thinking thoughts!

[sua_lay]

Today, I have spent a really annoying amount of time trying to figure out why isn't the W in 'dwarf' and 'sword' pronounced the same way

Comments

[theficklepickle]

I can't tell you for certain, and all my books are packed away at the moment, but I'd be willing to bet they originally came into English from different languages which would account for the pronounciations. As for the similarity of spelling, that might be quite arbitrary ... monks copying things out in the Middle Ages ==>> the first moveable type ==>> the first dictionaries; these all involved individuals making choices about the way they thought things should be written. So the short answer, really, is that human nature is infinitely contradictory; someone, somewhere, decided they liked those spellings, and those were just the ones that caught on. Our whole language is filled with random accidents like that, which is what makes it such a pain when people are trying to learn it. However I happen to think that's probably better and makes for a more flexible (malleable, even) language than, for example, French, where an Academie actually makes decisions about what is and what is not acceptable usage

[sua_lay]

I was wondering if it was the case of the words coming to English from different languages. Probably during different era as well. It's funny how people talk about a 'melting pot' of cultures and languages as if it's somehow a recent invention when your island is a fine example of millennia of people and languages mixing together.

So even without the scientific proof, I am quite willing to accept your explanation.

Can relate on random accidents, considering modern day Finnish is a lovely mixture of its old Fenno-Ugrian roots, Swedish and Russian words and even twisted English. Am also extremely happy I never had to learn Finnish as a second language. Yours is so much easier than this one... :D