Last night I was helping my son, Jake, with his homework and came across the word “militia,” although the dictionary says it is pronounced |məˈliSHə|. Really? Then why wouldn’t it be spelled with an SH?
That’s my problem with the English language, words like phone, knife, gnat, island, two, colonel, bologna, dossier, reign, know, knot, debris, and listen. Really! What brainiac decided that’s the way to spell those words?
It is estimated that 60 percent of English words contain a silent letter. My question is, why did they put them in there in the first place?
Here’s another one I don’t understand. You can say I shall polish my nails, or I’m going to eat a Polish Sausage.
So which is it, Polish or Polish? I guess it depends if I’m hungry or not.
What about this, which word rhymes with enough? Though, through, plough, or dough?
None of them do, so why do they all have o-u-g-h in them?
There have been arguments whether English is a phonetic language? I say it is not!
If you study the Spanish language, you will see that it is mostly based on phonics. Their words sound just like they’re spelled. No wonder other nationalities say the English language is the hardest language to learn. Heck, I’ve been speaking English for 56 years and according to my wife; I still haven’t mastered it.
I have to admit; I’ve always wondered why my wife comes home so tired from teaching kindergarten. She acts as if she has just run a marathon. Now after thinking about the English language, I know why, because she is the one that has to teach the kids how to read and write with all this confusion.
Then there are the rules, rules, and more rules of quotations, periods, commas, semicolons, apostrophes, conjunctions, phrases, exclamation points, adverbs, adjectives, proper nouns, pronouns, question marks, ellipses, hyphens, and parentheses. Really? They call them rules, but I call it confusion.
So beware, this is the first of many blogs to come. If everything is not perfect in my writing, it’s because I’m a Photographer/Cattleman and not an English major.