Comment Re:OT: Re: possession (Score 1) 286
Sorry about that little misunderstanding of you main point. Though, going over it again, I just made a connection (almost a minor epihany) as to why it's all the more common words that are more irregular as far as spelling goes.
According to my basic understanding of the roots of Modern English, English draws from Old English, French, and Latin primarily. As you mentioned before, written and spoken French are so dramatically different pronunciation-wise. So it stands to reason that some of that lengual(sp?) tradition carried over. As far as percentages go I'd wager that the and French rooted words make up a good percentage of the words in most people's everyday vocabulary with Old English being very close.
Thankfully there's that base of Old English there as well that has more logical pronunciation with words like "good", "bad", and so on. Plus the more "complicated" words like "decapitation" have Latin roots and are easy to sound out. Otherwise, I think there would be a *lot* more problems with words not seeming to match up to a logical spelling. :-)
According to my basic understanding of the roots of Modern English, English draws from Old English, French, and Latin primarily. As you mentioned before, written and spoken French are so dramatically different pronunciation-wise. So it stands to reason that some of that lengual(sp?) tradition carried over. As far as percentages go I'd wager that the and French rooted words make up a good percentage of the words in most people's everyday vocabulary with Old English being very close.
Thankfully there's that base of Old English there as well that has more logical pronunciation with words like "good", "bad", and so on. Plus the more "complicated" words like "decapitation" have Latin roots and are easy to sound out. Otherwise, I think there would be a *lot* more problems with words not seeming to match up to a logical spelling.
