🌍 Language & Etymology
Why English Spelling Is So Strange
The Great Vowel Shift
Epigram Literary Guild@epigram_editorial•2 min read
Silent Letters With a Past1 / 3
Why does knight have a k and a gh nobody pronounces? Because once they were pronounced. Many “silent” letters are fossils of older pronunciations that spelling never let go of.
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Irregular things often make sense once you know their history.
The Great Vowel Shift2 / 3
Between roughly 1400 and 1700, the long vowels of English moved. The word bite once sounded closer to “beet”, and house closer to “hoose”. This Great Vowel Shift changed speech while spelling stood still.
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Language keeps moving even when writing tries to stand still.
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