1189
Can't wait.
(thelemmy.club)
English-language spelling reform now.
But let's only do it in some English speaking countries and not others! I am joking, but this is one of the reasons why American English has diverged from British English.
Relevant xkcd:
My brain got fired while reading this. 🗿
In the ever so pretensious words of Walt Whitman...
"English is the greatest language ever!! It's as great as life itself! Also death!"
Well, one is a compound noun and the other is a trademark that became a common word.
Maybe start with the fact that not all words in use in English are English words.
Or that people in different parts of the world say/spell words differently and we inconsistently applied it:
Kernel and Colonel were the same rank but we took the pronunciation of the first and the spelling of the latter.
read deed redemption, the farm flipper spinoff.
reed deed redemption: a game about the ownership of a plant
Adultery is not the opposite of infantry; whimsy is not an adjective; you can live together in an apartment; and the Midwest is in the Eastern US.
the Midwest is in the Eastern US.
That actually makes sense because it's from the point of view of Europe.
Just as middle east and western Asia are the same region
As an Asian, "Midwest" always feels off. Only now I realized this is the same shit as "Middle East" (which I forgot to give second thoughts as an adult). Now both terms really sucks to me!
It is from the POV of the original colonies.
the Midwest is in the Eastern US.
This explains some of my US geography confusion over the years...
Midwest is not a place, it is a People.
"flammable" and "inflammable" mean the same thing
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'Jam' can mean a fruit preserve, to play music, a stuck door, traffic, to cram something into something else, a tense situation, or to block a radio signal. All spelled and pronounced the same.
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Why can I be overwhelmed or underwhelmed, but not perfectly adequately whelmed?
Nobody's stopping you using "whelmed". You can just start using it whenever the opportunity arises.
I use it occasionally, though normally not seriously, along with words where you have an "un" or "dis', but no positive equivalent, e.g. "gusting" as a positive "disgusting"
English lacks a "gusting" word, but romance languages don't.
e.g. in Italian "gustoso" is the opposite of "disgustoso"
That's a brilliant fact, and perfect example if anyone disagrees with me, thank you :)
lol I love "gusting." Next time I eat someone else's cooking, I'm throwing that out there.
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English can certainly be difficult! It can understood through tough thorough thought though throughout the learning process.
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.
A real English sentence.
Yeah I never understood that one myself
I'm a fan of the phrase "before was was was, was was is""
I'd guess this sentence would be just as flashy in any language really, not just in english
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It's phunny how fotographs phunction in filosofy.
There is nothing more useless than ph.
until youre being eaten alive by acid
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Phuck ophph
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past tense read and toxic lead vs reading and leading if somebody doesn’t underntand
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I would like to recommend Highly Irregular: Why Tough, Through, and Dough Don't Rhyme—And Other Oddities of the English Language.
It's a pretty quick read and it explains exactly how the English language became such a mess. For each thing that doesn't make sense, it provides a reason that explains it. Short version: the timing of the Great Vowel Shift relative to the invention of the printing press really screwed it over. There's quite a bit more (Norman invasion in particular), but that was what codified all the badness.
Learning the "why" of so many previously preposterous language and spelling rules was gratifying and enlightening. They're still preposterous but slightly less maddening now.
There's also an excellent podcast interview with the author on 99% Invisible. Check it out. It made me buy the book and I definitely recommend it every time a post like this comes up.
Those three are even all from the old vocabulary, they all have German cognates: zäh, durch, Teig
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this post was submitted on 30 May 2026
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