• Deconceptualist
    link
    fedilink
    English
    43 months ago

    That’s your issue? Not adjective declination?

    I’m nearly at the end of Duolingo’s German content and spelling has mostly been quite easy (as a native English speaker). You want a spelling challenge, try French.

    • @obviouspornalt@lemmynsfw.com
      link
      fedilink
      13 months ago

      Fucking French. ‘we’re never, ever going to say this ‘h’ character, but you still need it to spell words correctly because fuck you, that’s why.’

      • Deconceptualist
        link
        fedilink
        English
        13 months ago

        English isn’t exactly innocent there. See knight, plumber, mnemonic, pterodactyl.

          • Deconceptualist
            link
            fedilink
            English
            2
            edit-2
            3 months ago

            Yeah but the spelling ‘normally’ would have been updated to match English pronunciation. That’s what happens in most languages. As I understand there were two issues:

            • Some dictionary writers (ca. late 1400s IIRC) wanted spellings that seemed fancier like French and Latin, which is why e.g. the silent B in debt was added ‘artificially’.
            • The printing press was invented right in the middle of the Great Vowel Shift so old spellings got “locked in” even though spoken English continued to change significantly for a long time afterward.
    • @Saleh@feddit.org
      link
      fedilink
      13 months ago

      So we have this verb and the ending in third person plural is -ent but we just dont pronounce that so it pronounces the same way as third person singular…