English spelling
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Altogether, a small-scale video recapitulation of Gerard Nolst Trenité's 1922 poem "The Chaos". More from Bobby Finn is here.
Jeremy Jay has a somewhat analogous series about French and Spanish, but more focused on homophony than orthography, and with a demonic rather than a pedagogical vibe…
Laura Morland said,
June 2, 2025 @ 3:56 pm
As luck would have it, the clever (and trilingual) Roya just published her own take on English spelling: https://youtube.com/shorts/fqLVoJdAwO4?si=iyBAYdvBVrpTHo1n
JMGN said,
June 3, 2025 @ 1:28 pm
My fave:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ough_(orthography)
charles antaki said,
June 3, 2025 @ 3:10 pm
Nice one, JMGN.
When I worked at Loughborough University, saying it like the natives was a standing challenge to international visitors (and some national ones too).
David Morris said,
June 3, 2025 @ 3:21 pm
Several more examples: https://neverpureandrarelysimple.wordpress.com/2017/11/11/ough/
JMGN said,
June 3, 2025 @ 3:32 pm
Page 1572 of the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language reads:
"Through" contains three symbols: composite th, simple r, aand composite ough.
David Marjanović said,
June 3, 2025 @ 5:33 pm
…and she overlooked the spellings created by incompetent etymologists (could, island…) and the naturally homegrown insanity (ea in the video above, ough in the link above…)