[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 is a MESS.
The languages spoken in the British Isles first are various versions of Pict and Celtic. Britain was then invaded repeatedly. first invasion with a written record was by the Romans (and the Greeks tagged along). Various place names show signs of it, including any town called -caster, which suffix is derived from the Latin word ‘castrum’, which is a fort or castle.
Eventually, the Romans left (the Roman Empire was in decline), and then various tribes of Germanic peoples migrated, taking their languages with them. This includes the Angles (where the word ‘English’ eventually formed), the Saxons, the Jutes, and probably a few other tribes. Eventually the Angles and the Saxons intermarried and mostly won out for the moment, hence the term ‘Anglo-Saxon’.
The Danes and other Norse peoples were a constant pain in the English backside, leaving behind all sorts of words (including most that start ‘kn-‘ with the k being silent). In fact, the Norse invasion of 1066 drained the English King Harold’s army’s reserves badly, so when the Norman Duke William decided he wanted to force Harold to give up the throne (there was a lot of brute force politics involved), Harold’s exhausted army couldn’t withstand William’s fresh one and Harold was slain. The Normans spoke French, and a lot of the ‘fancy’ English words are originally French.
This whole mess has led to English being a mess, phonetically. It’s also led to a pair of fun sayings.
1. ‘English is the product of Norman knights wanting a little fun with Saxon barmaids, and is no more or less legitimate than any of the other results.’
2. ‘English doesn’t just borrow words from other languages. It follows them down dark alleys, knocks them out with a club and goes through their pockets looking for loose vocabulary.’
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