Irrelevante? Quizá.

I should seriously be writing a paper right now.

Or taking a nap.

It's pretty sad that I'm even too lazy to take a nap.

Ah well.

Let's instead go on a journey through English orthography.

Primero, tengo un enlace interesante para los que saben algo de ingles. Or have at least heard of English:

http://pauillac.inria.fr/~xleroy/stuff/english-pronunciation.html

I wish I could take the credit for finding this; nevertheless, it was actually brought to my attention by not-really-syntax professor. It's quite tricky, even for a native English-sprecher like mahself.

Especially since some of the words are apparently archaic Britishisms...

Pero todavía es bastante divertido.

Nonetheless, I would like to clarify once and for all that English pronunciation is NOT chaotic.

There is logic involved, even if 85% of those who speak the language don't even realize it.

For example, this business of -gh/ gh- words such as:

ghost

right

tight

bough

enough

laugh

laughter

daugher

and the like.

Iterestingly enough (<--ha...), the gh- in "ghost" is hanging around because apparently, quite a while back, a Danish printer wasn't fully versed in the actual English "conventions" (as lax as they were at the time) and brought over a few of his own.

Thanks, douche.

As for the words which end in -gh; here is the reason.

(So you can stop writing off English as a crapload of illogical conventions. (...Because that's only partially true.))

So. What would have been the original pronunciation of a word like enough [ənʌf]? Something along the lines of (and forget the vowels, they're not important here) [ɛnɔx]. (The [x] of Scottish or perhaps German --> Bach. That type of thing.)

So. What do phonology and human nature say about this sound?

It's hard to produce. Humans are lazy. Speech is rapid.

Por lo tanto:

[x] -- fronts and becomes --> [f]. Another voiceless fricative.

And there you have the reasoning behind that change.

"But Beccaniles," you might ask, "what about the silent ones?! And what about laughter versus daughter?"

Well. Those are a bit more difficult.

First of all, I'm fairly certain that "daugh" does not exist as a word. At least in modern English. That said, the silent

-gh- in "daughter" can be explained away by some sort of fricative elimination in front of another voiceless obstruent ([t]). Or, it could be that if "daugh" DID exist, the -gh perhaps became silent before combining with -ter or the word dropped away quickly. I don't blame it.

Can't imagine what it would possibly mean.

That said, the little guys like "bough," "through" and "though" can (if another pronunciation or rule didn't apply at some point) be explained away as merely entering English at a different time than "laugh" or "cough." Maybe. This is all just speculation right now. I'm just saying, historical linguistics will always provide an answer similar to this one.

Language is a logical tool.

Why would humans invent something so difficult that is so frequently used?

Oh God. That was such a loaded question.

Point is, through (<--- eeeeey) various miscommunications (thank you, once again, Mr. Danish printer) and spikes of prescriptivism versus descriptivism throughout the history of English orthography, the language has become a nice little catch-all of historical scripts and modern pronunciations.

Shout-out to Noah Webster for instilling a great sense of rebellious nationalist perscriptivism in the American people.

I would also like to apologize (or "apologise," if you're one of the islanders) to all foreign speakers who have undertaken the task of learning this cluster-eff of a language.

Nevertheless, I hope that one day, you can learn to love as I do the historical content present in our seemingly illogical orthography.

Makes reading excedingly boring assignments that much more interesting.

Screw the content.

Especially if it's Thomas Hardy.

Instead,

Czech ow-t the phun things won can due with Ing-lish letrs.

This is probably why I'm always unprepared with my class readings.

beccaniles