Post #4179187

2026-07-29 00:09 UTC

Man, English is stupid. I spent way too long wondering why lead, the metal, is pronounced “led,” but lead, as in guide, is pronounced “leed.” Same spelling. Different sound. Completely different meaning. Who designed this shit?

Replies (1)

@deFractal@infosec.exchange 2026-07-29 01:35

@chiefgyk3d@social.chiefgyk3d.com It wasn’t designed. Quite the opposite. It absorbed words from other languages around the world, often taking pronunciations from the local source language but adjusted to the local English phonetic structure, long before any telecommunication faster than a printing press, a horse, and a sail ship existed. It propagated words towards other English-speaking places, drifted pronunciations based on other local languages. It then merged conflicting spellings, pronunciations, and meanings, resolving almost every contradiction by choosing “both” and requiring context to sort out the resulting ambiguity. By the time faster telecommunication, and eventually audio telecommunication, came to exist, English-speaking cultures had thoroughly normalized the practice of absorbing words, distorting them a bit, freezing (possibly after Latinizing) their spelling (so letters remain incomprehensible when the mail sails across the ocean), and letting their pronunciation continue to drift (but not updating spelling) as generations grow up near different languages, hence continue to change local pronunciations. English is a hoarder of a language.

Open ##4179186