this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2024
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I'd blame the guy who thought pronouncing "vague" as /veɪɡ/ (or better who decided to write /veɪɡ/ as vague.).
we didn't have the vegwayest idea how that would work out in the future
Vague is french, segue is italian, hence different pronunciation, the french equivalent would probably be suite.
It's not pronounced in the same way as in french, why is it written the same way? I am not a native English speaker. Learning to speak English was so easy. Probably one of the easiest languages to learn. But the spelling is just the worst thing imaginable.
They literally took the worst parts of all languages for that. There is literally no consistency at all in English spelling. When you hear a word, you have no idea how to write it.
That's because it pulls from french, Germanic, Celt, Roman, Norse, Indian and Hindu and many other languages depending on who conquered us or whom we conquered...
Hindi
Thank you
Yeah that's correct
English spelling isn't very phonetic and generally prefers to keep historical spellings, a large portion of spellings are derived from variations of spellings used by Middle English writers hundreds of years ago. And Early Modern English & Middle English writers often times tended to use French-inspired spellings and etymological spellings (hence the spelling "island" from earlier English "iland" which was incorrectly thought to be related to Old French "isle"). English speakers also tend to change the spellings of loanwords very little when they borrow them, e.g. "naïve"/"naive" or "schadenfreude". But in the case of some words, e.g. "schadenfreude", the pronunciation isn't borrowed very accurately.
This is opposed to writing systems like French and Polish writing, which have had multiple more recent spelling reforms (and semi-frequently have spelling reforms still) which keep the spellings more consistently matched with the spoken language. And, in general, loanwords' spellings are adapted rather than preserved.
It's pronounced pretty much the same in French, except with a soft 'a' and French uses a lot of silent letters, so that's probably why.
As somebody that doesn't speak English natively... WTF?! I would never imagine this pronunciation. If you are going to corrupt the way it's spoken, why not go and change the writing too?
The answer to that question involves talking about the French and what happened in 1066!
Tbf though, Webster tried simplifying some words for American English. He just didn't manage to get them all.