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exchemist

Veteran Member
No worries. English is not easy.
I mean, why spell cough in such a way? Why have silent letters in words like knock?
These words are Germanic in origin. What has been lost is the original full pronunciation. But I agree it is arbitrary and confusing.

Other languages do this French has strings of silent letters in its verbs. The Dutch don't pronounce their final 'n' s. Polish seems to be a nightmare. But most of these have some kind of regularity in how things are pronounced, whereas in English just about everything seems to be irregular.
 

Jedster

Flying through space
These words are Germanic in origin. What has been lost is the original full pronunciation. But I agree it is arbitrary and confusing.

Other languages do this French has strings of silent letters in its verbs. The Dutch don't pronounce their final 'n' s. Polish seems to be a nightmare. But most of these have some kind of regularity in how things are pronounced, whereas in English just about everything seems to be irregular.

That's why my spelling could be vastly improved.
I play the board game upwords, a sort of £E scrabble, but have to use a dictionary.
I only just scraped my O-level with the lowest grade.

The only other language I know is Hebrew which has no silent letters,
I shall ask my wife about Polish, since she used to speak it.

Cheers
 
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