this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2025
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I speak spanish and one of the first cultural shocks I had was when I as a kid saw an episode of some sitcom (can't remember) and there where talks of a "spelling bee" a contest to see who could spell correctly, that was so alien to at the time because in spanish there are just a few words that are tricky, because they have some silent H or a P at the beginning but then I started to learn english and it all made sense.
In finnish it's the same and I've even had the same experience! We write almost completely phonetically so something like "spelling bee" is an insane thought. English writing system is basically abstract at this point and you just need to learn to pronounce each individual word lmao
The "c" in Pacific Ocean is pronounced 3 different ways.
Great - now I have another fun fact to annoy my colleagues with.
Pasifis Osun
Pakifik Okun
Pashifish Oshun
"English: if you can spell our words we'll literally give you a fucking trophy and a scholarship"
We have bees, and we also have really long, ancient words that no one uses or remembers like pulchritudinous, which means physical beauty or Myrmecophilous which is fond of ants.
Just the fact that we can have a whole contest around the idea, and that there's still room for words contestants haven't seen before, illustrates just how insane English is.
English isn't really a language. It's at least three languages in a trench coat.
it's wild to think that we embed miniature copies of Greek and Latin into English, for doing science and medicine. not just words, I mean a functional grammar fully stocked with roots and morphemes. we just make words like "holographic," "isotope" and "synesthesia" (Greek), "accelerometer", "prefabricated" and "refrigerator" (Latin), or hybrids ("television", "microscope.")
English is such a wonderful mutt of a language.
Fuck hybrids that mix greek and latin....
The worst offender: Decathlon, Greek sports in a Greek event (Olympics) and they use DECA! /s
Greetings from a Norwegian. (Some words of Norse origin, mostly those of pre Norman origin)
That's what happens when you mash several languages together. A lot of English terms have a Latin-derived and Germanic-derived word meaning the same thing.
French spelling is a total shitshow too. what's their excuse? Spanish and Italian turned out normal.