[pizzeys]

I think this fact (and he's obviously not wrong, though I don't know if I'd label it a secret - everyone knows this about English, I thought?) is inevitable from any language which gains the reach English did, or at least, gained the reach English did at the time English did... whether it would be different now we have global communication all the time remains to be seen I suppose.

How do you have a language spoken by so many wildly different people, who bring in their own vocabulary with each generation, and not end up with irregularity in spelling and pronunciation?

English is a mongrel, certainly, but that is a product of it being so widely 'deployed', not an inherent feature of the language. Sure, Italian is regular. Italian also doesn't have germanic roots all over the place mixed in with the latin and chinese and whatever else.

[umanwizard]

English has been "weird" for the reasons you're describing since before it spread anywhere.

It has more to do with the number of different cultures that have conquered England, combined with the fact that written English has existed for a very long time compared to most European languages. The fact that there isn't an authority that can dictate major spelling reforms doesn't help either.

[kwhitefoot]

> The fact that there isn't an authority that can dictate major spelling reforms doesn't help either.

Nor is there any need for it. An authority that could dictate spelling would soon start dictating pronunciation. It's bad enough that the pernicious influence of Estuary English is levelling pronunciation over the whole country but at least people, theoretically at least, have a choice. The only influence such an authority has is to artificially slow the development of the language and to try to shoe horn regional variations into a single formula.

People often complain that written English doesn't correspond with pronunciation. But no one ever says whose pronunciation that the spelling is supposed to reflect.

I'm from the south west of England and my pronunciation of words like house, boat, castle, book, etc. is quite different from that of, say the North East. So how would you like us to spell house? Should it be /'haʊs/ which is probably about what I would say and is also regarded as RP. Or should it be /'hu:s/ which is the best I can do for the pronunciation that at least used to be common in the North East and in parts of Scotland.

Would the spelling authority also specify which syllables to stress? Then how will it deal with American English which stresses the final syllable in cases where most Brits would stress the penult.

[masklinn]

Both french and spanish have a huge number of speakers, yet haven't broken to the extent that english has. And the issue of english phonetics long predates its rise to primacy as the international language.

[cwyers]

I think you need to have a frame of reference to truly realize it as a native English speaker

[zokier]

Does french suffer from the same issues? It has been spread pretty widely too and with long history.

[roel_v]

French has a central body that regulates (dictates) what is 'French'. English doesn't. Descriptivism vs prescriptivism.