You only need to learn separate spelling and pronunciation rules for each of the languages English has evolved or stolen from.
The tough spellings usually come from Germanic roots via Old English and Middle English, whereas the French-Norman spellings are less difficult.
Greek-Latin spellings are markedly less confusing when you learn the transliterations of the Greek alphabet. Of course Philadephia is pronounced with fricative 'f' sounds instead of plosive 'p' sounds, because the Greek letter for that sound is 'phi'. Because of that, I dislike it when people pronounce the feathered dinosaur archaeopterix as [ar-key-OP-tur-iks] rather than [ar-KAY-o-(p)TEAR-iks]. It isn't incorrect either way, because in English, correct is whatever other people will understand. (Suck it, French.)
This is why I get sick of people complaining about "monolingual" English-speakers. The language has been glued together from Dutch-Germanic, North-Germanic, French-Norman, Greek, Latin, and centuries of absorbing and assimilating immigrant populations from all over the world.
You really only need to learn rules derived from four dissimilar languages to spell and pronounce almost everything in English without having a word-specific association. The remaining ten percent of words are correct when spelled and pronounced as in the native language or as anglicized renormalizations, even using the rules specific to unrelated languages. That is why the plural of octopus can be either octopodes or octopuses. Octopi is colloquially correct, but it is then acceptable to deliver a short lecture on Latinized Greek words. Similarly, the acceptable plurals of cactus are cactuses, cacti, or (los) cactus (pronounced as in Spanish). As Spanish has an increasingly large influence on American English, I have found it useful to know that it only has five vowel sounds, and knowing how to pronounce burrito and enchilada correctly gives you all five.
Despite what your elementary school teachers may have said to you, you are only incorrect in English if other people cannot understand what you are trying to communicate. Nevertheless, failure to be incorrect does not imply correctness, which is why grammar nazis exist.
A lot of other languages borrowed words too. Some even more than English.
Polish is half Latin, 10% German, Italian, French and Russian, and now it becomes a lot like English too.
But it has consistent rules and after a word is used enough it becomes polonized: computer becomes komputer, and we don't ever have to wonder how to pronounce "c".
I don't want to sound pedantic, but the correct pronunciation of "archaeopterix" is [ar-keh-o-pteh-riks]. Apparently the English Wikipedia page for it has the English-tainted pronounciation.
I spent 5 good minutes trying to find a way to transcribe in a way that an Anglosaxon would pronounce correctly, as Greek-Latin vowels have a unique sound while in English their sound depend on the letters before or after them and often are pronounced as diphtongs.
In Greek-Latin AE = E, always, and sounds like the "e" in "men".
Of course that's correct. But the other pronunciation is not incorrect; it's just less correct, because it elides over the root boundary between the archaeo- for "ancient" and -pteryx for "winged one".
I recall hearing or seeing the less-correct pronunciation near the relevant fossil or fossil reproduction at the Chicago Field Museum of Natural History, but I can't remember if it was actually printed on the display card or not. I did have to explain to my kids why the correct pronunciation of root-combining words is important for effective communication. The exaggerated roll of the eyeballs means you're teaching it effectively! (Or at least that's what I keep telling myself.)
>You really only need to learn rules derived from four dissimilar languages to spell and pronounce almost everything in English without having a word-specific association.
Don't you also need to learn the language from which every word is derived from?
No. The rules come from different languages, but once the word is considered an English word, only the orthography matters. If you make a new word by combining skip and hop into "skiphop", someone may mistakenly pronounce it [ski-fope] rather than [skip-hop], despite the fact that neither "ski" nor "phop" are identifiable as Greek roots, because phi makes an 'f' sound, and that makes the subsequent 'o' vowel pronounced as the 'o' in 'phobia'.
Knowing the etymology helps, but is not necessary. When linguistic researchers create nonce words for their experiments--words with no etymology at all, like "gluff" or "splim"--they find that people still generally pronounce them in the same ways.
They also find that people impute meanings to the nonce based on structures found in the word. For instance, when given the nonce words "plorkish" and "erildophate", and told that they are synonyms, subjects may claim that the latter is more sophisticated or scientifically precise. Or perhaps they are told to match the word to the person who spoke it, and a significant fraction of subjects match the words to the pictures the same way.
You can do the test yourself. Print out photos of Bill Nye and Kanye West. Write out "plorkish" and "erildophate" on index cards. Tell people the words are synonyms, and ask them to match the word to the photo of the person who said it. If they don't swing at least 60% in favor of West=plorkish and Nye=erildophate, and pronounce the words the same way, I will eat a tiny portion of my least favorite hat.
I claim bonus points if they also use them in a sentence or identify the part of speech as adjectives. Perhaps ask your subjects to also guess the sentence their chosen person spoke when using the word.
People do actually get paid to test this. This might be a good Science Fair project, actually.
Absolutely not. You just teach kids the very obvious rules ("silent 'e'", "two vowels go walking, the first does the talking", "just memorize that sometimes 'gh' sounds like 'f'", ''i' before 'e' except after 'c' ... excepting obvious exceptions like 'science'", ...). With just a handful of heuristics and a modicum of rote memorization, children can figure out most English words with 0 background in any other languages. Besides this, pattern recognition is strong & easy -- tons of cognates and near-cognates, and most of the homophones & homonyms are common enough words that you'll learn them quickly regardless.
>With just a handful of heuristics and a modicum of rote memorization, children can figure out most English words with 0 background in any other languages.
Most doesn't equal all.
>Besides this, pattern recognition is strong & easy -- tons of cognates and near-cognates, and most of the homophones & homonyms are common enough words that you'll learn them quickly regardless.
It's very difficult compared to a language system where the pronunciation can be directly inferred from the letters.
You only need to learn separate spelling and pronunciation rules for each of the languages English has evolved or stolen from.
The tough spellings usually come from Germanic roots via Old English and Middle English, whereas the French-Norman spellings are less difficult.
Greek-Latin spellings are markedly less confusing when you learn the transliterations of the Greek alphabet. Of course Philadephia is pronounced with fricative 'f' sounds instead of plosive 'p' sounds, because the Greek letter for that sound is 'phi'. Because of that, I dislike it when people pronounce the feathered dinosaur archaeopterix as [ar-key-OP-tur-iks] rather than [ar-KAY-o-(p)TEAR-iks]. It isn't incorrect either way, because in English, correct is whatever other people will understand. (Suck it, French.)
This is why I get sick of people complaining about "monolingual" English-speakers. The language has been glued together from Dutch-Germanic, North-Germanic, French-Norman, Greek, Latin, and centuries of absorbing and assimilating immigrant populations from all over the world.
You really only need to learn rules derived from four dissimilar languages to spell and pronounce almost everything in English without having a word-specific association. The remaining ten percent of words are correct when spelled and pronounced as in the native language or as anglicized renormalizations, even using the rules specific to unrelated languages. That is why the plural of octopus can be either octopodes or octopuses. Octopi is colloquially correct, but it is then acceptable to deliver a short lecture on Latinized Greek words. Similarly, the acceptable plurals of cactus are cactuses, cacti, or (los) cactus (pronounced as in Spanish). As Spanish has an increasingly large influence on American English, I have found it useful to know that it only has five vowel sounds, and knowing how to pronounce burrito and enchilada correctly gives you all five.
Despite what your elementary school teachers may have said to you, you are only incorrect in English if other people cannot understand what you are trying to communicate. Nevertheless, failure to be incorrect does not imply correctness, which is why grammar nazis exist.