Why do so many words in English begin with a silent “p” like psychiatrist or pterodactyl?
In: 1812
Because they aren’t English words. They’re Greek. Pt, like Pt, like Ptolemaic. Psych, like Psyche (literally translated to “soul” in this context). English is less a language of its own and more an amalgam of other languages all mishmoshed together like linguistic chowder. It’s hard to learn, not because it’s really all that complicated, but because you basically have to learn snippets of, like, 20 other languages, some of them long dead, for it to be intuitive.
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