The Screwed-Up History of English Spelling | Otherwords

The English spelling system is a MESS... arguably more than any other language. How did it get this way?
Otherwords is a PBS web series on Storied that digs deep into this quintessential human trait of language and fınds the fascinating, thought-provoking, and funny stories behind the words and sounds we take for granted. Incorporating the fıelds of biology, history, cultural studies, literature, and more, linguistics has something for everyone and offers a unique perspective into what it means to be human.
Host: Erica Brozovsky, Ph.D.
Creator/Director: Andrew Matthews & Katie Graham
Writer: Andrew Matthews
Producer: Katie Graham
Editor/Animation: Andrew Matthews
Executive Producer: Amanda Fox
Fact Checker: Yvonne McGreevy
Executive in Charge for PBS: Maribel Lopez
Associate Director of Programming for PBS: Niki Walker
Stock Images from Shutterstock
Music from APM Music
Otherwords is produced by Spotzen for PBS.
© 2022 PBS. All rights reserved.

[@silverviper360]

My favorite description of English is that it is not a language, it is three languages stacked on top of each other wearing a trench coat trying to pass as one language

[@bri1085]

The Vicent Adultman of languages

[@DneilB007]

That’s brilliant. I’m going to steal that. Thanks!

[@CtrlAltDlt68]

@@bri1085 He's gotta go to the job store.

[@bri1085]

@@CtrlAltDlt68 And do a business

[@ramonadeclou6325]

It actually is passing as one language

[@lynnettevelez676]

This just further backs up the meme "english beats up other languages in dark alleys, then rifles thru their pockets for loose grammar and spare vocabulary". Love it!

[@imveryangryitsnotbutter]

Like culture like languange, amirite?

[@arichan7599]

true...even English took Filipino words back in the day and are now used as slang kinda cool

[@bri1085]

@@arichan7599 basura is the only Filipino word I've ever seen used as slang

[@DneilB007]

@@bri1085 Boondocks is from Tagalog bundók (literally ‘mountain’, but informally ‘the back country’, abandoned or out-of-the-way place). Cooties is from the Malay kutu (‘parasite’). The yo-yo used to be called a bandalore, but took on the name yo-yo thanks to a Filipino immigrant to the US. I’m sure there’s more, but that’s all that I know about.

[@bri1085]

@@DneilB007 I did not know any of that, that's proper interesting

[@rmdodsonbills]

It's also true that when English adopts a loan word it's much more likely to use the spelling from the original language, while other languages tend to adapt the spelling to their own spelling rules. Another thing I've noticed as I listen to people from other parts of the US is that we can't consistently change the spelling to match the phonetics because we don't pronounce words the same way. Where I grew up "bag" rhymes with "lag" but a few hundred miles east of here, it rhymes with "leg." In Texas, "on" rhymes with "San Antone." You can't standardize that!

[@luuketaylor]

Of all the years I've spent binging linguistic content here on KZbin, this has got to be my new favorite video, Dr. B! I'm honestly in a bit of shock that after all this time I never learned, in such brevity, this concept of hypercorrection. I've already sent this video to a few of my friends who are English teachers so they too can enjoy wrapping their heads around this. Storied is a gem on this platform.

[@sirmoonslosthismind]

yes, the prescriptivists have done great damage to the english language over the years. we are much better advised to document and consolidate how english works in reality rather than to try to "correct" everything.

[@digitaljanus]

I once talked with the former editor of the Canadian Oxford English Dictionary, and she told the story of one of those "inkpot" words that went awry. These early modern scholars put a silent "p" at the beginning of "ptarmigan" (the bird) because they assumed the name came from "pteron", ancient Greek for "wing". But the ptarmigan was pretty much unknown to the ancient Greeks; the name actually comes from Scottish Gaelic "tàrmachan" meaning "croaker". She also half-joked that there were about a dozen different pronunciations for "porpoise" going around in the 16th century, and the "standard" one must have been chosen by throwing darts at the available options.

[@gabor6259]

Spelling it like that defies the porpoise of simplification.

[@alanbarnett718]

NOW! AT LAST! I KNOW!!! (It finally all makes sense...) 🥴

[@Delgen1951]

sounds about right.

[@golDroger88]

How do you know the Greeks didn't know the bird?

[@cindykaywebster4643]

Too funny !!!

[@danielvuoristo5489]

As a Swedish speaker, it's fascinating to hear old versions of English words that are identical to modern words in Swedish and other Nordic languages, for example hus and hund

[@levent.a.7280]

All Germanic languages are similar, English, german, Dutch, swedish, Danish, Norwegian are from the same family

[@MrHaighahatta]

Quite a difference today between "husband" and "house-bound," though they are, originally, the same.

[@arolemaprarath6615]

@@levent.a.7280 English is not fully Germanic. It is a hybrid of Latin and Germanic.

[@robotlegs]

@@arolemaprarath6615 You can speak full English sentences without Latin words. But you can't speak full English sentences without Germanic grammar and vocabulary. I don't think hybrid is an accurate description, English just has thousands of borrowed words from Latin and French.

[@jonunciate7018]

@@arolemaprarath6615 and french.

[@MoneyGist]

"Most other languages have spelling systems that are regular and predictable." French: "Am I a joke to you?"

[@soquentiasseurompe688]

French is super regular and predictable compared to English. Yes, there are a lot of silent letters resulting in homophones, but when you know how a word's written, in most cases you know how it's pronounced.

[@MoneyGist]

@@soquentiasseurompe688 You should try Spanish.

[@soquentiasseurompe688]

@@MoneyGist I know intermediate Spanish and French. This doesn't affect my point. I'm comparing French to English, not to Spanish.

[@MoneyGist]

@@soquentiasseurompe688 Good for you. I was comparing French to "most other languages."

[@lrizzard]

french spelling is so consistent (with some exceptions) i can pretty correctly read french words despite only having A1 level french English on the other hand...

[@ts25679]

As much as our language can be a challenge, even for native speakers, I do love how our history is ingrained in the language. Though admittedly this was small comfort to dyslexic me in school.

[@AG-hx6qn]

That's what I love about it, too. :)

[@themroc8231]

I am from France, a country famous for writing two times more letters than it pronounces. But I also learned to speak Spanish as a child, and I always found it remarkable how everything you write in Spanish is pronounced just the way it's written, to the point that making kids do dictations in schools would make no sense. But as an adult I went to live in Argentina, where the Spanish language and pronunciation has been modified by an enormous influx of Italians and other Europeans immigrants in the 19th and 20th century, and here Spanish orthography has become almost as opaque to the language's phonology as it is in France. One of the most glaring examples is how people here pronounce v and b in the exact same manner, to the point that I have spent time explaining to them how the letters sound different in other languages, and they seem physically unable to hear the difference. And confusions between v and b are the most common spelling mistakes you'll find here. They also pronounce s and z in the same manner, so that words like caza (hunt) and casa (house) are undistinguishable. To this day, now that I am perfectly bilingual in rioplatense Spanish, my go-to method when I am in doubt about the spelling of a word is trying to remember how it was pronounced in Spain's Spanish.

[@silenttakuza]

Most words are pronounced as they spelt but iirc seguir conjugates in third person with an umlaut(though not always written).

[@novedad4468]

It is true that c and s are two distinguishable sounds in Standard Spanish in opposition to latin American and Southern Spanish dialects, but b & v only have one sound in both Spain and Latin America. As a side note, as a native Spanish speaker, I too was really confused when spelling contests would appear in American movies

[@aleikava]

I'm spanish and I used to do spanish dictations when I was at school and at highschool. It's true that spelling in Spanish is easier compared to many languages, mostly compared with English, but kids still do some errors with mute h or the difference between b and v.

[@juandiegovalverde1982]

B and v are pronounced the same in all of the Spanish dialects, including Spain Spanish.

[@themroc8231]

@@silenttakuza It's an accent, not an umlaut. And it transcribes pronunciation. This is an oversimplification, but usually in Spanish you pronounce the accent on the penultimate vocal, in which case you do not write the accent, but if the accent is on any other vocal on the word then you write it down. Example: Papa (pronounced pápa) means pope Papá means dad.

[@sandradermark8463]

The English language is like a Norman château built on the foundations of a Saxon mead hall, then finished in Renaissance Tudorbethan style and furnished with furniture and curiosities from all over this planet.

[@joanhoffman3702]

Well put!

[@eliscanfield3913]

I think some of the mead was still available when they were building the rest, lol

[@andrew7955]

With Norse nails

[@CaptainAmaziiing]

You had me at mead hall. Everything after that is inkhorn.

[@sgg17003]

And then renovating with Ikea furniture and replacing the chandelier with a disco ball.

[@Kairikey]

I'm Thai, and this topic reminds me a lot of my own language, lol. While Thai words do have more consistency, especially in the vowel department, than English words, we also have a lot of weird word that consists of silent letters and duplicated letters which help trace back to its origin. Tho, the reason is not snobbery, but more because we imported writing system that doesn't fit our language that came with many weird letters that we don't have, plus no equivalent for the sounds we had. And we ended up losing those unique sounds in modern days. Our language is pretty hard to learn to read and write for beginners, and on top of that, we also lack a nice and clean romanization system without resorting to diacritic and other IPA-ish letters because of the lack of vowel glyph.

[@archtansterpg4246]

I tried learning the Thai alphabet and this was definitely what tripped me up. Some silent letters and inconsistent spellings, plus a lot of consonants that seem to make the same sounds. It's a beautiful language, but it might take me a while to get back to it.

[@blimpytheseal3383]

another คนไทยยยยยยยย yayyy

[@HuyQuangBui]

Yup. As a result, for instance, when I pressed on the microphone on my smartphone keyboard and say "กาน-ไช้-แรง-งาน-ทาด" for a word meaning "slave labour", while the word should have been spelt "การใช้แรงงานทาส", the system sadly returned "การใช้แรงงานธาตุ".

[@TomCruz54321]

As someone who speaks a phonetic language, learning English as a second language was very annoying. The rules are all over the place and there are tons of exceptions to the rules. The only way I could really learn is to forget all the rules and just memorize the spelling of each word. The things that gave me most trouble are the random double letters. Double "rr", "tt", "ss", "nn". In fact I still get "exagerrate" wrong to this day. I always think it's a double "rr" but it's actually a double "gg". Another one is past and present tense that spell the same like "read" and "read". Another one is words that have the same spelling but mean different things like "project" (work plan) and "project" (cast an image). Don't even get me started in "ie" and "ei"..

[@stevetheduck1425]

Then there is the trade of being a 'bookkeeper', which has three doubled letters in a row. This is actually quite recent, having been 'book-keeper' when I was a kid.

[@Matzu-Music]

a vowel is shortened when followed by a doubled consonant.

[@DinoBryce]

That’s why they should learn rules @@Matzu-Music

[@sweetssandbox3526]

If it helps, I make those same spelling mistakes as a 30 year native speaker. My worst weakness is the word “occasionally”

[@GregPiperWriter]

It's an idiotic language and the only reason it spread everywhere is imperialism.

[@luisespineira9882]

Erica is a great host. She makes this topic enjoyable to listen.

[@jtduarte6829]

And she is also gorgeous which is made even better with her inteligence

[@niccolopaganini1782]

Can't agree enough @Jt Duarte and @Luis Espineira

[@Chance57]

Dr. Brozovsky does bring a lot to these videos.

[@zacknelson7839]

@@jtduarte6829 haha yeah I actually started watching her videos because she's hot but kept watching them because the content is really good too.

[@azuarc]

Now in my 40s, and monolingual, I thought I was generally done learning (pre-existing) words. Then yesterday I discovered that "quay," a word I'd only ever seen written, is pronounced like "key,"

[@NovaGirl8]

you're joking, right? *a google later* wtf?! i'm bilingual with English as my second. It was fun learning English in school and I also encounter some new words and new pronunciations. as a kid, I refused to believe lily was a real word and grudgingly pronounced colonel was pronounced as 'kernel'

[@TacticusPrime]

@@NovaGirl8 The more annoying word is lieutenant, pronounced very differently in the US and in the UK.

[@jasonspence]

@@TacticusPrime see, it's so confusing that that's backwards. It's spelled differently, but pronounced lootenant in both places. In the UK, it's spelled leftenant! I remember reading how the "f" in UK and "u" in US both come from a "v" sound

[@Alex_Deam]

@@jasonspence Lieutenant is not pronounced lootenant in the UK. @TacticusPrime had it the right way round.

[@theshyestsasquatch]

First time I seen that word I thought it was pronounced ‘kway’ because it’s spelled like what ducks say, you know, quack.

[@AM-kr4pv]

We still have that throaty gh sound in words like might and light in Scots. Usually represented by a CH like in Chanukah and is part of a little tongue twister that goes "it's a braw bricht moonlicht nicht the nicht" (it's a great bright moonlit night tonight). Kind of reminds you that Scots and English both grew alongside each other from shared Germanic origins and there's things we ended up keeping in one and dropping in the other.

[@martinhughes2549]

In Wales certain old English place-names have a Welsh name which in Welsh phonetic rules is retained, eg Newborough; "NiwBrwch" or Broughton= Brychdyn. The hard sounds are retained in Cymraeg!

[@alanbarnett718]

Some people think Scots is just an earlier form of English that's survived somehow in the uncivilised North, but it's not so! Basically, they are two different languages that developed at the same time from similar roots, and had a great deal of influence on each other (English on Scots more than Scots on English), and so ended up (almost) mutually comprehensible. And then there's Glaswegian...

[@brenkelly8163]

Fabulous. As a trained linguist, this was the best video explanation on the spelling for all ages and included many key idea built in, like the great vowel shift, and given with wit, humor, and examples. A must for students, teachers, anyone learning English, and anyone spelling or writing in English- heck, everyone. A+ professor!

[@MorganThaGorgan]

One of my favorite phenomenons in English speakers is this idea that if you have only ever read a word, but have never heard it said you end up with completely different words. For years, I thought rapport was pronounced just as you see it (rap-part). Turns out you don't even pronounce the t and the a is more like an e (rep-poor). Weirdly enough, I have found Spanish, Cayuga, Seneca, Cherokee and Navajo to be easier to learn and more consisten than english. English really is one of those languages where even the speakers don't know it very well.

[@pbsstoried]

Chaos was one of those words for me! - Dr. B

[@Torlik11]

It makes me think of the movie "Megamind", the way the main character mispronounce some words like "school" because why would "ch" ever sound like "k"?

[@seansreading]

Gunwale

[@ngw03]

I never thought I’d see the words “easier to learn” used to describe Navajo, but I suppose that says more about the difficulty of English… 😉

[@naginiriddle7091]

@@Torlik11 but it isn't just English that employs these rules. As pointed out, English is a hodgepodge of several other languages, which is why the rules appear to break all the time. "Ch" makes a "k" sound in the Italian language, and it always does. But in English, it can be "k", "h", "sh", and "ch". It all depends on where the word originally came from. English honestly isn't that difficult compared to some other languages I have seen. What's cool is getting to trace the words back to their origin. You can find so many different language influences in English, which makes it pretty interesting to study.

[@Torlik11]

As someone who speak french as a first language, when I read something in english it's always a fun game to look at words that where borrowed from french and try to guess how it's pronounced in english.

[@twistedtachyon5877]

How do the cinq ports score in that game?

[@Delgen1951]

then how about words that started in French broth into English and them back into French like Diskette for Floy disk, which was called Diskette in English or Weekend and all.

[@Kai555100]

Same but I look for german words

[@rodcoates7027]

Didn't a French author once say that English was very much like French but spoken with a bad accent?

[@MrTrilbe]

English where the french loan words are pronounced with a bad Danish accent and the Danish loan words are pronounced with a bad French Accent and the British words are mostly used in an area of France, with a French accent... o/ Brittany/Bretagne

[@DeclanMBrennan]

Lots of people are saying Erica Brozovsky is a great presenter which she indubitably is, but I think the emphasizing graphics also contribute a lot to getting a high volume of information across in such a short time while still being very entertaining.

[@jeff__w]

Masha Bell, a retired teacher of English, has her own take on the messed-up spelling of English in her blog post "The depressing history of English Spelling." She points to "1) Adoption of o for /u/ next to m, n, v and w (e.g. month, love, wonder) in the 8th century. 2) Diluting regular e and e-e spellings (erly, frend, hed...speke, speche, theve) from 1430 onwards. 3) Insertion of surplus letters by early printers (e.g. build, guard, have). 4) Ruining the short and long vowel system, as in ‘cop, copper - cope’ with a) omitted consonant doubling in words of Latin origin (proper, copy) by Samuel Johnson b) and using doubling for showing Latin spelling changes (rather than a short, stressed vowel), e.g., apply instead of aply, because in Latin the word had the prefix ad (adplicare). 5) Changing previously regular English endings and prefixes to irregular Latinate ones, e.g., old English ‘importence’ → importance; ‘inclose’ → enclose. 6) Adoption of different spellings for different meanings (e.g. bred/bread)." (That's her list. I would have at least made the items parallel.) Samuel Johnson gets a good part of the blame, actually.

[@richtylka465]

This was fascinating. You are a great communicator, and your animator is a genius. The "I love Homer" poster had me shaking with laughter (or lafter).

[@twistedtachyon5877]

Ooooohhhh. Suddenly that poster makes WAY more sense.

[@idraote]

As a long-time learner of English (we are talking decades), I am still confronted with the random word I don't know how to pronounce correctly. Most of those words I have learned by reading. Luckily for me, Cambridge has a beautiful online dictionary with both British and US pronunciations.

[@JustAnotherPerson4U]

I still remember coming across the words promiscuous and countenence, and just sounding them out slowly to work out how to pronounce them.

[@blindleader42]

"long-time learner of English" is a label that applies in varying degrees to Americans as well, even well educated one. My high school biology teacher, never got the message about the pronunciation of "women", and pronounced it the same as "woman", even exaggerating the 'wo' like "woe" (See 7:10 above). A friend who is an intelligent and successful engineer, persists in pronouncing automaton as aut-o-MATE-on instead of au-TOM-e-ton, in spite of the example recordings and lexical references, I've given him. Of course, I am perfect in both spelling and pronunciation... Yeah. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

[@georgedunn320]

As a T-shirt I have puts it, "People Who Mispronounce Words. ... READ."

[@LuisSierra42]

I spent my childhood and teens studying English but i really only learned when i was exposed to it via movies and media in general because really they can't teach you enough in school to be able to have a conversation or at least be understood because of all the peculiarities of the language

[@pokechatter]

@@JustAnotherPerson4U My memory of the spelling of beautiful comes from a teacher I had decades ago had students sound it out as be-a-utiful. My brain still thinks back to that whenever I see the word.

[@nicoledegennaro2993]

I think one of the most interesting things about English is that even most native speakers will "mispronounce" (in quotes because what is considered mispronunciation I find is highly dependent on dialect and location as well as other factors) at least a few words. I consider myself pretty well read and well spoken and even I have a few pronunciation quirks. But most of us have subconsciously learned to recognize at least the most common variations of pronunciation for words. Therefore, even though there might be slight variations, so long as it's within what that individual perceives as an "acceptable range" of pronunciations we still know what they are saying and if the change is subtle enough most of us don't even notice that the way the pronounced it was a bit different. I'm not sure if this is the case with other languages too, but I notice it a lot with English and I always find it really neat

[@mrs.g.9816]

The fact that non-English speakers can be quite fluent in speaking and writing English (with the exasperatingly complicated spelling and pronunciation!) while I still struggle to remember my Spanish or French is very humbling. BTW - I like documentaries about early and middle English and the great vowel shift. Fascinating to hear how early, middle and Shakespearian English sounded like.

[@charlesphilips2045]

Erica Brozovsky is an amazing explainer. I'm totally enjoying Otherwords.

[@weidergonga2997]

There were a tv show in Brazil that promoted a national spelling bee contest among teens. Portuguese is kinda straight to the point when it comes to pronunciation, but there's also a lot of exception to the rules, so it was fun.

[@lemonz1769]

Portuguese straight to the point ?!?! I suppose the spelling is relatively regular but you make up for it with the amount of vowel sounds, multiple variations of the letter “r”, initial/mid vs final vowel, peculiar consonant/vowel combos… and that’s just BP. European Portuguese is another story.

[@weidergonga2997]

@@lemonz1769 Yeah, but when compared to other romance languages, like French, Spanish, our pronunciation is very simple

[@lemonz1769]

@@weidergonga2997 Maybe it’s just me then 🤷🏻‍♂️ I’m a native English speaker that studied Spanish for 6 years and French for 2 years. I decided to explore Portuguese during this pandemic and have thoroughly enjoyed it. However, I’ve found it to be much more difficult to master pronunciation than any other Romance language.

[@weidergonga2997]

@@lemonz1769 Well, I'm a Portuguese native speaker, so... I also studied French and Spanish and from my perspective those languages are much harder to master the pronunciation. I even began to study Russian and Turkish, and I found them so much easier in terms of pronunciation than the ones I was supposed to be more familiar with. And kudos to you, for taking the time to learn Portuguese, I'm always delighted when I know someone from another language root is learning it.

[@OPequeNiNo1]

When I was little and saw spelling competitions in cartoon I never understood them to be honest, I thought to myself “but you know how to say the word so it is trivial to spell it…” And this is true except for some super fancy words which was not the case for the spelling competitions in the cartoons where they had to spell very common words.

[@rab52764]

Just found this series. Loved them all so far. I'll be going back to watch them all! She actually makes grammar and etymology fun!

[@ankitsonariya918]

Erica is one of sweetest hosts on any informational show I've seen

[@ldbarthel]

One thing you didn't cover in the video is how English was left to the people after the Norman conquest. The upper classes did not deign to sully themselves with the common tongue and much pruning took place. For example we lost most of the noun declensions. Losing those endings had impacts on spelling as well. Modern English must now rely on word order and helper prepositions like "to" to understand whether a noun is the subject, direct object, or indirect object of a sentence.

[@Lucius1958]

Don't forget the Danes...

[@Doublemonk0506]

Also, didn't the French noble invent swear words since they wouldn't be caught dead saying scitte or ærs (sh*t and a**)

[@Elheru42]

One feature I always thought was fascinating is that food at the produce level has a Old English root, due to being the realm of peasants. Whereas the consumed food, that which the aristocracy would connect with, has a French root. So you end up with differences between cow and beef, sheep and mutton.

[@a.g.m8790]

“Known for the inkpots that nerds and know-it-all’s kept on their desk” damn doc 😭

[@karlkutac1800]

Just re-watched this. I wish Dr Erica would make the videos twice as long, and give more examples. I'm sure she has more to say. I'd love to hear it. Great job, very informative.

[@wiseausrs]

Thanks Dr Erica! I really do enjoy this series. It's immensely informative and I think this is important stuff to know for contextual reasons. You're an awesome educator!

[@acoupleofschoes]

I'd love to see an episode on the different forms and usages of English past tense verbs. For a lot of words there are unique past tense words as well as -ed endings, such as burned/burnt, sweeped/swept, dived/dove, shined/shown, outshined/outshown, sneaked/snuck, lighted/lit, bided/bid, swimmed/swam, and many more. Most book writers, or editors, tend to use the -ed endings, but speaking I usually use the unique word.

[@bri1085]

Isn't the part tense for shine, shone?

[@blindleader42]

@@bri1085 Yes, 'shone' is the correct spelling. But shined and shone are equally correct for both past tense and past participle. Irregular verbs are a nightmare for even the best educated English speakers.

[@bri1085]

@@blindleader42 I was just surprised at the OP putting Shown besides shined, felt like I was being gaslit.

[@hectorrobertocontrerasmiranda]

i think this is part of the "forgoted words" video

[@ItsPForPea]

Yup, I'd recommend "forgeted words" by KZbin channel "Be Smart" too

[@-FermatsletzterSatz-]

Thank you very much for the interesting video! The inconsistencies of english and french always bothered me. Especially the english language was always a thorn in my side as its pronounciations changed so much compared to the other germanic languages. When I first heard about the great vowel shift, it was very disappointing to me that english used to be more consistent and close to other germanic languages and lost that consistency for no apparent reason. I always liked the example of the word "child" which used to be pronounced "cild" with a "k" sound and an "i" like in "invent". The relation to the german word "Kind" is easy to see. But not only did the great vowel shift mess up the word, it didn't even do it right as the plural "children" still uses the old "i" sound for some reason. Anyway, the video was very insightful to me about the development of the english languages and the multitude of external influences. To be honest, the spelling of the english language still bothers me and probably always will. But at least, I have a better understanding of why it's that way.

[@sirmoonslosthismind]

what we now call english began life as a creole, and at heart always will be.

[@Deviantygr]

Did you mean English will always be a þ in your side? ;-D

[@-FermatsletzterSatz-]

@@Deviantygr I just saw your comment again after 4 weeks and chuckled just like I did the first time. That was a good one. ^^

[@ALV5252]

I always love these otherwords video because as a person who wants to know stuff about just anything, this feeds my soul.

[@YouTubeallowedmynametobestolen]

Wow! I think this was the best video on this topic that I have ever seen. I learned a lot! Thanks so much, Dr. Brozovsky.

[@NotLazySelectivelyMotivated]

This is the kind of stuff you need to know to go on Jeopardy.

[@riaz8783]

I cannot get enough of Otherwords. Dr Brozovsky is such an engaging host and the topics are fascinating. Learning Japanese, it becomes really obvious how consistent their pronunciation is compared to ours.

[@andrebserpa]

It's important to remember that although these factors explain the messed up spelling system, none of them are "to blame" for it being "permanent". In fact, there's no reason to see any spelling as permanent. Several languages are frequently updating their writing systems to better match current pronunciation (German had a reform in 96, and Portuguese had one just in 2004, for example). Granted, English spelling is so far gone at this point, and the language is so ubiquitous in the world that it's hard to see any willingness to change. But one can only hope.

[@samuelgibson780]

Because it is used all over the world on the internet, people are using it in all kinds of cool ways. I would expect it to evolve a lot but remain fairly intelligible for a very long time, if left totally unchecked. Love me some English. Idiosyncrasies and all!

[@NoActuallyGo-KCUF-Yourself]

One of the biggest difficulties in English is so many people follow and spread false "rules" of English. Many so-called exceptions to grammar rules are really because the rule either doesn't exist or is misunderstood/ misinterpreted.

[@JDubyafoto]

There is a lot of influence from Celtic & Welsh. Also, written English and oral English were not the same as only the church and power brokers knew how to read or write. There's also Old English, Middle English & Modern English. The history of the English language is quite fascinating.

[@athenahitchin7738]

Love this whole video, the ending comparison is really interested me the most as the comparison to texting as like this reminded me of doing Shakespeare in theatre in high school and how my theatre teacher who was a thespian (his words) brought up why Shakespeare jokes and monologues are written in a way to address the class groups of the theatre, flexing their word knowledge to the balconies first then continuing with simular context's jokes for the folks in the sets, and finally a crass often very Old English joke at the end. Reminds me how we now are starting to reach a point with texts and digital spelling to almost write English to fit the audience rather than the audience trying to get the conversation.

[@lukefuller284]

I've never seen such a comprehensive breakdown to answer the question that every English speaker asks. I now have something to show my friends next time I hear it!

[@beware.thegroove6937]

newbie here and I AM OBSESSED WITH THIS CHANNEL. I ALMOST SCREAMED WHEN YOU DID THAT "aCcTuAlLy"

[@ravendaine]

I just finished reading Highly Irregular, which is a really fun dive into these same forces shaping English, told in little tidbits about how a bunch of different quirky things came to be! Highly recommend it!

[@tunesquicklee]

i always tell people "if english wasn't my first/native language, i'd never be able to learn it" and THIS IS WHY. so props to people learning it as their not-first language. it's confusing as hell. also, your brains are denser (compliment)

[@superioritymelee]

Dunno, as a non native, learning English seems so easier than German. I think learning the pronunciation of a word isn't that hard considering many people hear English so often. Though this might be due to hindsight bias.

[@rhel373]

I didn't find it that hard to be honest. I mean, yeah, it's a complete mess, but eventually you kind of develop a feel for it. Plus your grammar is way simpler than in my own native german for example.

[@sugarzblossom8168]

English is my first language and I fond spelling and sometimes pronunciation extremely hard and I still want to learn french to some degree which I am worse at

[@SniffishBowl]

It’s easy once you get a grasp of it.

[@MultiDudeman]

This has been one of my favorite episodes, I knew some of this but not all, very informative, great job!

[@raspberry1080]

I love this series!!! Now I have something to tell my students when they ask why English spelling is such a mess.

[@Adam-lc6mk]

I finally have a video to send people when they talk crap about other people misspelling words or using "slang" I try explaining that English is just a Mashup of all the greatest hits (some not so great) and they look at me like I'm crazy lol

[@LVXMagick]

What a great video! It is inevitably that our language will evolve as it has in the past over time, forever. People think if words as so solid but they are only signs that point to a greater essence. The essence is what never changes.

[@kylacecilialoves]

Thank you so much for making this video. I have been wanting this lesson for so long

[@whatsinaname7289]

That glasses trick is magic. Loved it! Also love your attitude and presenting style, doc. Subscribed to see more of this.

[@phoenixparrot9351]

The spelling Bee was made officially in the United States but it was a practice done on a smaller scale throughout the British Commonwealth, it was just done by teachers with there students, the United States just made it a big competition.

[@Cyrribrae]

Woah this is so cool! Great job bringing in stuff from all corners of history and explaining the human motivations behind their influence on language. Lots more appreciation for both the difficulty of English and also appreciation for its inconsistencies. In some terrible backwards way, it's almost poetic that this language so disjointed and imposed upon in various ways would end up being a lingua franca.

[@WanderTheNomad]

It's like the ultimate compromise

[@darrowoflykos4909]

Recently discovered your channel and can’t get enough, I can’t stop plowing through your videos. Great content!

[@MatthewDLDavidson]

I had always suspected that Guillaume/William the Conqueror’s invasion of England and Old French/Norman language had something to do with the evolution of Modern English but didn’t really know how it happened. Also, I had heard of the “Great Vowel Shift” but never really understood what it was until this lesson. I’ve always had fun with deliberate misspellings in English, but had no idea it was (psychologically) a way to make sense of those “weirdly spelled” words in English. What an extraordinary video you created, and thanks for educating me. I woch’d this too or thry thymes! 😊

[@abid5087]

In my medical literature class, we’ve talked quite a bit about this. The best example is when we read Chaucer. We read a translated version, but to show us what the original was like, our teacher played a video of someone reading the general prologue aloud. It was completely unintelligible because of the phonetic Middle English pronunciation.

[@PixelatedH2O]

In my high school senior English lit class we were required to learn and recite the prologue to The Canterbury Tales. That was over twenty years ago and I only remember the first four lines. I don't think many people were even able to memorize much more than that even then. I found it very easy to actually understand when reading though, overall.

[@seanmalloy7249]

@@PixelatedH2O For me, it was my junior-year English class, but I still remember the General Prologue down to 'Bifell that in that season on a daye / In Southwerk, at the Tabard as I lay...'

[@joanhoffman3702]

Let’s face it: given its various origins, the English language is a mess. This is what happens when you create a language by committee, but none of the members are talking to each other, and they’re scattered by place and time throughout history!

[@elizabethsisney9145]

I luv this channel! I found you by accident and decided to see what kind of uploads you had and you have so many different topics. I like learning about history and interesting things file away and share. Great info for trivia game’s or just sharing. Definitely subscribed right away and am sharing with family and friends.

[@visitken]

This was fascinating. Thank you Dr. Brozovsky!

[@sandradermark8463]

The Icelandic spelling system still uses the thorn rune among Latin letters - look up their spelling of Thor's name for instance.

[@Beedo_Sookcool]

I þink we should bring back boþ Ð/ð and Þ/þ to English. Ðat would sure make it easier to tell at a glance how to pronounce þings!

[@sandradermark8463]

@@Beedo_Sookcool I would say "thanks" with a thorn rune if I could type one on my smartphone keyboard!

[@Beedo_Sookcool]

@@sandradermark8463 I can't vouch for anyone else's phone -- because mine won't do some of the tricks you're supposed to be able to do, according to the internet -- but if I hold down the "T" on mine, it brings up other variations, including Edh and Thorn and Ts with diacritical marks. But for my post above, I just Googled Edh and Thorn and copied-and-pasted them in where appropriate. 😉

[@quelebm125]

@@Beedo_Sookcool While dhey look cool, I think it'd be more practical to introduce "dh" for dhe voiced dental fricativeand keep "th" for dhe voiceless. Like how it is in Albanian, Cornish, and Swahili orthography.

[@Beedo_Sookcool]

@@quelebm125 Possibly, but there are other languages where "dh" is pronounced as it's spelt, or simply as "d," and that could also lead to confusion for speakers of those languages trying to learn English. Plus, English has enough muddling in its construction as it is; you might as well try keep any potential changes all on the same branch of the linguistic family tree, for simplicity. After all, it was a solitary Classicist snob who started the whole nonsensical rigmarole that you shouldn't split infinitives or end a sentence with prepostion in English, because they didn't to that in Ancient Greek or Latin . . . which is a preposterous standpoint to cling to. Not only are they not even on the same branch of the Indo-European language family, the way they're structured makes it impossible to do those things, anyway. And if anyone tries to tell me I shouldn't split and infinitive or end a sentence with a preposition, I will tell them to immediately &+%# off. 😉

[@yegirish]

Awesome video, and despite years of language nerdery, I hadn’t learned about hypercorrection spellings until now. Super cool. One issue: the video claims that English is among the hardest languages to learn, and it mostly isn’t. There’s no single way to measure the difficulty of a language, but English is unusually simple in structure compared to most other languages. It has no grammatical gender, (almost) no noun cases, no complex verb conjugations, and no weird inflections or other features. It might be the structurally easiest language other than malay/indonesian? But it is absolutely one of the most absurdly spelled languages, which makes it a treasure trove for etymology nerds :-D

[@yegirish]

Along those lines, there’s a fascinating concept I once read about that referred to complex linguistic features as “spikiness” of the language. If a linguistic community is fairly insular, everyone grows up learning the language and there’s no cost to “spiky” features (like complex word inflections in Georgian). But as a language expands geographically and more outsiders join the linguistic community, they struggle with the spikiness and try to simplify it. Similarly, when a linguistic community is exposed to a large amount of external trade, the traders try to use a simplified version of the language to be understood.

[@falcon_arkaig]

I think the main reason why English is so easy to learn (of course, subjectively) is because English is so dominant of a language. I feel like if another language like, say, Chinese, were more dominant of a language on the internet and what not, more people would think it's "easy." Just like English. For more obscure languages like Ukrainian, Taiwanese, etc etc Its harder to learn bc there are less resources.

[@Aries_Sinslayer]

I just found this channel and it's already my favorite. 😀

[@Glockenspheal]

Amazing timing, not long ago I was told the Great Vowel Shift was a thing, because to me, vowels having let's call it "composite" sounds (a sounding like two vowels, e and i as ei) didn't make sense to me. On a related note, a pet peeve of mine that sometimes drives me insane is the use of than and then, so many people use then instead of than, that whenever I see a than, it really throws me off balance, It's become such a rare sight these days, it's kinda funny and sad at the same time.

[@Beedo_Sookcool]

That used to bug the Hell out of me, too. Then I realised I was doing it, too. Then I further realised that it wasn't actually ME doing it; it was Autocorrect "helpfully fixing" what I was typing and I wasn't noticing the "correction" until someone pointed it out. I would not be surprised if up to 25% of the spelling / usage errors on the internet are the work of Autocorrect. (Or, as someone so recently pointed out to me, it should be called "Autocorrupt.")

[@ldbarthel]

@@Beedo_Sookcool So much so that I call it auto-incorrect.

[@nono7105]

Oh, the then/than is a pet peeve of mine too. I believe it occurs because yanks pronounce them the same way and so don't know which spelling to use in which context. As for the 'autocorrect', I believe you'll all find that its proper name is 'autocarrot'. 😏

[@JediCoati]

Orthography is such a trip. Along with finishing my linguistic degree last year, I also took introductory Korean. And I'll never forget, after learning hangeul, my first time coming across a word ending with a ㅅ that was pronounced like ㄷ. (First of all it took forever to track the rule down because I was using hyper-specific linguistic terminology when searching that no one explaining the phenomenon was using.) When I had found the rule, I had an eye twitch moment of "why - I can't see the reason for this". And then immediately shed that feeling for "thank god I don't have to learn English as a second language".

[@nono7105]

I tried learning Korean. The SOV grammar wrecks me. It's worse than Yoda. The lack of prepositions and articles also breaks my brain. No one should have to figure out so much from context alone. I watch Korean television and they say one word and the translation is a sentence. Language needs to be more precise than that. And what's with the complete lack of pronouns? Not even a him/her? Geu namja? Geu yeoja? Seriously? And the different levels of formality, le sigh. What's with the weirdly specific forms of address. Everyone is called by some sort of title, depending on your social standing and age. Older brothers or sisters have a different word to younger brothers or sisters, and those words are different depending on whether you're male or female. Why suddenly get so specific when every other thing you have to learn from context? Crazy. Right and left are multiple syllable words. Really? And their counting system ... 🤨 They do have a word for 'the day after tomorrow' though. So. Yeah. There's that. 🙄

[@gaidhliglass]

@@nono7105 english also has a word for the day after tomorrow; overmorrow. Weird, huh? But anyway, I found learning Korean easier than german-and I grew up in germany. Japanese is also easier than those pesky latin based languages.

[@nono7105]

@@gaidhliglass Don't think 'overmorrow' will catch on though. Japanese at least has better grammar than Korean. Seriously, I can't handle SOV. SVO or go home. I wouldn't mind learning German, but I'm afraid my voice box would fall out.

[@grewdpastor]

@@nono7105 overmorrow? At least it has good germanic papers: Uebermorgen (german) / Overmorgen (dutch). 😉

[@Paul_Ch52]

Excellent graphics to go with the vocals. Excellent examples and explanations. You guys are good. More, please.

[@cindykaywebster4643]

Completely fascinating! Thank you for uploading it!

[@zos253]

do find it amusing how some areas of the north and rural areas do still have accents that roughly follow the old pronunciations of words

[@SteveSilverActor]

Excellent video! However, with regard to the statement, "English is one of the hardest languages to learn," on what basis is she making this statement? A native Mandarin speaker is going to have a much harder time learning English than a native Dutch speaker. And while English has many exceptions to its spelling conventions, there are indeed conventions. Is English really harder to read and write than Chinese or Japanese? As an ESL teacher, I can say that the most challenging aspect for most non-native speakers is the pronunciation. English has a lot of different vowel sounds that often don't exist in the speaker's native language. Fortunately, English grammar isn't very complicated. Yes, the spelling has some craziness, but compare that to Japanese, where there are at least two different readings for each character (and often many more), and you need to know about 3,000 characters to read the paper.

[@petersdotter1]

True what you say. I have spent my life teaching Romance languages, and when students complain, I remind them we have three ways to use every verb in every tense, and most foreigners really have a hard time with, "I write, I am writing, I do write." Then, DO is rare and used for emphasis, but DON"T is common and negatives would be hard to make without DON'T/DIDN'T as a helper verb. We lost declensions, but we made verbs more complicated by a factor of 3!

[@niklas5336]

@@petersdotter1 I writen't :)

[@toomanyopinions8353]

To my understanding it's dependant on yes what other languages you know, but also if you want to be fluent and if you want to know spoken, written, or both. Learning just to speak or just to write is a lot easier than learning both + becoming fluent enough to recognize how to pronounce a new word you read or what a new word you hear means.

[@OzerBergman]

BRAVO! Nice to know I'm not the only one nerdy enough to enjoy -- and learn from -- this.

[@FlyToTheRain]

literally was talking about this with my dad last night. it's likely i'll show this video to my students to help explain why we have to practice so much when learning to read and write.

[@lacie5522]

1:20 actually, that was so cute! lol

[@chadmelonite9999]

That's one of her standard gimmicks that is done in other videos, as well.

[@Sky-pg8jm]

I think part of modern language spelling reforms only sort of catching on is their understandability. it's easy to change how you spell, but that doesn't mean it's easy for someone else to learn it. Colour to Color is easy to understand, you simply drop the U. Women to Wimmin is less so, I'd personally pronounce the second more like "why-mine". Speaking of pronunciation, there's a second factor, there's no common English pronunciation across dialects and accents. For example, I'm Canadian so I speak with a Standard Canadian English accent, which is mostly indistinguishable from Western American English. However, I picked up a "cot-caught merger" from the Ottawa Valley accent due to some time living there meaning those two words are homophones to me where they might not be for others. Trying to implement one single English spelling reform means trying to implement one single English pronunciation, which is impossible, and even if you tried would probably be quite colonialist to be honest.

[@quelebm125]

I've thought long about the "which pronunciation to use" question, and I've decided that it'd be best to make it a compromise between General American and General British pronunciation; and picking elements such as rhoticity from the American one, and retaining the yod more in the British one so as to minimize the number of words spelled the same. Words should be spelled unmerged: so no caught-court, cot-caught, do-due, etc. mergers. But words like whine-wine and horse-hoarse might be spelled the same due to only a few dialects and mostly the older speakers of them still distinguishing between them, and as for words like knight-night of course those would be spelled the same since they've been merged in all dialects for centuries. This way, it's not biased toward any particular dialect and chooses different features not arbitrarily, but to minimize the number of words that will be spelled the same. Even for less standard dialects, such a system would be easier to spell as a whole.

[@larsvegas1505]

Wat i find weird about the word woman is that when ur talking about one woman ur pronouncing it as written but when ur talking about more then one u say wimman.. (or somthing like that).. but still write it the same.. atleast for men u have 1 man, 2 men.. 4 mans.. etcetera.

[@DarkDutch007]

@@larsvegas1505 one woman, multiple women. one man, mutliple men.

[@sallomon2357]

@@quelebm125 in the middle part you mean that these homophones in particular dialects should be merged? Because I'm not sure I understood that part. Btw: a thing that I think is at least somewhat missing from this video is the mention of why some, mainly British, dialects are non-rhotic, as that added to the confiusion in the weird non-systematic system that is English spelling and pronunciation. If you don't know the story (not sure how true it is), GBritish-adjacent dialects allegedly lost rhoticity because, after the 13 colonies declared independence, the British wanted to sound more "posh" and "sophisticated" than these "rebellous American colonists", and so they started to get rid of their "r"s.

[@pdzombie1906]

So, interesting, Dr. B!!! Actually... I thought english was kind of easy to learn due to the verbs, but spelling you learn it the same way you do in spanish: just reading a lot and getting used to see the words as they are written. Thanx!!!

[@weird-bookworm]

I’ve seen exactly two other words videos, but I love her already

[@eid8fkebe7f27ejdjdjduyhsvqhwu2]

That's what I love about my native languages German and Belarusian. (Almost) Everything is written as it is pronounced. You don't know how a word is written? Just rite how it is pronauncd!

[@larquefausse3623]

I see what you did there.

[@korenn9381]

pronounst*

[@lemmypop1300]

@@korenn9381 pronaunst*

[@griffenspellblade3563]

There is also the trend for English to adopt loan words in a non-standard way. Sometimes we keep the original spelling and the original pronunciation sometimes one or the other and sometimes neither.

[@clarkjessebacerdo8422]

We need a part 2 of this ❤

[@bloodless-bruno]

I've discovered your channel some days ago and become a big fan. Your videos are amaaazing ♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️

[@deepseastonecore3017]

A star walks into a black hole but doesn't seen phased.The black hole then turns to the star and says, "I don't think you understand the gravity of this situation."

[@seanmalloy7249]

Fazed, not phased. One of the myriad of commonly-confused English homonyms.

[@bri1085]

I wonder if French has a spelling bee

[@KevinBReynolds]

I'm 69 years old now and have seen a lot of these kinds of videos and thought I pretty much knew the story, until this video. There was a lot in this I didn't know. Thank you!

[@kurei0.]

I love this channel. i'm learning things i never knew i wanted to learn. fantastic content!

[@Is_this_Aviral]

Cool vid 😁☺️😁😎😎

[@TheMelMan]

I was legitimately thinking about this the other night then KZbin recommends it today. Thanks Big Brother.

[@Sophie_Cleverly]

I love this topic so much that once in English Language class our teacher had to leave the room for something and she asked me to teach everyone else while she was gone lol

[@Gabiman66]

Somebody once told me that learning english is like solving a cipher, sophisticated I disagree Its like solving a broken cipher Hard, not sophisticated It would be sophisticated if it was on purpose

[@medusa_slayer]

Oh what I would give to learn how to properly speak in middle-age English . Medieval is awsome 😍🔥⚔️📜

[@hmmmm7468]

AGREE!

[@hmmmm7468]

I'm not even native...

[@JetpackSniper085]

That “UM, actually” made me spit out my coffee. I wasn’t even drinking coffee.

[@TheSpudlyMcgudly]

Dr Erica.. after seeing your outtakes I summarise that you would make an excellent Welsh speaker 😁

[@Takashikuubo]

As someone that’s learning japanese I would say at least all three of their alphabet makes sense

[@thelocalstumbler]

Know the difference between the American vs British Tyrannosaurus Rex? One is T-Rex and the other is Tea-Rex. Tea-Rex is much more marketable IMO. I'm hilarious.

[@JCavinee]

You're not though.

[@Nydaruus]

LMAO love this 1

[@Moose_of_the_Ages]

Holy cow, this explains so much. I've been wondering about this for years.

[@syednaveed6285]

Nearly 800 years of history, condensed into an 8 minute video. Delightful!

[@xgokke6927]

Wait when did English become one of the hardest languages to learn?

[@MatthewConnellan-xc3oj]

Yesterday, didn’t you hear about the spontaneous truth-revamping?

[@Lycaon1765]

Eh, other languages have inconsistencies as well. That's how you can tell these languages are natural.

[@justpassingthrough7728]

Okay this is my first Otherwords video and I have to say that intro animation is amazing.

[@JamieAllen1977]

love this kind of thing; always learn something new.

[@bri1085]

First

[@hmmmm7468]

Congrats!

[@bri1085]

@@hmmmm7468 thank you

[@aztekno2012]

Awesome. Thanks for the out-takes at the end too!!!