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English really is an international language. It draws on Roman, Celtic, Anglo, Saxon, Viking and Norman sources - among others, no doubt. It is amazing that any rational rules of grammar and spelling should emerge out of that pot-pourri. But they have and native English speakers are nearly all fluent in both the spoken and written forms.

The example given, showing all the variant pronounciations of the syllable 'ough', suggests that English is chaotic, with no relationship between the written and spoken forms. It isn't really that bad, or it would not have become one of the most used languages in the world. Thanks to its mixture of sources, it is also a very rich language, in the sense that words and idioms have historical connections, drawing on the chequered past of these islands.

American attempts to rationalise the spelling made very little difference. We enjoy the idiosyncracies.

A ruff-koated, doe-phaced, thawtful plowman stroude throo the streats of Scarborough; a(gh)ter fawlling into a slow, hee cawphed and hiccupped.

I think this is reasonably accurate.

Sloo rather than Slow?

We're back to GBS again.

I was thinking slow (slough) 'ow' as in how.

This is a particularly off putting example of the written form of our language being confused with the spoken form.

Or maybe I should say phoneme / digraph confusion. We can have 'ow' saying 'o' as in so/sow. Of course sow can also mean 'pig'!

Just think of our children learning to reed!

Having said all that, sometimes I'm still not sure I've got it right.

This is also interesting:

Cna yuo raed tihs??

I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt!

One quite interesting and unusual thing about English I discovered at the 'Secret Worlds and Hidden Lives' conference I went to a few months ago is that the language is exceedingly gender neutral.

Anyone who has studied any foreign languages will be familiar with the concept of grammatical gender, masculine and feminine word forms, and the agreement of adjectives, what I had never previously thought of, however, was how much this facilitates closeted gay people in concealing their sexuality. There are very few gender specific nouns still in common use in modern English and no adjectival endings to inadvertently betray the sex of the partner with whom you spent the weekend.

LOL Portwyne!

This is cool. Yes, as GBS pointed out, why not we say put as cut (coot, with a 'oo' reduced in length)? English always has such funny places. May be due to confusions between ancient grammarians!

I wake this morning to find that one of my posts has been referred to the moderators. Mmmmm.

Maybe I should explain. This thread is about the English language and it's variations. However phonetic variations are not the only interesting aspects of English. In the post above I wrote the following:

"Can you read this. I couldn't believe that I could actually believe what I was reading. The phenomenal power of the human mind, according to research at Cambridge University, it doesn't matter in what order the letters in a word are, the only important thing is that the first and last letter be in the right place. The rest can be a total mess and you can still read it without a problem. This is because the human mind does not read every letter by itself, but the word as a whole. Amazing huh? Yeah and I always thought spelling was important!"

However, I wrote it with the letters mixed up, but with the first and last letters in the correct place, sort of to show it works, that was the point.

I would give another example of a word so written again, here, but as I don't want this post removed, I won't.

I understand we have to have rules but on a thread about the peculiarities of the English language this seems a bit stringent.

Peter

As an occasional fellow-sufferer you have my shpamyty...

Portwyne,

Hanx!

:-)

(Hanx, was, by the way, the title of a Stiff Little Fingers album, memories, memories.)