Spelling is ruining the English language

[Trilby]

why is phonics spelled p h o n i c s and not fonix?

and 'onanism' doesn't mean what you think it means, either.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Originally Posted by Brianna

why is phonics spelled p h o n i c s and not fonix?

Good one. Why do we spell anything phonemically? Well, the sober answer is etymological reasons, and etymology itself is at least as fascinating a hobby as entomology. <--"Eek! A big bug!"

And 'onanism' doesn't mean what you think it means, either.

Inasmuch as usually when we do it we're not spooging on the ground after coitus interruptus, no. Nobody knows why, but it seems Onan really didn't like his sister-in-law. Well, soon enough, she didn't have to deal with him.

There are two accepted pronunciations of Uranus -- and you can make a shitty or a pissy pun with either. Unhappy planet! (Probably not as depressed as downwardly mobile Pluto, though.)

Dude, that's [hacienda] not even an English word.

It was probably some English professor whose name is unfortunately lost to history who woke up a freshman-English class with, "English doesn't borrow from other languages. English follows other languages down dark alleys, knocks them on the head, and goes through their pockets for loose grammar."

Memorable if not fully descriptive; we've been cross-pollinating other languages for decades if not centuries. For about a millennium English was half French; now French borrows Englishisms right and left. Russian had been tentatively sipping at English words -- often for Communist Party doings, of all things -- and with Communism's fall the floodgates are open -- kompakt disk isn't even Russified with prefixes and suffixes in a manner hitherto quite typical. A foreign root-word might be accepted into general Russian use after being buffered, bracketed fore and aft, with a Russian prefix and a suffix. The suffix is at least understandable as a linguistic adapter to fit an alien word into Russian grammar easily; the frequent use of a prefix is less easily explained. A vivid example: Russian has the word park as a city park, right enough. Russian émigrés in America, getting around to owning cars after leaving Soviet privation, coined zaPARKovat' as the verb for to park their car. Verb prefix za (which can mean a bunch of things depending entirely on the verb -- long story) plus the foreign root-word, plus the addition of one of the less usual verb endings and its associated conjugation! What's more, I think that's the imperfective aspect of the verb. Oy. Gev. Alt. Because I'm not sure of the perfective form. Zaparkat'? Some other verb prefix?! Mustn't tear my hear... not that much left.

[Kingswood]

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

It was probably some English professor whose name is unfortunately lost to history who woke up a freshman-English class with, "English doesn't borrow from other languages. English follows other languages down dark alleys, knocks them on the head, and goes through their pockets for loose grammar."

Is this the quotation you're after?

The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.
James Nicoll, 1990

[Jill]

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

It was probably some English professor whose name is unfortunately lost to history who woke up a freshman-English class with, "English doesn't borrow from other languages. English follows other languages down dark alleys, knocks them on the head, and goes through their pockets for loose grammar."

Memorable if not fully descriptive; we've been cross-pollinating other languages for decades if not centuries. For about a millennium English was half French; now French borrows Englishisms right and left. Russian had been tentatively sipping at English words -- often for Communist Party doings, of all things -- and with Communism's fall the floodgates are open -- kompakt disk isn't even Russified with prefixes and suffixes in a manner hitherto quite typical. A foreign root-word might be accepted into general Russian use after being buffered, bracketed fore and aft, with a Russian prefix and a suffix. The suffix is at least understandable as a linguistic adapter to fit an alien word into Russian grammar easily; the frequent use of a prefix is less easily explained. A vivid example: Russian has the word park as a city park, right enough. Russian émigrés in America, getting around to owning cars after leaving Soviet privation, coined zaPARKovat' as the verb for to park their car. Verb prefix za (which can mean a bunch of things depending entirely on the verb -- long story) plus the foreign root-word, plus the addition of one of the less usual verb endings and its associated conjugation! What's more, I think that's the imperfective aspect of the verb. Oy. Gev. Alt. Because I'm not sure of the perfective form. Zaparkat'? Some other verb prefix?! Mustn't tear my hear... not that much left.

Make no mistake -- the origin of the word is itself, or the fact that it was borrowed or stolen, is of no general concern to me. I was just pointing out the ridiculousness of using a wholly foreign word as evidence of how annoying the spelling rules are in the English language.

English did not create the construct of the 'cie' in the word 'hacienda'. It's therefore absurd to complain that it doesn't follow English spelling rules!

[Kingswood]

Originally Posted by Jill

Make no mistake -- the origin of the word is itself, or the fact that it was borrowed or stolen, is of no general concern to me. I was just pointing out the ridiculousness of using a wholly foreign word as evidence of how annoying the spelling rules are in the English language.

English did not create the construct of the 'cie' in the word 'hacienda'. It's therefore absurd to complain that it doesn't follow English spelling rules!

The only difference between a foreign word and a perfectly acceptable English word is about a century of use and its inclusion in a few editions of the major dictionaries. I could post some examples, but the quotations that Urbane Guerrilla and I posted about the purity of the English language should be enough to make my point.

Furthermore, your beef about the particular word "hacienda" being used as a counterexample does not in any way prove that the I before E except after C rule is actually useful enough to remember. Five root words, plus a couple of dozen words derived from these. That's all the rule is good for. FFS, it takes less time to remember these five root words than it takes to remember the full wording of I before E except after C rule.