hegel: Add another famous Doper to the list–Gallagher, aka Rysto.
Gallagher? Huh? Who in the world are you talking about?
Anyway, my point was that it seems absolutely ridiculous to me that we have the same four letter word group pronounced seven different ways. I probably should have put this in the MPSIMS forum.
Perhaps the reference was to the “comedian” Gallagher.
Ah, yes. Gallagher…
Countless comedians have poked fun at the idiosyncrasies of English. It gets old pretty fast…
In regard to the “rule” about not ending sentences with prepositions, this comes, as I understand it, from an illogical plan to “purify” the language by making it more like Latin. What they did not realize was that in Latin, the rule actually made sense (so much sense that any native speaker would inherently follow it), whereas it holds no bearing in English. It seems to me silly to have a dead language as a role model. Besides, it’s comparing apples with oranges. Let’s not take a hammer to our language to try to mold it into something it’s not.
sorry no cite for ya, my info came from a respected collage prof I had a long talk with about english and its inherently goofy rules.
I would like to find some hard info though now that you bring it up like that. I mean some of the rules make more sense if they are because of random people putting them down at different times. Like the i before e rule, its kinda weird that words like sheik are spelled ei without any part of the rule coming into play.
It sounds like it was meant of a joke.
Lawyers used–and still use–complicated language primarily to control legal matters. For example, using Latin where English would suit.
English spelling was created by those who wrote and circulated it, letter writers, playwrights, and people who distributed religious and political pamphlets, for example. None of those were foremost, lawyers.
That there are exceptions to many “rules” of English points out, more than anything, flaws in the rules. The rules are meant as aids to observations about the way English usually is constructed. A rule is just some schoolteacher or grammarian’s idea, they aren’t rules in the sense that some official board sat down and dictated that the language had to be that way.
An article on the “-ugh” conundrum.
I devaisd ü wei üf wraiting Inglyš fünetykli iuzing Sentrül Iuropiün karektürs.
Büt Ai don-t ðink eniwon gyvs a šyt 
cuate, parts of that are not phonetic. In the words “devaisd” and “karektürs” (but for some reason not in “iuzing”), the “s” represents its voiced counterpart (z) whereas is in “Sentrül” it is unvoiced.
One of the problems with writing phonetically is that some grammatical rules would be seemingly shot to hell. No longer would most plurals be formed by adding an “-s”, but rather by adding either an “-s” or sometimes a “-z”. No longer would regular verbs take “-ed” in the past tense, but rather “-t” or “-d”. Granted this is affected only by whether a word ends in a voiced or unvoiced consonant, but native speakers intuitively know how to deal with this and don’t need the cumbersome distinction in writing. Also, it would be harder to trace root words. “Pedal”, “centipede” and “expedite” all have the root “ped” but they’re pronounced differently in each. I would rather see at least a semblance of grammatical and etymological regularity than phonetic spelling.
Not that it helps the discussion any, but I have found this poem by an unknown author:
English is Tough Stuff
Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.
Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it’s written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.
Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.
Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation’s OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.
Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.
Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.
Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.
Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.
Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.
Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.
Pronunciation – think of Psyche!
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won’t it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It’s a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.
Finally, which rhymes with enough–
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give it up!!!
I loved reading that poem! Foreigners learning English should have to read it aloud as their final exam.
I don’t think this is a valid point. The english of former British colonies (many, many countries) is much more likely to be closer to British English than American English.
I would therefore think the spread of people speaking with a derivative of British English would be much greater than American.
England is closer to Europe, therefore it could be inferred that most Europeans would speak British English rather than American.
British English is the one learned by most foreign pupils. My big German-English-German dictionary lists the British pronunciations of English words, rather than the American ones I’m so used to.
It makes sense - the linguistic center of most languages would be the countries from which they first developed - no one goes to school to learn Québec French, nor Viennese German, nor New York English. There has to be a linguistic standard, or else there’d be unintelligibility. The easiest standard is to take the standard speech of what is considered the linguistic center of the language’s home country.
On a side note, I also had a friend, from India, who consistently used British words where we all expected American ones - we all had a nice chuckle when he said ‘rubber’ for ‘eraser’ :).
One problem with phonetic spelling has been only briefly touched on is that you have to decide whose pronunciation you are going to settle on. I know people who pronounce the word “house” as “hows” and others who pronounce it as “hoos;” how are you going to spell it phonetically? Hari Seldon mentioned the same word in relation to its plural and also offered the example of “greasy.” Should we standardize on the midwestern America pronunciation? The Bostonian? (How in the world would you write “coffee?”) The British?
I think the OP has been well answered. At least we don’t have any of the idiotic gender conflicts that plague some other languages, where a table might be feminine and a girl masculine or such nonsense.
RR
In One Language for the World, Mario Pei presents a strongly critical case against English, addressing it as if it has personality (he devotes a chapter of the book, published in 1958 by Biblo & Tannen, to various languages’ pros and cons):
English is very confusing.
It has no standard form, and refuses to have any.
Its spelling is ghastly, and if it is phonetized, half the word-stock, now recognizable in written form, will become a shrouded mystery. (Phonetizing is presumed necessary for a language formally constituted as the world’s one “official” language.)
Its grammatical simplicity is a snare and a delusion.
It is too given to slang and jargon, and changes far too fast to suit anyone but its [native] speakers.
Although some Englishmen might disagree, England’s actually in Europe. 
And don’t forget the influence of TV. For example, most Dutch kids learn perfect English in school, but pick up the accents from their favourite TV shows - a lot of them American. Since those are subtitled rather than dubbed over here, the American accents do influence the kids.
Governing bodies don’t create a universal language. It’s been tried with Latin, French, Esperanto, and probably others I know nothing about.
People change their languages as they wish, and grammarians and Linguistic policemen are powerless to affect this process, unless by actual force. That too is ineffective in the long run. By the time English is the universal human language, it won’t be English anymore, so don’t worry. First it will steal every expressive word, and slang phrase in every language that survives along with it. Then it will slowly take over in the streets and shops where language grows.
What the greatest number understands will survive to be used in the future. The rest will be a quaint echo out of linguistic history. French, on the other hand is being murdered by its own home nation, and the academy that guards its purity.
Tris
I did actually know that, having English heritage and having been to England three times, I don’t know why I phrased it like that. 
:smack:
OK, I see where you’re coming from. My emphasis should have been on the countries where english is the official language.
While stationed in what was then West Germany, my experience with the Germans was that many of them spoke near perfect american dialect. When I visited the Netherlands, I recall hearing mostly the american dialect, but reading mostly british spellings.
Now that I have given it more thought, it would be interesting to know how spanish speakers in the west feel about europeon spanish. It would seem the Spaniards are probably in the minority, but is their dialect considered the standard?