deus ex machina

illuminice:

if anyone ever tells you that english isn’t ridiculous remember that the reason why we have a silent b in debt is because a group of guys got together to standardise english spelling and got to the word debt, which at the time was primarily spelled either ‘dett’ or ‘det’. so they basically went:

‘everyone speaks latin, right? so let’s put a silent b in debt. like debitum, which is latin for debt. problem solved.’

also the reason why there is a h in ghost is because when the printing press first came to england the only people trained to operate it were flemmish speaking, and they put a h after g because that’s what you do in flemmish. they put shit like ghirl and ghoose, but the only reason why ghost stuck is because people saw ‘the holy ghost’ in the bible and were like ‘well, that MUST be right’.

so yeah english is a really stupid language with some of the most ridiculous spelling

When you know a little about linguistics: The plural of "memorandum" should just be "memorandums" because that's how people naturally say it, "memoranda" is just prescriptivism

When you know a lot about linguistics: Oh my god? So certain English words borrowed from Latin and Greek have competing plural forms, with one form using the English plural -s and the other using a borrowed Latin or Greek form? Do you realize how crazy that is - a language borrowing *inflectional morphology* from another language? And here the two competing plural forms have become markers of education, expertise, and social class, isn't that incredible?

french: haha i dont fuckin know man just do whatever

german: Oberweserdampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitänsmützenabzeichenpoliermittelkanisterdeckelherstellungsverbandsvorsitzendenausweishüllenschneidemaschinenmotorwartungsplanaktualisierungsbeauftragtenzertifikatsausstellungsbehördenbeamtenkrawattenknotenbindeanleitungsautorenbürocomputertastaturanschlusskabelumhüllungsreparaturdienstfahrzeugsvorderreifengummibeschichtungsfabrikgebäudeheizungsrohrverlegungsmechanikerwerkzeugkastenverschlussklappensicherungsschlossfunktionstestverantwortlichenprüfungsfragebogenfragenentwicklerqualifikationsurkundendruckentintenpatronennachfüllpaketbestellformularankreuzkästchendesignerausbildung

english: *shooting up in the bathroom*

gaelic: the pronounciation changes depending on the gender and what letter the word starts and ends with and hahah i dont even know good fucking luck

polish: here have all of these consonants have fun

japanese: subject article noun article verb. too bad there's three fucking alphabets lmao hope your first language isn't western

welsh: sneeze, and chances are you've got it right. idfk

chinese: here's a picture. draw it. it means something. it can be pronounced four different ways. these twenty other pictures are pronounced the same but have very different meanings. godspeed.

arabic: so here's this one word. it actually translates to three words. also pronouns don't really exist. the gender is all in the verb. have fun!

latin: here memorize 500 charts and then you still dont know what the fuck is happening

sign language: If you move this sign by a tenth of an inch, you'll be signing "penis"

russian: idk man its pronounced like its spelt but good fucking luck spelling it

Greek: so basically we're going to add 15 syllables to every word you know and assign it one of 3 genders at random. Also good luck figuring out where to put the accents you piece of shit

latin: words like 'yes' and 'no' aren't important. memorize these 3000 different ways to talk about killing people though because you will use them

greek: hello naughty students it's participle time

egyptian: ancient pictionary

french: pronouncing every letter is for chumps