https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_e
Cognitive dissonance on the more accurate name of “Ignored e”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heteronym_(linguistics)
Record a record? Convict a convict? What an annoying concept.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morphological_leveling
At least irregular verbs are drifting away, that’s a pleasant surprise.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trisyllabic_laxing
fotograffy > fuhtawgruhfee I’ll die on this hill
You’re about twenty centuries too late on the χ thing. You’re gonna need to go back and talk to the Romans.
[kʰ] or [χ], both end as /k/ [kʰ] in English anyway. But it feels weird that people insist on that etymological ⟨ch⟩ as if “English got it from Latin” was more important than “it’s ultimately from Greek”.
It’ll be part of the great English spelling reform. Until then, it’s going to be spelled the way we Romanized Greek in the 16th century.
On thinking it over, “proper” spelling of foreign words has done its own share of damage to English spelling. We don’t just have to learn our own spelling conventions, we also have to learn foreign ones. Or not (sent to you from Cairo, Illinois, locally pronounced “care-oh”)
Frankly, I agree. I’m perhaps biased because of Italian, but I think etymology doesn’t belong to the spelling; a consistent and dialect-agnostic set of rules that allows you to predict how to spell and pronounce a word is far more important.
In special I never understood why English obtusely sticks to the double spelling standard, native (as in /gɪf/) vs. Romance+Classical (as in /dʒɪf/).