This is not about math. I just had a pre-somnolent image of a cluster of words that I just have to let out. In less pretentious language: I thought of this as I dozed off last night.
“A mnemonic pneumonic gnu’s knees.”
Nglish is a weird language. Note that of the 4 words that are all pronounced as though they start with en, none actually start with en. They also came from four different root languages to English (Latin, Greek, Khoikhoi, and German).
We are taught spelling in school as a sort of faith: This is how it is because it is. The root of spelling (in non-pictographic languages) is to produce a stream of characters (letters) to represent the series of sounds (phonemes) that make up each word. So why do we use three different letters for the same hard-K sound? Four if you count eks. Let’s knot forget the mental knife we use to silence kay itself in several common words. Why have we lost the letters for hard and soft ch? Greeks still use chi (χ is not x). Can you spontaneously spout the 5 pronunciations of “ough”?
Basically, why are so many words pronounced differently than they are spelled? The simple answer is, teenagers.
Adolescents have a strong drive to both differentiate themselves from their nurturers, and to assimilate with their peers. In humans, this has always meant creating an “in” language. Slang. Some slang words or pronunciations just work, and are kept into adulthood and entered into the lexicon. In illiterate society, the whole language shifts from generation to generation .
Meanwhile, written words don’t change. So, as generations of speakers gradually drift their spoken language, the best matching written word stays the same. For example, leading glottals, like the kay in knee, became unpronounced in modern English. You’ll have to visit the U.K. if you want to get the feel of how to really pronounce all those ough’s. Or to see why there is the rule to use the predicate “an” for “h” words, with instead of “a”.
Homonyms are another toy I like to play with in this language where words and meaning and pronunciations line up as orderly as cooked spaghetti in a bowl. I frequently get to use a sentence with three different words that are pronounced exactly the same way. When I advise my customers of a shipment of multiple items, I write that “they’re on their way there”. I’m just easy to amuse.
N.E. way, speaking of drift. I’ll just stop here.
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