@susettemclachlan8765 A plumb line is the string used to hang a plumb bob, but it is also used as a compound term for a plumb line and plumb bob together.

@susettemclachlan8765

Жыл бұрын

@@ononearts You are right. I had never known what the lead weight - the plumb bob - was called because we always called it a plumb line

@evo5dave

Жыл бұрын

What I thought too

@ikmarchini

Жыл бұрын

You are correct. In French that person is a plombier. We should call them a plum-ber. Also, lazy tongue comes into it.

Thank you for this explanation, the old Indonesian spelling we have silent letter, but we changed it in the modern Indonesian spelling, to make easy the learner to understand the voice and spelling with same logical.

@RobWords

Жыл бұрын

That sounds like a good idea!

Not gonna lie, I overlooked the length of this video and thought it would be at least 28 minutes long because if the title. I'm glad I was wrong. Thanks for such a helpful video!

I have yet to watch one of your videos and think I knew any of it. You are clearly well informed, well read and well… interested. This was no exception and we clearly don’t know a shard (euphemism) about where our language originated. Thank you for everything so far and I (most definitely) look forward to more.

I see the trouble with that spelling. But the trouble is already inside the French spelling. There are so many irregularities, that for me as an Austrian, who speaks different languages and had Latin at school, sometimes it has been easier, when learning English, to recognize a read word with this latinised spelling. Of course only in the cases where it is genuine. And for someone who has no romanic basis and no foreign words deriving from Latin, learning English must be hard (French aswell by the way).

This is the most interesting comments section I've ever read! Well done! Yall are very smart people....

I just discovered your channel and an enjoying it a lot.

Hearing the actual reasoning behind things makes it a lot easier to understand than some stupid rule. I love that this channel explores those things.

Had no idea plumber/plumbing came to us from Old French and had already lost the "B" - I just always assumed that it came direct from Latin due to the whole Plumb from Plumbum (Lead) thing. Cheers for yet another informative video.

@bornhoffer

Жыл бұрын

I doubt this to be true. The word for plumber in modern French is "plombier", with the B clearly pronounced.

@justinwhite2725

Жыл бұрын

@@bornhoffer and the 'r' is silent. Ironic thst he uses French in his examples when it has more dropped letters than most other languages.

@eiseli99

Жыл бұрын

Yeah, well there are some confusing things in the video: the French word for plumber is plombier (which has a b that is pronounced), as ​ @ebronken ​points out. The same with the word "subtle" which is "subtile" in French.

@wolf1066

Жыл бұрын

@@elgur4512 You're quite right. All the words in English derive from Indo-European. Screw this "French" and "Latin" bullshit. That was sarcasm, in case you missed that.

@wolf1066

Жыл бұрын

@@bornhoffer Didn't Gideon put up a different word for the Old French, though?

This is awesome. I had no idea - what a great video!

I like very much to listen to you. Thank you very much for sharing your unique knowledge in such a nice manner 🙋‍♀️

I'm extremely pleased to have stumbled upon your channel, and have subscribed. Please continue to produce such informative and enjoyable content. The "inkhorn controversies" provide much amusement as well as perfectly legitimate irritation.

Very interesting! I teach English and I'm often asked by my students what's the reason for those silent letters.. and I didn't know about those annoying scholars.

@andrewjonathan5630

Жыл бұрын

Elisheva, don’t be fooled. This is wholly inaccurate.

@elishevak.8637

Жыл бұрын

@@andrewjonathan5630 can you explain?

@ko71k52

Жыл бұрын

@@elishevak.8637 Here in comment section I found a more sensible explanation: they are there to link the words with it's roots and derivatives: Receipt - reception Doubt - dubious

@Becvar80

Жыл бұрын

@@ko71k52 That same comment also said maybe this is a reason. They didn't know, but simply put forth the theory. Just because something seems to make sense doesn't mean it's right. Renaissance scholars made these decisions, and modern scholars are the ones who actually have the knowledge to claim something was a certain way, not someone who'd barely even wondered about this before seeing the video on their feed.

I agree. There are some very illogical placements of certain letters within specific words.

I love that they did that! it's helpful......I know Greek and Latin roots well enough to understand words that I wouldn't understand otherwise.

I find such quirks surprisingly useful for making intuitive connections with other words. For example, the silent 'b' in 'doubt' makes it very easy to make a connection with the word 'dubious'. It's these intuitive connections that make us fluent. In absence of such subtle clues, we would have to rely solely on repetition to burn the connections into our minds. I don't think these changes would have survived if they weren't useful.

@Primitarian

Жыл бұрын

What a fascinating contrarian defense. Yes, it is easy, and even fun, to poke one's finger at these Renaissance scholars as if they were pompous meddlers. And yet this is not really fair, they were concerning themselves with something more than pronunciation: etymology. And this seems to me justified due to the unified linguistic heritage of Europe as well as the fact that, in English at least, fidelity to pronunciation has turn out to be such a fool's errand (e.g., the pronunciation of "ough," which he discusses in another video).

@elainechubb971

Жыл бұрын

They are also very useful in providing a spelling that means just one word that can't be confused with another. For example, sign (see post below from KingOfScilly and resulting comments): if you spell this using the usual form for words pronounced similarly (wine, swine, twine), it's the same as sine; and you can't drop the "e" signifier for a long vowel because it would be a sin. (Sorry!) I think you are quite right (not rite) to point out that anomalies stay around because they are useful. Purely phonetic spelling does not work for English, which has an abundance of monosyllables and thus homophones that need to be distinguished one from another.

@frenchimp

Жыл бұрын

Well to us frenchspeaking folks it is perfectly clear that 'doute' and 'dubitatif' have the same root. We don't need your mute b as a reminder.

@TheMangeGrain

Жыл бұрын

@@frenchimp Well, not so clear IMO, hence the "dans le doute" expression which tends to replace more and more the "dubitatif" adjective. You need to know that the modern french verb "douter" comes from latin "dubitare" to understand why "dubitatif" is the related modern french adjective, and not some other word like "doutif". And... it seems like "doutif" was actually used in middle french, so maybe our own Renaissance scholars chose to alter french with latinisms, like english scholars did.

@zlosliwa_menda

Жыл бұрын

@@frenchimp Maybe so, but it was only a simple example to illustrate the point. In any language there are tens of thousands of words, some more obscure than others, so even native speakers keep expanding their vocabularies. Besides, French does a similar thing with the circumflex which marks the now absent 's' in words like hôpital or château. I don't think the guys at the Académie Française left these marks for the benefit of ignorant foreigners like me, who might otherwise never realize that "château" and "castle" are cognates. I guess it must be useful even at higher levels of fluency and with more obscure words, even if you don't consciously think about it.

I have just discovered your channel and am addicted. It's fascinating learning of the origins of these weird spellings and word usages that I've grown up taking for granted and not understanding or questioning. I am currently learning Japanese which has its challenges, but now I can see that leaning English must be a nightmare for non native speakers. Thanks for your great work.

@markrossow6303

Жыл бұрын

the daughter took Japanese in H.S. but might take Korean in college -- the Korean alphabet Hangul is the only scientifically designed alphabet ( there are some pronunciation rules that blur over standardized Korean spelling, but that is the fault of the language, not the alphabet ) in the '80s I heard about 2 German school boys who taught themselves Hangul to pass notes in class, using it to spell their own language...

@danielantony1882

Жыл бұрын

@David Bork Kana is also phonetic... Aside from 2 letters... That are also not phonetic in Romaji. At least not the one without the ō, ū and all that jazz. Generally, the point of different pronunciations in the Japanese language, is to change the meaning. For example: 生(U) is for 生まれる(Umareru: To be born), 生(Nama) is for Raw/Fresh, and 生(Sei) for 人生(JinSei) Life, specifically, personal life(Not as in private, but as in, a person's life). The language is far more poetic than you think.

Bill Bryson's book 'Mother Tongue' covers development of the English Language in great detail, though, if my memory serves me correctly, he places the correction of spelling in the mid-late 19th century when scholars on both sides of the Atlantic decided to codify spelling which, up to then, had been a little 'free form' and academic dictionaries were published to be used as the prevailing standard and this is when the silent letters were actually officially introduced with both nations' scholars taking a slightly different view. Hence the US dropped the 'u' from colour etc, while the UK retained it, also 'nite' and 'nght' for example and the US dropped the use of the 'double L' in, for example, 'traveller'. In the late 19th century English records, such as census forms, you can still see 'labourer' and 'laborer' spellings as well as other word variations. A very interesting and amusing book. So although the silent letters may well have appeared much earlier, spelling wasn't formally defined till the appearance of these 'new' dictionaries.

No dout this is one of the best KZread channels.

Catalán actually pronounces all these silent letters! Doubt - dubte (doob-teh) Recipe - recepta (rey-sep-tah)

@OntarioTrafficMan

Жыл бұрын

There are no silent letters in Recipe Edit: oh wait you mean receipt

@juanausensi499

Жыл бұрын

Not all of them: Island - Illa

@paucc

Жыл бұрын

@@juanausensi499 But in Spanish, the S is pronounced. I love languages.

Would you make a video about the pronunciation for the letters 'OO'? Why are there so many exceptions from the general rule? We have 'cookie', but we also have 'door', 'flood', all pronounced differently :) Love your videos! Thank you!

@yugandali

Жыл бұрын

Cookie and flood are pronounced differently, as you should know if you have gone through the door and entered a school. And don’t eat food from the floor.

@bagpussmacfarlan9008

Жыл бұрын

@@yugandali Thanks for that, I'm in a good mood now 👍

@alonsoACR

Жыл бұрын

The original is on 'door' like a really long 'oh' this is related to the Great Vowel Shift(s), of the Renaissance and early modern periods. You can look it up on Wikipedia for a full list. Some changes weren't 'complete' so you got these exceptions. Say these two words: Route and router. Is it pronounced Root and rooter? Or Raoot and raooter? Or a mix? Answer varies between regions. Not dialects, because even within the same dialect you see either. It's very town-to-town. Scots didn't go through the full change for instance so in Scots the words Brown Cow are pronounced like in olden times, broon cooh. Before, almost every OW and OU was like a modern OO, while the old OO was like the modern OH. You can see Shakespear rhyming Throne and One in one of his poems, for example. Confusing, but such is English.

@lishayost444

Жыл бұрын

Wow, I never even realized how many different ways we say 'oo' in different words.

@comradewindowsill4253

Жыл бұрын

@@alonsoACR rawoot? what, with two different syllables? I highly doubt that anyone actually says it that way. if you mean pronouncing it to rhyme with 'doubt', however, sure.

I love your videos! Keep them coming!

For an Italian like me "doubt" is natural, because in my mind I see Latin root.

@alkante2962

Жыл бұрын

At least... someone sane in this threat, thank you to clarify what should be obvious for everyone to see! I find his explanation horribly misleading.

@stuartdparnell

Жыл бұрын

Franglish would have it be doute, English however wanted to have germanic twist on the latin word so yeah, doubt.

@lloydgush

Жыл бұрын

Brazilian, same as you.

@TitusRex

Жыл бұрын

Yes, I also like the silent letter added based of etymology, makes it easier to know the meaning.

@abrigospardos

Жыл бұрын

In Spanish we sometimes use the adjective "dubitabundo" to describe someone who is mulling things over too long before making a decision, and "dubitativo" for something that expresses doubt.

The b in plumber is there for a good reason. It is plombier in French and the symbol for lead is Pb.

@martinwallace5734

Жыл бұрын

Yes, but the point is that it has been ADDED by English scholars, to make it conform to Latin. It came over to English as the Norman French without the "b". The ATILF says the word "plunmier" is attested in 1266 ... so at one stage in French the Latin "b" had become an "n". The "b" was added back into French in the 15th century.

Dude! You are the Guy from DW who's dooing brilliant Interviews!!? Aren't you? Btw. - nice educative video, thanks for that 😁

@RobWords

Жыл бұрын

Hi Emiliano. I'm not sure about brilliant interviews, but I am the guy from DW!

Good one! Please make another one on pronunciation on how Latin origin words are spoken wrongly/differently in English.

This is exactly the kind of detail I LOVE. What a brilliant channel! I’m hooked! 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽 I figured it had something to do with Latin roots but who would have ever imagined that this had been done deliberately? Sneaky scholars! I actually admire them for pulling this off! I’ve started sharing your videos-which I discovered only today-with my students who are French. This channel will help me answer a whole lotta side questions on the erratic English language😁 Excellent job! Thank you so much!

@palmereldrich

Жыл бұрын

I am new too and have fallen very hard for this great channel but you said it better than I could !! Educating others and actually penetrating through evil ignorance to the brilliance of a communicated idea fully realized and seeing the comprehension dawn in other peoples eyes is pure MAGIC to me. Does'nt happen often but when it does.....

@lisaedmondson780

Жыл бұрын

@@palmereldrich Beautifully put!

I'm a native spanish speaker, but somehow i learned how to speak english well enough to teach it as a foreign language here, in the Dominican Republic. My students here really suffer with spelling, mainly because spanish is quite the opposite of english, in the sense that for spanish you spell practically the same as you hear it, very different story in english. When my students ask me why is spelling english so hard, the only answer i can offer is that is english is crazy. The simple answer. This video sort of proves that.

@percyfaith11

Жыл бұрын

On the other hand English grammar is the soul of simplicity when compared to romance languages like Spanish.

@nicodemo3246

Жыл бұрын

@@percyfaith11 maybe french, as a spanish speaker i hardly see it as romantic

@percyfaith11

Жыл бұрын

@@nicodemo3246 Well, blame the Romans then because that is where the term comes from, not from love.

I'm so stressed out. But your videos are comforting. I'd rather focus on Scholars being chaotic ninny's than my problems ATM. Thank you ❣️❣️❣️

I have created a minimalistic french spelling system. Unfortunately, most traces of it have disappeared from the Internet but it's all there, stored neatly in my brain!

In fact, as a foreigner I have easier access to English because these silent vowels allow me to recognise the original Latin root of the word. As in „dubito, ergo sum“.

As an ESL teacher in Thailand, I'm asked about these silent letters often, because young Thai students learn phonics from their Thai teachers. When asked about the 'b' and the 'p' etc., I can only respond with "Those are there to punish you for not studying enough."

@ajinkya3780

Жыл бұрын

As an Indian,I simply tell students that English is the most stupid language given by the Colonial rulers to us.

this is super interesting content, please keep it up!

I lovd it. In Spanish we have similarly senseless spelling and grammar rules that go against every learning kid and foreigner’s common sense. I still hope this common sense will some day rescue our languages from all this absurdity.

Ever since I was a teenager, I have been interested in languages and their origins. When I took German in school, I noticed how most of their words are spelled phonetically. The same for Swedish and Norwegian. Their rules for phonetic spelling may differ somewhat, but once you learn the simple rules it becomes very hard to misspell a word. With that in mind, I have wondered why we have some letters that have two different sounds. Like the letter "G". It can sound like the "g" in good or the "j" sound in George. The Letter "C" can have the "k" sound or the "s" sound. I propose we limit one letter to one sound. Cat should be spelled "kat" and city should be spelled "sity", or perhaps "sitty".We could give the letter "c" a new sound, that of "ch" as in "cheese". Of course then cheese would be spelled "ceez". "Geez" would be spelled Jeez and geese would be spelled gees. Doubling a vowel would make it long, and a single vowel within a word would make it short. Now what to do about "wood" and "would". Well, we'll have to figure that out later.

@Teun_Jac

Жыл бұрын

You might as well start writing Dutch

@Durzo1259

Жыл бұрын

You're 100% right and I've been hearing of people proposing this since I was a kid, but it never seems to get traction. Maybe they're afraid of every pre-existing book becoming incomprehensible to the next generation. Of course you could re-write them, but it would be a monumental undertaking.

@ethanlamoureux5306

Жыл бұрын

So far every proposal for spelling reform has proven to just make another mess. The problem is, English has way more sounds than there are letters in the Latin alphabet, and there's too much historical baggage attached to the old alphabet. George Bernard Shaw realized the problem and proposed that we create a new alphabet, one not based on the Latin one, where every sound gets its own letter. This was done and it's called the Shaw or Shavian alphabet. Of course it languishes in obscurity.

@sherrillsturm7240

Жыл бұрын

Then, you'd have a Scandinavian language.

@ethanlamoureux5306

Жыл бұрын

@@sherrillsturm7240 No, you’d have a slightly more logical spelling system for English.

Isle is from French île, where the circonflex on the "I" points to a dropped letter from a more archaic spelling, usually an S. (See also, forêt -> forest -> forest, or , côte -> coste -> coast). So at least here they weren't going any further back than relatively modern French.

@Ugly_German_Truths

Жыл бұрын

But it is two dropped letters. The latin term for land surrounded by water was insula. as in "insulated"

I am Korean and have studied English for more than 40 years Finally I come to understand why. . Interesting! One thing though, Korean scholars are periodically changing the way Korean words are spelled to match the modern changes in the language. Why isn't this the case with English? There are confusions of course but higher literacy does mean a lot of things you know. .

Loved the video! Shared with my 12 year old daughter who’s been asking just this!

As a native English speaker with a love of modern day Latin (Spanish), I actually love that these scholars did this as it adds to the range of "transferable" words one can match to Spanish equivalents, such as "Debo" and "Isla".

@holliswilliams8426

Жыл бұрын

I have also studied Spanish and am glad that there are so many Romance words in English, for example ''defenestrate'' in English immediately gets you a free word ''defenestrar'' in Spanish.

As an Italian I find this changes they did very useful because this way it is very easy for me to understand those words at first sight. I guess that this is the same for many Europeans and Latin Americans at least. So thanks old scholars 😘

Very, very interesting. Merci beaucoup !

Learners of English struggle with these words. One of my friend’s parents who were from Italy, had lived in the UK for decades and couldn’t master complex English spelling and pronunciation. When people say English is easy they need to consider this aspect of the language.

Well for someone who has learnt Latin in school (like me) those spellings come quite natural. Who cares for old French anyway?

I'm old enough to have adult children, and I've always been a huge reader, reading one or two books a week, nonfictions and novels, I do a lot of writing, I work in elementary schools, yet I'm a terrible speller. I'm ashamed of this and have tried to learn spelling. I love the massive vocabulary in English and how we adopted so many words from so many language, but I hate having almost no set rules in spelling, and that so many words are not spelled even close to how they sound.

@dhy5342

Жыл бұрын

I before E, except when it isn't.

@joeskis

Жыл бұрын

Such as...?

@colleenhonderich1598

Жыл бұрын

Please stop feeling ashamed. I'm a retired high school English teacher and, like you, an avid reader. Day 1 of any class I met, I always confessed that I was a bad speller and have been since the day I began school. Once the class stopped laughing ( "You teach English and can't spell, ha ha) I explained that I also knew how to edit, spell-check and use a dictionary. Spelling errors, whether on the blackboard or in a written first draft, are perfectly forgivable. Only after I have had an opportunity to check/edit do spelling errors become unacceptable. We all have weaknesses. The trick is to find ways to compensate. I'm a bad speller - ergo, I have become a careful editor and regard the dictionary as my best friend.

@Lethgar_Smith

Жыл бұрын

I write for a living and I also cant spell. Its like being a mathematician and not being able to do long division. Things I have trouble with are words with a lot of S's and C's like success, secession, succeed etc. Spell check had to spell all three of those words for me just now. Grammar comes naturally to me and I dont have to even think about it. However, the spelling is too much like having to memorize a mathematical formula. Just a meaningless rule that must be followed without comprehending its meaning.

@bobstarr

Жыл бұрын

Like a few in this chat, I have a horrible time spelling no matter how much I read and I have come to the belief that there is no logic in spelling. This video is a good example. The example I use is the number of ways to make the "ew" sound. To, too, two, threw, through, gnu, and blue.

As a speaker of the US version of English, I have great disdain for silly spelling changes such as these, but am thankful that at least Webster instilled a little bit more sense into our spellings than is true for most of the rest of our English speaking neighbo(u)rs.

Thanks for most of that ;) A word about ISLE, however. The contemporary French word is Île; often the ^ accent circonflexe represents a missing S from former etymology. Cf. FEAST which comes from the French fête. Not sure that the British have an equivalent to the French Académie, which publishes the official French Dictionary and define official grammar and usage (which evolves).

All children should just start to pronounce all letters and if teachers complain, insist that these should be removed if they're silent

@Nimmo1492

Жыл бұрын

And when writing, replace the silent letters with other random letters. So the can have a receikt to show a deqt.

@hetmanjz

Жыл бұрын

Rong!

@jmitterii2

Жыл бұрын

Thaht wyud b ryhdiculas!