why does a 'know' start with a "k" but a "NO" wudnt start with a 'K'
why is a DO pronounced as a "du"
But a SO not prounced as a "su"
🙄 🙄 🙄
The written English language is littered with contradictory rules and odd spellings of words. Why night, nite and knight for instance?
Well, it took some research, but I have uncovered the *true* answer to this.
English is not what you would call a 'classical' language, such as Latin, Greek or Hebrew, with structured and logical progression. In fact, it is a modern language that draws heavily on other languages for the base meaning of words, and even borrows letter from latin, greek, arabic and other languages to form its words.
Prior to written English there was no set way to spell words, and in much the same way that we use Romanji to spell out japanese words such as Konichiwa, other scripts were used to literate English words.
Hence everyone had a different interpretation as to how they formed the words. It wasn't until the Great Vowel Shift (make sure you pronounce the V properly) of the 1500's did it move towards any standardisation and the pronunciation of words was locked down into a structure.
Unfortunately, like anything English, they only did half a job before they knocked and decided to get pissed down the pub. Hence the English language has changed little in 500 years despite many non-English people's attempt to fix this.