[HappMacDonald]

> French pronunciation is mostly consistent (more so than English at least)

Most of English's inconsistencies stem from words absorbed from other languages, and far and away the largest helping of that was the French that British nobility picked up during the Norman invasion.

My understanding of French pronunciation primarily revolves around the idea that 80% of words end in three randomly selected vowels followed by 1-3 randomly selected maximally hard consonants such as j, x, z, k.. and that the sum total of those randomly selected letters always sound identical to the vowel portion of the word "œuf" which means "egg". Which is also basically like trying to say "eww" while you have an egg in your mouth.

[hirvi74]

To further this, a perfect example are some of the culinary words vs. the animal words in English.

Pork, Beef, Poultry, Venison, etc. are thought to have French etymologies.

Pig, Cow, Chicken, etc. are thought to have Germanic etymologies.

It's because the French speaking nobility ate the meat, and the lower-class old English speakers raised the animals.

[morpheos137]

No offense but this is a sophomoric take. I'd be willing to bet that more native English words have irregular spelling than norman/Latin/other imports. The same thing happened in French too. Often orthographic changes lags pronouciation changes. The reason many English words have irregular spellig is because English has been a written language for a long time. That is why you have words like Knight, Knee, Enough, Eight, Cough, etc which are all native words. My understanding is the k in kn words used to be prounouced.

[hirvi74]

Knee is the same in German as it is in English. However, the Germans pronounce the K, e.g., "Kah-nee."

The word for "Knight" in German is "Ritter" if I am not mistaken? Though, I have no idea where the word Knight comes from. (Which I intend to look up after posting this).