why english became so inconsistent in pronunciation?
yes, i know that written language doesn't evolve as fast as oral language, but the incongruencies are much more than other widely spoken languages
there is no rule to guess the pronunciation of certain words, you just have to know them, like blood vs gloom
old english wasn't like that afaik
>the incongruencies are much wider than other spoken languages
Citation needed
Because it's the only romantic Germanic language
England industrialised first. Hence solidifying written spelling by the printing press, before major changes in the spoken language.
Subsequently, whenever anyone questioned outdated spellings, the whole argument about 'no one written spelling would match any one accent' came up.
If 'book' suddenly became 'buk' to reflect southern pronunciation, the other half of the country would demand 'book' back.
All living languages are like that.
You are dumb
There is no such thing
>missing the point this hard
The point is that it doesn't clearly follow either romantic or germanic rules
>there is no rule to guess the pronunciation
You can guess plain and dull tonal stress in the second sylable from the end of the word and 90% of the times you'll be right. And 90% of those times the words just have 1 sylable anyway. At that time, you realize this ''''language'''' is like the grunts of an ape.
There's no lamer language than english.
It follow germania ones being a germanic language
English has extremely consistent pronunciations, the second syllable is almost always the one stressed and the vowels in unstressed syllables are schwa.
>why english became so inconsistent in pronunciation?
Because it stopped using accented writing.
Standard spelling always existed before the Industrial Revolution. Just not in Shakespearean and earlier English.
Because the relevant English speaking countries never managed to introduce meaningful spelling reforms
wrong
most languages don't have inconsistencies of that degree, at least those that use a latin alphabeth
regarding the accents you are right, but what rule tells you that the oo in blood is more like "o" with some degree of "a" unlike the oo in gloom?
Its a germanic language it does not matter what YOU think as you are no one
woah woah mate i'm not attacking english, just asking
English is used more widely than most other languages, and in places where people have been permanently settled for longer. Similar differences exist in the Spanish-speaking world.
Sorry.
But pronunciation it not how you determine a linguistic family anyway.
You can trace English back just like a family tree and see where it branches. All roads lead to germany
>Similar differences exist in the Spanish-speaking world
i may be wrong but i think that in that case it applies to letters independently from specific words
ie: ll or y which argentineans pronounce differently than spanish people in all cases
anyway i think that what said is fair enough
you lads are full of shit
Knowing the basics of german pronunciation I can always correctly know how to pronounce a german word
Same with spanish
French can be more tricky, but it's more complex, rather than flimsy
Italian is piss easy except for some hard/soft g/c shit
But english is a work of guessing
Oh what is that? River? Is that gonna be pronounced Ray-ver or Ree-ver. I don't know
Knight? But you don't pronounce K? Weird
You pronounce night the same as nite. Absolutely nonsensical
no
in spanish vowels are pronounced identically in all accents.
some accents pronounce a few consonants differently, but it is 100% consistent and not a problem. (spaniards except Andalucians pronounce Z, Ce, Ci as the TH of English, while all other Spanish speakers just pronounce them like S, and Argentines pronounce ll and Y as the SH of English or the S of measure)
The hardest issue is different countries using different words for the same noun, like Choclo and Maiz for Corn (also tortilla means different things in Mexico and Spain), and Argentina/Uruguay/Paraguay using a different pronoun for You (singular), Vos instead of Tu, that has different verb conjugations.
the American vs British pronounciation of "Water" is a much more drastic difference. Someone who is studying English may not recognize them as the same word.