If you’re trying to learn English, good fuckin’ luck, because “GHOTI” is pronounced “fish” (touGH, wOmen, acTIon).
English is a bizarre and wonderful language, and I am so, so glad that I was born into it rather than having to learn it as an adult. Of all the major languages out there, it’s gotta be in the top three hardest to learn, because the sounds made by various letters have almost no consistency. And the reasons for that are absolutely fascinating.
English is really three languages, maybe four. It’s a mixture of the original Germanic stuff, high-falutin French, and then an injection of Greek and Latin. Each of these mutations happened at a specific point, and each brought with them a whole host of new words and sounds that we now just call “English”. French was the first major change, and the best way to examine it is through meat.
In 1066, Norman invaders sailed from France into the British Isles and took over. They became royalty, and their language, French, became the language of the ruling class. French words became fancy-talk, and we can still see that today: french terms are usually reserved for the more eloquent style of discourse (like that, right there). But the most obvious example of this is the meat that you eat. English peasants raised animals, which were butchered for and consumed by the French aristocrats. So the living animals (the pigs, cows and chickens) were known by one name to the Germanic-speaking peasantry, and the meat that they produced (the pork, beef and poultry) were known by a completely separate name to the French-speaking rulers.
The next mutation happened during the Renaissance. Suddenly, this whole world of “the Old Masters” opened up, and with it, their languages. Latin, Greek, and some Arabic made the jump into English with the “re-discovery” of astronomy, physiology, and all those other “-ologies”. What this means is that in modern English, there’s usually three ways to say something. There’s the original, simple, Germanic; there’s the fancy, erudite French; and there’s the technical, scientific-sounding Latin or Greek. Like with the word “green”.
You can say “green” and people know what you mean, it’s clear-cut, it’s simple. It’s Germanic. Or, you could say “verdant”, and add a bit more linguistic spice by using the language of the ruling class (although it has its roots in Latin). Lastly, if you’re talking about something scientific, you’re probably using words like “chloroplast” or “chlorophyll”, both of which are rooted in “chloro”: the Greek word for “green”.
English has had several major mutations, and I reckon we’re about due for another. The introduction of the internet has completely changed the way we interact, and with it, the words we use for interaction. New slang, new abbreviations, all sorts of new stuff are moving into the way we talk, like LOL, which we looked into in this issue. So, to all future and current learners of English: I wish you the best of luck. Because there’s a hard thing about this language, a certain je ne sais quoi, a multi-lingual convergence, that you’ll have to get used to.