cyberpunk007@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
It’s a miracle I know it, and having to teach someone how to read and spell was an eye opener for me trying to explain “this is like this except for this one word because… Reasons and sometimes there’s a variation like this because…reasons” so many times.
I once had a roommate from Chile and he asked what the difference in pronunciation was for “juice” versus “Jews”. I’m still not sure I properly got the difference across…
Also the difference between “to rob” and “to steal” was an interesting thing to think through and then explain.
I can see why he’d have trouble with those two, because Spanish doesn’t have the English “z” sound. They’ll both sound the same using Spanish pronunciation .
Mostly the “reasons” just boil down to etymology. We spell things the way the languages we stole them from spelled them.
Having to explain to my spanish speaking friends why an english word is spelled one way but pronounced another entirely different way gave me the same experience. So many times i have to tell them: “i don’t know english is just weird.”
samus12345@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Usually the reason is either because some jerks intentionally changed certain spellings to look more French (“receipt” didn’t have a “p” originally, for example), or just because English is such a mongrel language with words taken from various other languages with different spelling and pronunciation rules.