And loanwords

And also the fact they adopted some spelling rules from Flemish

And the great vowel shift

And the fact that the spelling rules haven't been updated in so long.

Is this right?: "I remember as a kid, I'd be watching american movies with English subtitles on and literally thinking "Why the f does the spelling have to be that hard? What's the point of making it so inconsistent??"

Bold of you to assume that I have one

Wrong. It's just called a "through hole" all holes have openings.

Yes. Also they don't experience friction

Yeah but the 2.5 ft hole is still a hole it’s just half the size that you want it to be but that doesn’t mean it’s half of a hole

Wanna buy a sun dial??

What most people won’t tell you is that people who are good spellers here in the US are worshiped. We’re absolutely put on a pedestal. Actually it’s hard to go out in public when people know you can spell the way we can. It’s can be quite cumbersome.

My answer is “none”. It doesn’t have a hold because it is a hollow cylinder.

It does if I tell you to dig a 5ft hole and you only dig it 2.5 feet deep. Go dig the other half of my hole.

Good point, and I love your name lol

[removed]

Do you have a source for these claims? Because I'm finding the exact opposite (in other words, the result you'd expect)

> In contrast, non-native speakers living in English-speaking countries for many years learn 2.5 words a day, over twice the rate of native speakers. Even with that breakneck speed, researchers found that adults know on average 10,000-20,000 words less than their native counterparts, or a native English speakers’ 8- to 14-year-old vocabulary level. 

I voted for Gore

"Half" is a subjective concept, so it would depend on your original goal.

Says the brain...

I think I'm missing the part of my brain that I would need to understand this.

I still don't get it.

Like, what YOU said makes sense, but their wording... I just don't see how that wording can translate to what you said...

Oh well, I'll take the L on this one.

But can one dig a medium sized hole?

That’s one issue. Danish has even more, and other funny phonological stuff going on, though even then has more consistent sound to spelling matching.

“Now we’re digging a hooooole, that’s what we’re doin. But is a hole even a thing?”

They do. I speak Brazilian Portuguese, which has way more uniform rules regarding spelling versus pronunciation, but there were spelling competitions. Idk how those are going nowadays. But they can be very easy if you are fluent in the language conventions. So usually who participates is on the younger side

None. A hole must have a bottom or it's an opening.

Most native English speakers seem barely able to spell anything but the most basic words, so I doubt anyone besides weird nerds like me spend any time looking up word etymologies. We just memorize how to spell and speak, like anyone else does. We just have the advantage of having been totally immersed in it since infancy.

I'm sure you'd be unsurprised to learn that the evolution of English pronunciation is partially responsible for the weird spellings as well. The "gh" in "light" used to make the Germanic throat noise, but now it doesn't. Writing is a lot stickier than pronunciation. Everyone learned how to spell from writing that happened before pronunciation changed, so the spelling stuck around. The same thing happened in Romance languages when they started diverging from Classical Latin.

I could go on and on, but I'll save it for my ESL coworker who enjoys having esoteric conversations about linguistics.

Well it is probably the fault of the french that the English use this atrocious spelling. Would have to check tho.

Well, Chinesse and Hindi and the most spoken languages because China and India are 1/3 of the entire humanity.