Our Loopy Language

English is fun!

The clan and I (not the kind with a "k") were talking about the English Language and how difficult it can be with all it's rules that are always meant to be broken (e.g., "i" before "e" except after "c" or when sounding like "a" such as neighbor or weigh...with exceptions, of course).  So this Thoughtful/Thankful Thursday really has me thinking, especially since I notice the word "thought" as in "thoughtful" in the chart to the left!  I actually had to look up a few of those words to make sure how they were pronounced.  In case you are like me, "slough" is pronounced "sl-oww" like cow, "slew" and also 

"sluff" and "lough" is "lock".  **Scratch Head Here**   

From what my "studies" have uncovered, it seems that much of the messiness of our modern day language stems from an era called "The Great Vowel Shift".  The cartoon below does a pretty good job of summarizing what it was.  However, I'll have a quick bash at condensing so here it goes...

The Great Vowel Shift took place around the 1300's to 1700's when communication opened up between different groups of people with all their varying dialects and caused a shake up in the way things were pronounced as their speech co-mingled.  It sounds like it was kind of like a giant "vowel stew" where everyone contributed a bit and all those flavors blended to make a new flavor of sorts.  I love analogies, by the way :)  About this same time the printing press was introduced in the 1470's which started to cement the way words were spelled with all their eccentric variances. Of course, this is my quick summary after all my minutes of studying on the topic so please, read up on this yourself as there's LOTS of info on this topic.

This pretty much explains our language!

My guy T.R.

Craziness! you may shout.  Well, me too, among others. There were some of the greats out there that tried to make a bit more sense of of the written word. Noah "Dictionary" Webster proposed reforms back in the late 1700's to early 1800's.  In 1906 the Simplified Spelling Board was formed and lead by Andrew Carnegie and included famous members such as Samuel "Mark Twain" Clemens. Simultaneously, the legendary Theodore Roosevelt (ooo, don't get me started talking about him or I'll glowingly froth for hours!) also tried to get the government involved in simplified spelling but to no avail.  If T.R. couldn't get it done, I'm afraid no one can.

So in conclusion, I suppose all we can do is put up with our crazy language as best we can and be thankful (oh, so I hit both thoughtful AND thankful today!) for Spellchecker :)