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A comment on Italian government seeks to penalize the use of English words. Parent comment

Re:Italian government seeks to penalize the use of English w... by nl on Monday April 03, 2023 @12:21AM (#35418526)
If you are interested, there's a good reason why English spelling is so weird. The pronunciation of vowels shifted between 1400-1700 and depending on when a specific word's spelling was "standardised" decides which version of the pronunciation was used. If it's the old vowel pronunciation the spelling will make no sense, whereas the new vowel are mostly ok.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift is pretty good, and include sound files of the old vs new pronunciations.

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Re:Italian government seeks to penalize the use of English w... by TRiG_Ireland on Monday April 03, 2023 @07:21AM (#35421652)
And the great vowel shift happened very shortly after the introduction of the printing press to Britain and the standardisation of English spelling.
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