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English is weird
jwhouk:
Don KEE-OH-TAY.
Tova:
--- Quote from: Cornelius on 15 Nov 2020, 07:22 ---On the other hand, transliteration brings its own problems.
--- End quote ---
Yeah, that was the kind of thing I had in mind when I wrote my "I can hear you laughing" aside.
Morituri:
The relationship between English phonology and English orthography is more than a little complex, inconsistent, and problematic, at least, as compared to most languages.
Basically every letter is pronounced every way it ever was in any of the languages we stole words from. Except we're only guessing on the fly, and usually in a subconscious way only, what language something was stolen from, and we often get it wrong.
When that happens our pronunciation can rapidly switch from Historically Accurate to Hysterically Approbate. At the same time the word picks up a new pronunciation and a pack of variations that get pasted on it from the language we're mistaking it for. And if the meaning or pronunciation drift too far, we'll just steal the original word again! That's why 'Saloon' and 'Salon' have different (though related) meanings in English.
It's a very sloppy process, and proceeds by steps each and every one of which seems to infuriate a different half of us.
But it's creative. English continues to change and adapt pretty rapidly relative to most others, and that may be a feature rather tha a bug.
Wingy:
An argument can be made that English is more of a creole than a language, but it's a bit thin.
Case:
--- Quote from: N.N. Marf on 15 Nov 2020, 05:30 ---So.. his name's not like ``quick's oat?'' I've been saying it wrong for months (reading/discussing it) and no-one's said a peep about it. Some friends I have, letting me labor under that false impression.
--- End quote ---
Tangentially: You said you resent 'queer' since the orginal meaning was 'strange or crazy'. That's maybe true for the word's English usage history - but it's originally a loanword from Dutch and/or German. In German, 'quer' means 'orthogonal to' or 'not parallel to'. Tellingly, German LGBT+folk have adopted the English spelling & meaning, because 'quer' is both ubiquitous as well as rather innocuous. (Would that be a 're-import word'?)
So taken in its true 'original' meaning, queer would be rather apt - especially as it is often used within compound-nouns to signal 'something that is orthogonal to the dominant paradigm' (e.g 'querdenken' = 'thinking outside the box')
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