Saturday, February 28, 2009

Illogical English

Here's a few words with annoying and overly complex spellings:

thought
though
through
tongue
design
eight
insight
could
would
should
..and many more, I'm sure.

What's with all the silent "g"s and "h"s? What's wrong with "thot" and "thru"?



Other observations:
Why use "ph" when "f" is a perfectly capable letter? I guess it doesn't look as nice, but it's much more efficient. Besides "ch" sound, the letter "c" is pointless because we already have "s" and "k". So drop the "h" and make "c" always be pronounced as "ch".

The letter "g" has a similar problem. Why make it sound like a "j" when we have a "j" already?

Other unnecessary letters :
Q ("kw"; or just "k" in words with a silent "u", like "baroque".)
X ("-ks" as in "fix" or "z" in "xenophobia")

However, I do think that both "q" and "x" are much better looking than their respective alternatives.



And I don't get double letters, at least at the end of words. Why does "grass" need two "s"s and "kill" need two "l"s? We wouldn't pronounce them any differently with just one of the letters.



Anyway, that's enough ranting for today. The images are from a project I did at college. This one is my favorite:


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