ENGLISHIT
-- the sights and sounds of English --
New blue shoe two to too -- A child wonders how-in-the-world can these simple words sound alike but look so different? An adult wonders too.
Iz thair eny way owt ov this cunfewshun?
This is what my bewildered daughter wants to know. There are so many vague rules for spelling and pronunciation of English words. Gud luk!
Compared to Spanish, a beautifully organized means of communicating, where nearly everything sounds the same as it's written, phonetically -- English is distorted, incoherent, and not a lot of fun to learn or teach.
She wants to know why snow-plow doesn’t rhyme. Or why been can't join the green teen seen family, or why 'to' won't associate with go so no? She wants to know why I don’t know but is too polite to embarrass me.
I never realized consciously the lunacy involved here.
French may be notorious for its non-articulated word endings but English offers both unpronounced word endings (know) AND unannounced beginnings (know). To know means to understand, but who understands know?
"You just have to English it," I say.
"Englishit?" she says.
Exactly.
Blame it on England. Once upon a time in far away places, while gobbling up foreign markets, the Anglo-Saxon British Empire lapped its tongue everywhere, superseding hundreds of languages in the process. English was top dog. Bow-wow (not to be pronounced 'boh-woh'). The message was clear -- if you want to succeed in commerce and communication you have to do it in English. Ruff, rough.
However, look at Britannia today. England had its run, now it's run down. A tiny bankrupt country. A rather large antique store. A flawed language. Look at oar ore or door; foe, go, sew, bow, dough. Imagine a first encounter with own, cone, sewn, moan. Look at it! Jeeves…
Yes, English is the language of Shakespeare -- but did you ever notice that he never quite grasped the spelling part either? Thy wit doth oft shew thro' thy writ.
If American freedom-fighting independents had revolted against this taxing language (instead of T, eh, tea) I might not be struggling to explain an obtuse system of communication. The Declaration of Independence could have been composed in a completely new language reflecting the multicultural population. Instead, this royal divorce has a long list of 27 formal complaints about the rotten things the King had subjected on the colonies. The document signers probably used up too much space for any more complaints to be listed, but #28 would have been: He has ruled the new world cruelly with the sight slights and nonsensical phony phonetics of his own crown sound.
Try some 'een' words: scene, keen, bean, lien, protein, routine, caffeine, beguine. Notice any difference? Hmm?
Actually, we can spread out the blame a little more because modern English has been composed of bits and pieces of languages near and far. This is in part the reason for the divergent spelling components. But can't we demand some sensible correlation between the spoken and the written word? When children write 'shugr' for sugar, they are telling us something profound: the official spelling is wrong; yet we correct their non-mistake. This is where the common madness takes hold.
Today for billions of people the way out into the world-at-large is a grasp of English. Lambs to the slaughter. Try this well-known example: bough, cough, dough, tough, through. Even with the same pairings of vowels and consonants in a tight little row -- none of these words sound alike! Incredible. Why not use -- bou, cauf, doh, tuf, thru? There is space available in the dictionary, not one spelling would duplicate any other word. So? Not mind-boggling enough?
This fragile planet is coming together on the English system. Seems unfair. International business dealings and most international schools use English. Air traffic controllers govern the heavens using English. Holy Babel. At least they don't have to write it down. But if something should (should -- yes, honey, the L is dumb -- should, would, could, -- it's tricky. Want some magic? Put an 'er' at the end of 'should'. Shoulder. Amazing, huh? ) -- I'd rather not think about this. It's like trying to explain a joke.
If language is an evolving, living organism, shouldn't we be nurturing it along toward a better, more genuine international entity? Of the 3,000 - 4,000 speech communities to choose from, why hasn't a realistic global language developed? 500 million people speak English, yet twice as many people speak Mandarin. Maybe we're missing something here.
Stop for a moment, pronounce and define each of these words in two different ways: lead, read, live, tear, wind. Why do we have shared spellings?
A hundred years ago some disenchanted communicators attempted to develop an international language, one that looked the same as it was spoken: Esperanto (pronounced Esperanto!) -- a sophisticated yet simplified composite of European languages -- a phonetic wonder that never caught on despite having superior potential.
The difference between English and Esperanto is the same as that as petro power to solar power. So much is already invested in the former that it seems too late to change. A bad marriage, death do us part.
We can rationalize -- to its credit English has many more words and a greater vocabulary than most other languages -- that is its glory, its redeeming value. But why are there so many variations on the same sounding words: poor, pour, pore; four, fore, for; rain, reign, rein; way weigh whey? There they're their – Hip-hip hooray for homonyms, but why haven't more sounds been utilized?
Is there more grammar than there is sound to go around? English could generate other linguistic patterns. Fresh sounds could add thousands of new words and/or replace clogged and non-functional spellings. Humans are capable of many other utterances. We tend to mock the way other languages utilize inflections, trilling, clicking, whistling, nasal and guttural sounds. But the joke is on us. There's a huge aural spectrum to be tapped into. English is a bit of a prude.
Glean every unique oral sound from the languages of the world into one special linguistic structure and you've got the Nobel committee waiting at the door.
English grinds against pure intuition and cohesive understanding, especially for all language immigrants young and old attempting to grasp the illogical demands of this language. Sight and sound are out of sync. Our faltering system demonstrates that we still have a long way to go to be able to effectively communicate in a universally clear way. Right? Write? Rite? Wright?
As a child, the same age my daughter is at the moment, I can recall only one aide that helped me through the traumatic craziness of English spelling. One little jingle: "I before E except after C."
How well I remember that: I before E -- such as in 'believe'; except after C -- such as in 'perceive'. That's great, but what about 'their' ?
A quick consultation with Strunk and White informs me that I failed to recall, or I wasn't taught, the complete jingle: "I before E except after C, or when pronounced "ay" as in neighbor and weigh." Or their. Well...
I suppose with my young mind being so weighed down with new words there wasn't enough headroom for the entire jingle. It's not my fault! -- Wait a minute -- what about -- 'weird', 'seize', 'foreign'? None of these words fit the rules of the whole jingle either. Neither does 'either' nor 'neither'. This is crazy.
Well, maybe with English being a memory-based language it also helps to develop memorization skills in the user. That seems like a worthy by-product. Don't you think? Yet, while playing spin doctor, you'd still have to concede English's untreatable sexual disease -- "to each his own" or "one by one each walks toward his own destiny." What about that by-product? Eh? Find the miraculous cure, a genderless pronoun, and your portrait will hang in politically correct classrooms around the globe, a legendary enshrinement ensured.
Meanwhile, I have to keep reminding myself (and a perplexed daughter) that English was not developed to make us feel like fools. We are not stupid -- the language is, kind of.
Let's at least concede a little maintenance can be done. If we use 'I' for the self, why not use 'U' for 'you', the other self. It makes perfect sense and saves two useless letters, Y and O, for other projects. Why not spell 'why' with just Y, and 'oh' with just plain O. Am I nuts? Am I missing some unspoken taboo of language logic?
Professor Henry Higgins claims it's the illiterate regional dialects that is ruining proper English. Miss Eliza Doolittle, a Cockney flower girl, says the real problem is people such as 'enry 'iggins. The reign in Spain stays mainly in the plane.
The bottom line is that most of us are not language experts or even capable of speaking any other language -- English has us so snowed under. Shovel this:
At the end those e's are silent; gh's are kind of quiet too. And that 'ed' , well, think of it as a t. If y is the tail it's really ee. Up front, sch is sk actually, as in skool (so you are correct); as for ph -- it's really just f; oh yes, kn and gn, just forget the k and the g exist, okay? And while you're memorizing 150,000 words try to remember the jingle, but don't forget there are exceptions, a few, well, maybe hundreds. Got that, sweetheart?
P. S. -- O, if werds lookt az spokn at leest U wood not get az mad at mee wen I tri to teech U theez things.
Witnessing a child's innocent attempt to understand an unreliable English has been a painful experience. Soon spelling bees will sting her into submission. But the price of a vocabulary victory is the defeat of her intuitive sensibilities.
Welcome to Englishit.
from Elementary Concerns, ©2000 John Kirkmire, @2015 Kirkworkshop. All rights reserved.
return to stories page
-- the sights and sounds of English --
New blue shoe two to too -- A child wonders how-in-the-world can these simple words sound alike but look so different? An adult wonders too.
Iz thair eny way owt ov this cunfewshun?
This is what my bewildered daughter wants to know. There are so many vague rules for spelling and pronunciation of English words. Gud luk!
Compared to Spanish, a beautifully organized means of communicating, where nearly everything sounds the same as it's written, phonetically -- English is distorted, incoherent, and not a lot of fun to learn or teach.
She wants to know why snow-plow doesn’t rhyme. Or why been can't join the green teen seen family, or why 'to' won't associate with go so no? She wants to know why I don’t know but is too polite to embarrass me.
I never realized consciously the lunacy involved here.
French may be notorious for its non-articulated word endings but English offers both unpronounced word endings (know) AND unannounced beginnings (know). To know means to understand, but who understands know?
"You just have to English it," I say.
"Englishit?" she says.
Exactly.
Blame it on England. Once upon a time in far away places, while gobbling up foreign markets, the Anglo-Saxon British Empire lapped its tongue everywhere, superseding hundreds of languages in the process. English was top dog. Bow-wow (not to be pronounced 'boh-woh'). The message was clear -- if you want to succeed in commerce and communication you have to do it in English. Ruff, rough.
However, look at Britannia today. England had its run, now it's run down. A tiny bankrupt country. A rather large antique store. A flawed language. Look at oar ore or door; foe, go, sew, bow, dough. Imagine a first encounter with own, cone, sewn, moan. Look at it! Jeeves…
Yes, English is the language of Shakespeare -- but did you ever notice that he never quite grasped the spelling part either? Thy wit doth oft shew thro' thy writ.
If American freedom-fighting independents had revolted against this taxing language (instead of T, eh, tea) I might not be struggling to explain an obtuse system of communication. The Declaration of Independence could have been composed in a completely new language reflecting the multicultural population. Instead, this royal divorce has a long list of 27 formal complaints about the rotten things the King had subjected on the colonies. The document signers probably used up too much space for any more complaints to be listed, but #28 would have been: He has ruled the new world cruelly with the sight slights and nonsensical phony phonetics of his own crown sound.
Try some 'een' words: scene, keen, bean, lien, protein, routine, caffeine, beguine. Notice any difference? Hmm?
Actually, we can spread out the blame a little more because modern English has been composed of bits and pieces of languages near and far. This is in part the reason for the divergent spelling components. But can't we demand some sensible correlation between the spoken and the written word? When children write 'shugr' for sugar, they are telling us something profound: the official spelling is wrong; yet we correct their non-mistake. This is where the common madness takes hold.
Today for billions of people the way out into the world-at-large is a grasp of English. Lambs to the slaughter. Try this well-known example: bough, cough, dough, tough, through. Even with the same pairings of vowels and consonants in a tight little row -- none of these words sound alike! Incredible. Why not use -- bou, cauf, doh, tuf, thru? There is space available in the dictionary, not one spelling would duplicate any other word. So? Not mind-boggling enough?
This fragile planet is coming together on the English system. Seems unfair. International business dealings and most international schools use English. Air traffic controllers govern the heavens using English. Holy Babel. At least they don't have to write it down. But if something should (should -- yes, honey, the L is dumb -- should, would, could, -- it's tricky. Want some magic? Put an 'er' at the end of 'should'. Shoulder. Amazing, huh? ) -- I'd rather not think about this. It's like trying to explain a joke.
If language is an evolving, living organism, shouldn't we be nurturing it along toward a better, more genuine international entity? Of the 3,000 - 4,000 speech communities to choose from, why hasn't a realistic global language developed? 500 million people speak English, yet twice as many people speak Mandarin. Maybe we're missing something here.
Stop for a moment, pronounce and define each of these words in two different ways: lead, read, live, tear, wind. Why do we have shared spellings?
A hundred years ago some disenchanted communicators attempted to develop an international language, one that looked the same as it was spoken: Esperanto (pronounced Esperanto!) -- a sophisticated yet simplified composite of European languages -- a phonetic wonder that never caught on despite having superior potential.
The difference between English and Esperanto is the same as that as petro power to solar power. So much is already invested in the former that it seems too late to change. A bad marriage, death do us part.
We can rationalize -- to its credit English has many more words and a greater vocabulary than most other languages -- that is its glory, its redeeming value. But why are there so many variations on the same sounding words: poor, pour, pore; four, fore, for; rain, reign, rein; way weigh whey? There they're their – Hip-hip hooray for homonyms, but why haven't more sounds been utilized?
Is there more grammar than there is sound to go around? English could generate other linguistic patterns. Fresh sounds could add thousands of new words and/or replace clogged and non-functional spellings. Humans are capable of many other utterances. We tend to mock the way other languages utilize inflections, trilling, clicking, whistling, nasal and guttural sounds. But the joke is on us. There's a huge aural spectrum to be tapped into. English is a bit of a prude.
Glean every unique oral sound from the languages of the world into one special linguistic structure and you've got the Nobel committee waiting at the door.
English grinds against pure intuition and cohesive understanding, especially for all language immigrants young and old attempting to grasp the illogical demands of this language. Sight and sound are out of sync. Our faltering system demonstrates that we still have a long way to go to be able to effectively communicate in a universally clear way. Right? Write? Rite? Wright?
As a child, the same age my daughter is at the moment, I can recall only one aide that helped me through the traumatic craziness of English spelling. One little jingle: "I before E except after C."
How well I remember that: I before E -- such as in 'believe'; except after C -- such as in 'perceive'. That's great, but what about 'their' ?
A quick consultation with Strunk and White informs me that I failed to recall, or I wasn't taught, the complete jingle: "I before E except after C, or when pronounced "ay" as in neighbor and weigh." Or their. Well...
I suppose with my young mind being so weighed down with new words there wasn't enough headroom for the entire jingle. It's not my fault! -- Wait a minute -- what about -- 'weird', 'seize', 'foreign'? None of these words fit the rules of the whole jingle either. Neither does 'either' nor 'neither'. This is crazy.
Well, maybe with English being a memory-based language it also helps to develop memorization skills in the user. That seems like a worthy by-product. Don't you think? Yet, while playing spin doctor, you'd still have to concede English's untreatable sexual disease -- "to each his own" or "one by one each walks toward his own destiny." What about that by-product? Eh? Find the miraculous cure, a genderless pronoun, and your portrait will hang in politically correct classrooms around the globe, a legendary enshrinement ensured.
Meanwhile, I have to keep reminding myself (and a perplexed daughter) that English was not developed to make us feel like fools. We are not stupid -- the language is, kind of.
Let's at least concede a little maintenance can be done. If we use 'I' for the self, why not use 'U' for 'you', the other self. It makes perfect sense and saves two useless letters, Y and O, for other projects. Why not spell 'why' with just Y, and 'oh' with just plain O. Am I nuts? Am I missing some unspoken taboo of language logic?
Professor Henry Higgins claims it's the illiterate regional dialects that is ruining proper English. Miss Eliza Doolittle, a Cockney flower girl, says the real problem is people such as 'enry 'iggins. The reign in Spain stays mainly in the plane.
The bottom line is that most of us are not language experts or even capable of speaking any other language -- English has us so snowed under. Shovel this:
At the end those e's are silent; gh's are kind of quiet too. And that 'ed' , well, think of it as a t. If y is the tail it's really ee. Up front, sch is sk actually, as in skool (so you are correct); as for ph -- it's really just f; oh yes, kn and gn, just forget the k and the g exist, okay? And while you're memorizing 150,000 words try to remember the jingle, but don't forget there are exceptions, a few, well, maybe hundreds. Got that, sweetheart?
P. S. -- O, if werds lookt az spokn at leest U wood not get az mad at mee wen I tri to teech U theez things.
Witnessing a child's innocent attempt to understand an unreliable English has been a painful experience. Soon spelling bees will sting her into submission. But the price of a vocabulary victory is the defeat of her intuitive sensibilities.
Welcome to Englishit.
from Elementary Concerns, ©2000 John Kirkmire, @2015 Kirkworkshop. All rights reserved.
return to stories page