The English Language is one of the most difficult languages to learn, mostly because it has strange, and extraordinarily inconsistent spelling conventions. Why? That is the question author and language expert Arika Okrent answers in her book Highly Irregular. In short, English is a Germanic language spoken by barbarians, altered by the French, influenced by Roman missionaries, solidified by the printing press, and made difficult by elitists. Oh and the Vikings were also involved for a bit. This is why, as Arika points out in her title, Dough, Through, and Tough do not rhyme. I also get to the bottom of a few other pressing issues, such as why Colonel is pronounced kernal, why “moose” is not pluralized “meese” like geese, and why a town in England is the reason ‘sew” doesn’t rhyme with any other words that end in “ew”. Plus we get to the bottom of the clandestine organization known as “The Simplified Spelling Society”, and what they had to do with “The Great Vowel Shift”.
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