English Frustrations

What's the purpose of silent letters? When does 'i' come before 'e'? Why are there different pronounciations of the same English words? Have no fear your grammar goddess is here!

Unfortunately friends, the pronounciation problem is not one that finds its base in grammar rules. This comes from different dialects and our ancestory.

Homonyms (also called homophones) are words that sound like one another but have different meanings. Some examples of homophones that sound alike but are spelled differently include: here and hear; their, there, and they're; right and write; your and you're; and sight, cite, and site; Some homonyms are spelled the same, like bark (the sound a dog makes) and bark (the outer layer of a tree trunk).

One of my lovely interviewees, Brea, wrote in after her interview to ask another important grammar question. She wanted to know why the "ph" makes an "f".

Time for a history lesson: There was no "F" sound in Greek, it was just a softer "p" sound, which is represented by just one Greek letter and is closer to a regular "p" sound. But it's not the same as a regular "p" sound, which Greek also has. So when Ancient Roman grammarians translated Greek into Latin, they spelled it "ph" to distinguish it from the regular "p", because they didn't have the letter for it. Fast-forward a few centuries, and people had stopped using the the softer 'p' sound in regular speech, for whatever reason - probably because it was too difficult to pronounce in faster everyday speech - and it sounded enough like the regular "F" sound that it wasn't all that confusing. But the spelling of it stayed around. So all "ph" words where it's pronounced "F" are originally Greek in origin

#Frustrations #SilentLetters #Writing #Pronounciation #English