French is a nightmare to spell, and part of the reason English can be really tricky and inconsistent is because up to half of our language is derived from French, which was a result of the norman occupation of england for a few hundred years.
A little known history fact that I am proud of knowing because I do not know many. And I probably got it wrong.
Spanish and French Spelling Bees from a Gambler’s Perspective, coming soon from the mind of MM.
Lmao, he has a sentence that refers to “a mess of skirts” with a subscript and rare footnote that reads “bad outcomes with women.”
I have never heard that term but it sounds pretty sexist.
I was reading about this a while back, and I think your intuition is correct. Spelling bees are pretty much just unique to English. Spelling bees in other languages are rare to nonexistent.
In Mandarin, they have something similar where they ask you to write a character for a certain word. That’s a different skill than spelling, imo.
Well, part of why I think that’s probably dumb is it seems to be concentrating on just the military stuff. The sort of history that’s all about battles and commanders.
My understanding has always been that English was the peasant language and the royal court all spoke French (a much more civilized, structured language) until very recently.
One thing I’ve never read about is how the Romance languages were all codified by the Romans. Obviously they took the root words and gave them Latin structure and declensions. But just how did this process take place and how long did it take to take hold in each place? Fascinating stuff imo.
Also why did all the Romance language countries stay Catholic when precious few outside of them did?
It‘s not just that. To take a random example: the word „knight“ is of Anglo-Saxon origin and stopping to pronounce all those silent letters and keep them in writing is entirely the fault of you guys.
However, French contributed a lot to vowels being a mess (although English has some domestic problems there based on the great vowel shift).
@suzzer99 Latin is heavily influenced by Ancient Greek. On the one hand, because the two separated pretty late in Indoeuropean migrantion and then the Romans adopted some more words from taking over lots of Greek areas in the Mediterranean (the Byzantine/ Eastern Roman Empire was mostly Greek speaking)
I saw him coming out of the Bellagio poker room during a WSOP a couple years ago, I swear to God he had on that same shirt lol…
I took Latin in college - one of the few classes I actually enjoyed.
But how about all the Romance languages? They all got their spelling and grammar straightened out, or I assume the spelling would still be a huge mess like English, and Latin verb declensions to boot. How the hell did that process go down?
What would Germany be like today if you weren’t all a bunch of barbarians the Romans didn’t want to even fuck with? Would your culture be different, and would you think differently if German was romanticized? Would you still be a Catholic country? This stuff fascinates the hell out of me.
Wait I just realized my buddy who’s lived in Germany for 25 years has a masters in Latin studies or something. Holy shit what a great resource. Messaging him now.
I’ve probably seen him on 5 separate occasions. 2+2 polo shirt every time.
Sounds like you and a few others might be fans of this podcast.
French spelling is a mess, too. I have no idea about other Romance languages, but at least the wikipedia entry on Spansih orthography claims that the Royal Spanish Academy has enforced/ started a lot of the “straightening out” that you mention. Makes sense that English not having a central institution to change spelling, would not have been able to do that. France is more centralized, though seems to be very conservative concerning language, so that may be the reason for that.
All European languages (well all languages probably) are strongly influenced by language contact: English has its Anglo-Saxon origin, but Danish and French influences due to Viking invasion, Norman conquest and post Angevin-Empire ties to France. Spanish has all those Visigoths, “French” itself is a Germanic word.
Half of Germany was part of the Roman Empire for hundreds of years and it is not really a Catholic country at all. Protestants and Catholics make up similar parts of the population. We fought a war over it for thirty years in the seventeenth century.
I also second @jwax13 ´s recommendation of The History of English Podcast. Very peculiar mix of language history and “real” history. There is even an episode about gamgling ;)
edit: found it: Episode 91: Traders and Traitors | The History of English Podcast
Spanish doesn’t fuck w/French spellings at all. Even when they steal a word like “buffet”, they change the spelling to something that makes perfect sense in Spanish “bufé”.
One thing that I find hilarious, but at the same time bugs the hell out of me is the Spanish version of the French city “Bordeaux” (pronounced bore-dough). Instead of using the logical “Bordó” in Spanish, it’s “Burdeos”, which is basically a completely phonetical version if a Spanish speaker tried to pronounce Bordeaux. But to me this is kinda idiotic b/c there are probably instances where a Spanish speaker is referencing Bordeaux to a non-Spanish speaker and they have 0 clue wtf they’re saying.
I know from my French classes that Spanish people consider the spelling / pronunciation divorce in French and English a sick joke. Personally I just wish they’d stop pronouncing the e’s at the end of the words.
They do the same thing with English. It’s beautiful.
Coleman (camping supplies) is a huge brand in Latin America. But you better pronounce it “Col-E-Man” or they have no idea what you’re talking about.
I took a French class with a girl from Spain and found it funny that she made 0 effort to use the French ‘r’ and instead rolled the hell out of all her r’s which made her pronunciations sound pretty ridiculous.
The best example I’ve heard is Popeye’s. I have no clue wtf they’re saying, it’s like “Pope, ehh, ess” or something like that.
Here in France I often have the worst problems being understood when trying to pronounce English words in the way a French person says them. Names of beers are a nightmare.
