[mathieuh]

People always seem to complain about the etymological spelling of English but I love it. I love being able to look at a word and quickly know what its likely origin language was and get an idea of its meaning.

N.B. I'm not a prescriptivist and I don't really care how you spell something as long as I can make it out. I'm just interested in languages and think it's really cool that looking at English words is like peering into history.

Fair, it makes it more difficult for learners, but I'm not sure how relevant that is for a language unless you debase languages to being simply brutal ways of conveying meaning.

[eesmith]

Does that make you especially dislike the "intentional meddling" of "snobs" on English?

Look at the word "island" and you might think it comes from the Latin "isle". This is a false etymology created by "snobs" who considered "yland" to be a corruption of the Latin, rather than a word with Proto-Germanic roots.

[jan_Inkepa]

>This is a false etymology created by "snobs" who considered "yland" to be a corruption of the Latin, rather than a word with Proto-Germanic roots.

Do you have a reference for the top-down-because-of-snob-ness rather than more organic cross-polination/interference of similar words? https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/island#Etymology gives it as being due to interference from the French-derived 'isle' (rather than from Latin, i.e. 'insula'), as does https://www.etymonline.com/word/island.

[eesmith]

I used the term "snob" in quotes because that's the term used in the linked-to article. Here are the relevant parts:

> Okrent mostly attributes English’s idiosyncrasies to the barbarians, the French, the printing press, and what she calls “the snobs.” ...

> At other times, standardization was deliberate. Those whom Okrent labels “snobs,” primarily 18th-century linguists, publishers, and pedants addicted to “intentional meddling,” consciously manipulated the language. Their meddling included the introduction of the supposedly sophisticated silent letters in doubt, indict, receipt, and salmon, as well as the Hellenized spellings of medical terms that originated as diaria, asma¸ and fleume.

Nearly all sources I can find point to that same Etymonline entry.

My understanding is more like https://www.quora.com/Which-language-is-responsible-for-the-... :

> British pedants, making a wrong guess, as they often did. Surprisingly, isle and island do not have the same origin. ...

> Isle comes from the French île (courtesy of the Normans). In Middle English it was spelled ile or ille. ..

> This ultimately comes from the Latin insula, and in Renaissance France some pedants tried to change it to isle, but ultimately failed. ...

> British pedants had more success, having decided that spellings should indicate classical origins at the expense of pronunciation. This had the advantage that it made spelling harder for those without the benefit of a classical education, and provided an opportunity for schoolboys to mock their lesser colleagues.

> They had some justification for isle (though it was a stupid rule). However, they also changed iland to island, incorrectly assuming common origins.

The "indicate classical origins" is from the (false) belief that this word came from Latin.

https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/349393/dictionar... quotes the OED as:

> The ordinary Middle English and early modern English form was iland, yland. ... In 15th cent. the first part of the word began to be associated with the synonymous ile, yle (of French origin), and sometimes analytically written ile-land; and when ile was spelt isle, iland erroneously followed it as isle-land, island; the latter spelling became established as the current form before 1700.

[JasonFruit]

I don't know about the person who started this thread, but I find that confused, throat-clearing, "We messed up, but with the best of intentions" mess absolutely delightful. As a child, I got very into etymology, and my father loved bursting my bubble by doubting that anyone knew any of it for sure. I think we were both enjoying different sides of that fanciful, egotistical guesswork.

[eesmith]

You might also like Merriam-Webster's Concise Dictionary of English Usage.

Ad copy: "A handy guide to problems of confused or disputed usage based on the critically acclaimed Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage. Over 2,000 entries explain the background and basis of usage controversies and offer expert advice and recommendations."

A copy is available from archive.org: https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780877796336

(The full one might be too - I have a copy of the concise one so that's what I know about.)

[LudwigNagasena]

> Fair, it makes it more difficult for learners, but I'm not sure how relevant that is for a language unless you debase languages to being simply brutal ways of conveying meaning.

It makes it difficult for everyone. So many hours of L1 and L2 speakers are sunk for no good reason just because someone finds it cool to have “p” in “receipt”.

[Longhanks]

Your complaint comes down to the meme „why use many word when few do trick“.

[LudwigNagasena]

There is literally no connection between my “complaint” and the meme.