English is really funny

[Wright1000]

Here is something very interesting I found.
Some people may not understand it though.
English is not only illogical but also one of the funniest languages in the world.
GHOTI-- If we spell it logically, it will be pronounced as -- FISH.

Enough- GH stands for F.
Women- O stands for I.
Nation- TI stands for SH.

So, logically, GHOTI = FISH.

I think it was G B Shaw who invented this. If anyone else has any such interesting theories, please share them here.

[Aleema]

I think it's because English has a deep and varied etymology for its words. I guess that could be true of about any language, but when I find something that's pronounced differently, it's usually because it's a word of a different origin from the another.

I respect Japanese for its general consistencies in having building blocks that, for the most part, sound the same no matter how you arrange them. French, on the other hand, really bugs me because so many combinations of letters can mean the same pronunciation, or not at all what it looks like. Similar to English, I suppose.

[lordcloudx]

Well, there are quite a few words that sound exactly the same, but are easy enough to distinguish from each other when used in context or when in written form, e.g.

I like to write stories.
It is my moral right.
Left is not right.
I know that I'm right.
Your rite of passage.
Your name is Wright.

[Wright1000]

I remember something else I found in a newspaper some days ago.
Tough... Though... through... thorough...
None of these words rhyme with each other.
All the words looks same. They can be created by adding one more letter to the word on the left.
But the pronunciation is completely different from each other.

[Desu_Cake]

If you think English is funny, you should try Irish.
Points to whoever can pronounce 'Bláthnaid Ni Chofaigh'

[Applegate]

Well, English is a bastardisation of Germanic, whatever the Vikings spoke, French, Latin and a dash of Spanish. It should come as no surprise that the language can be amusing.

To make things more amusing, the pronunciation of American English is closer to the English spoken in Shakespeare's time than the English spoken by Britons today. To pronounce Middle English (ye olde Englishe, for you weirdos) properly, it is best if you speak Frisian or German, as their pronunciations of the language in their native dialect come closer than either American English or British English.

Lots of languages have funny quirks like that.

[Auro-Cyanide]

It's to be expected of a language created from the exposure to lots of languages. It is why it is one of the hardest languages to learn and one of the most flexible.

There was a period in England where the upper class spoke french, the middle class spoke english and the churches spoke latin. When announcements were being made, important words were spoken in all three languages. That is why legal documents often still today say one word three different ways, even though it is pointless.

GHOTI could also be phonetically pronounced,
GH- like gh in ghetto
O- like the o in spoken
TI- like the ti in time
There would be quite a few ways to pronounce it.

[Silvere]

It is why it is one of the hardest languages to learn and one of the most flexible.

Are you still talking about english? o_O

[Applegate]

As I said, English is actually easy to pick up, just difficult to master.

[Darkmoonfire]

To me, GHOTI looks like it should be pronounced goatee.

It's not just the pronounciation of words in the English language that is funny. You can describe a house as being a little big and pretty ugly.

[SilverxBlue]

I remember my English teacher once, she asked this question to almost every one of us....
"Did you not take a bath?" Yes or No answer only, please.
And yeah, I ended up pretending to be asleep so that she won't notice me and she won't have to ask me... ^_^;

[Auro-Cyanide]

"Did you not take a bath?" would probably be more of a rhetorical question in most contexts, so it requires no answer. The phrasing of the sentence indicates the speaker is making a statement, even though technically it is a question. Otherwise it would be "Didn't you take a bath?" or "Have you not taken a bath?" depending on what the person wanted to know and what they thought they knew already.

English is probably pretty good to learn because it is relatively easy to piece stuff together. Even those of us who are native speakers often don't use proper english when speaking. We often use half sentences and incomplete sentences when we talk. It is a hard language to use fully though. As a native speaker, there are quite a few things I do often, but I couldn't explain why

[Silvere]

It is a hard language to use fully though.

That´s something you can say about every language, no?
But still, English in one of the easiest languages out there. Why else would it be a world language?

[Auro-Cyanide]

It is a hard language to use fully though.

That´s something you can say about every language, no?
But still, English in one of the easiest languages out there. Why else would it be a world language?

I meant with the way the rules work. English doesn't actually have rules, it has suggestions, which can make it difficult to figure out why stuff happens and when. For every rule there are a dozen exceptions. Plus, like I said, it is very flexible. You can break every suggestion and still have your language be functional. I think it is a world language partly because of the dominance of England and America, as well as it being quite a fluid and alive language, and so quite adaptable. I know I wouldn't be wanting to try and learn English now, it would be pretty hard, especially for me because I hate abstract rules when I'm trying to learn.

[Taleweaver]

I think it is a world language partly because of the dominance of England and America, as well as it being quite a fluid and alive language, and so quite adaptable.

It's also a world language because it has very simple grammar rules in comparison to languages like, say French or German and a very comfortable learning curve for most beginners. In German, for example, most nouns have a gender that is not easily derived from the object or person in question. The German word for "dog", for example, "Hund", is male ("der Hund"), the word for "cat" is female ("die Katze"), and "baby" is neutral ("das Baby") while calculators are male ("der Rechner")- and while English gives them all the same article, "the", the German languages uses articles that are gender-specific (der, die, das). English plural, except for a few exceptions, is formed by putting an "s" in the end of a noun (dogs, cats, babies, calculators), whereas the German plural has many different shapes (Hunde, Katzen, Babys, Rechner are all correct German plural forms). Even most Germans have a hard time getting everything correct, and in the last few years, there's been a tendency to use anglicisms instead of the original German words because it's easier to work with these words.