Why English spelling looks like it lost a bar fight with history

According to Boing Boing, English spelling lost a bar fight with history—and it shows. The printing press, the Great Vowel Shift, French-Italian linguistic feuds, Dutch typesetters, and Renaissance scholars infatuated with Latin all contributed to this beautifully broken language. That's why 'Wednesday' sounds nothing like its spelling, and 'colonel' is pronounced 'kernel.' A new video breaks down how centuries of printing decisions, phonetic shifts, and scholarly stubbornness transformed English into a language that defies its own rules.

Listen to this story

Hear this and more stories in a personalized audio briefing.

Open The Chonkerton