1: Why is abbreviated such a long word. And why is the abbreviation for abbreviated longer than other abbreviations?
2: Why is phonetic spelled the way it is? I thought that it meant to sound out words the way they sound? Why the “ph” at the beginning then? Shouldn’t it be spelled funetic (or even funetik if you wanna be teknikal about it?)?
3: Why does the word lisp have an “s” in it? Why use a letter someone can’t pronounce easily in the word describing their condition?
4: Why does hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia (I’ll admit, I had to copy/paste that one) mean fear of long words? Once again, using something that someone can’t really say to describe their condition, seems cruel to me.
I have others but I can’t think of them right now. Please answer oh great one who makes fun of others in a freakishly smart way.
Also, the factoid that “hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia” means “fear of long words” is essentially a joke; nobody ever uses this contrived word except to make that joke, or to compile lists of similarly spurious names for phobias. Look: it’s got “hippopotamus” stuffed in there for no reason.
English does not borrow from other languages. English follows other languages into dark alleys, coshes them over the head, and rifles through their pockets for loose vocabulary.
To take this seriously:
1: “Abbreviated” is a long word because it’s not needed very much. All the short words got used for things like “man” and “house” that get used a lot.
2: “Phonetic” is pronounced exactly how it’s spelled. “ph” is always pronounced with an “f” sound in English. And it’s spelled that way because its origins are from Greek, and the English letters “ph” are the standard way to transliterate the Greek letter φ.
Having read** Empire of the Word** recently: not remotely to the extent of English. Chinese, for instance has shown remarkable resistance to change, despite invasions by speakers of unrelated languages. As did Egyptian, until Arabic came along.
And “lisp” is the way it is because of course one of the most natural ways in which words which describe aural phenomena are formulated is by use of an imitative or related sound.
Askance: And what kind of objective evidence supports such a conclusion?
There’s a haphazard selection of exceptions, possibly found somewhere in the upholstery.
In Greek, phi was used for an aspirated P sound. That is, a P with a puff of air after it. Unaspirated P in Greek was represented by pi. In Classical Greek, that is. In modern Greek, phi represents an F sound.
I recently ran across a word that had a ph-spelling/f-sound, but which was (I’m fairly sure) of Germanic origin. Unfortunately, I failed to write it down, and have forgotten what it was.
Sure, that’s where the <p> is separated from the <h> by a syllable boundary, in which case, it will of course be a /p/ sound followed by an /h/ sound, just as if there had been a space between them. But the digraph <ph> is, as far as I know, always pronounced /f/ (or at least pronounceable /f/; you have cases like the word “diphthong” where variant pronunciations also exist, but this is always the way in a system where spellings are frozen, even as pronunciations will, always, inevitably, drift and evolve over time).
You’ve just given the reason why there are exceptions, not a proof that there are none. If you tell someone learning English that PH is always pronounced /f/, then they’ll eventually run across, for example, shepherd and say “sheferd”. If you try to qualify the rule as you do above, you’ll most likely confuse them. Or make them think that English spelling rules are overly intricate.
Here’s another curiosity: aphelion. This is a word of Greek origin, but comes from two words where the P is from of them and the H from the other. So there’s no phi in the source and it should be pronounced as if there were a space between the letters. Yet many, perhaps most, people (not me, though) pronounce the PH as /f/. Go figure.
