I share some of my research about the reasons why English spelling is so inconsistent
Lvxferre [he/him] - 5mon
That's a great summary. It covers practically all sources of inconsistency (sound changes, internal variation, etymological and fake etymological pressures, cosmetic-O).
Additionally there's a small less-known rule that content words typically have 3+ letters, so sometimes you see "spurious" letters being added in. The link exemplifies it with ebb, add, egg, inn, bee, awe, buy, owe.
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iopq @lemmy.world - 5mon
That's very cool, I didn't know about this one. Thankfully it doesn't add any stress reading (in fact it's to disambiguate words), only complicates writing.
Chinese has a rule where content sentences are minimum three characters. You'd never say 我好 "I'm good". At best you can drop the pronoun and say 很好 "pretty good" but the third character is implied.
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klu9 - 5mon
Great overview!
One typo?
For example, any and many were spelled based on one dialect, but spelled based on another dialect instead of the also current spellings eny, meny.
I think one of those "spelled" should be "pronounced".
iopq in linguistics
The cause of inconsistencies in English spelling
https://iopq.wordpress.com/2025/07/12/the-cause-of-inconsistencies-in-english-spelling/I share some of my research about the reasons why English spelling is so inconsistent
That's a great summary. It covers practically all sources of inconsistency (sound changes, internal variation, etymological and fake etymological pressures, cosmetic-O).
Additionally there's a small less-known rule that content words typically have 3+ letters, so sometimes you see "spurious" letters being added in. The link exemplifies it with ebb, add, egg, inn, bee, awe, buy, owe.
That's very cool, I didn't know about this one. Thankfully it doesn't add any stress reading (in fact it's to disambiguate words), only complicates writing.
Chinese has a rule where content sentences are minimum three characters. You'd never say 我好 "I'm good". At best you can drop the pronoun and say 很好 "pretty good" but the third character is implied.
Great overview!
One typo?
I think one of those "spelled" should be "pronounced".
Thanks, fixed