[ELI5] Why have some languages like Spanish kept the pronunciation of the written language so that it can still be read phonetically, while spoken English deviated so much from the original spelling?
In: Culture
English didn’t deviate from original spelling. Spelling adapted to the English language speakers throughout its history. And its why it gives so many secondary speakers a vocabulary pronounciation headache of its own. 😁
I wouldn’t say Spanish has kept pronunciation for the same reasons above and below. It was adapted to its speakers.
But Korean fits this description of being pronounced as written because modern Korean was constructed to be so.
So why isn’t English pronounced the way it’s spelled? As logical as it would seem from convenience and efficiency in learning, languages don’t always evolve that way. They become designed that way once speakers become aware of their sound and written language and try to find ways to standardize it so it’s easier to educate others and make the population literate. This is what happened with Korean. The Chinese characters didn’t exactly fit the pronounced language. So they designed a written language to fit their pronounced language (Korean characters literally tell you how to make the sound in your mouth) to make it easy for everyone to learn and be literate. But for a language to change like this takes strong influences, like an effective government and education system.
But languages don’t always turn out this way because native speakers get used to inconsistencies and inconveniences. People learn to adapt to the ‘logic’ of their language. And in the case of English, you just have to learn those awkward pronounciations ( thought, night, this, house, mice, exam ) because a lot of foreign influences over hundreds integrated into English.
First there was the Celtic languages.
Then the Romans came, left, then came back with Caesar and established some of the latin in our grammar and alphabet.
Then Germanic groups like the Angles ans Saxons brought Old English, which is not too unfamiliar from Modern English.
Then the Vikings raided and gave us some cool words like that start with sk, sky and skill.
Then the Norman french invaded and slowly killed off Germanic Old English after making French the court language for awhile, which is why English has a lot of French vocabulary that trickled to the peasantry. (Colour, battle, castle) Apple used to refer to all kinds of fruit in general rather than just a Red Delicious or Granny Smith.
It wasn’t until around the Tudor era that Early Modern English broke out of the French from court. We also had the Great Vowel shift where our pronounciation of vowels in words went rose in the mouth.
Colonialism and Exploration added some words from Dutch, German, Spanish, and Portuguese into English because of over seas trading.
And by this point the printing press was made so more people started to become literate and read and write in English. But everyone had their own spelling and writing conventions.
Dictionaries and rules of style to standardize English were slowly being established mostly in the 1700s by a lot of educated men who had their own ideas of what proper grammar and spelling for English should be, like Samuel Johnson for the British and Webster for the Americans. (This is why the British spell Colour and Americans Color.)
Hope this explains why languages don’t always pronounce as they’re written.
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