So how these English spelling become so 'illogical' and confusing??
The English spelling system has developed over the centuries and the irregularities came about because of various invaders and writers trying to use their alphabet and sounds to English:
English is developed from the Romans, Anglo-Saxons & Vikings, the French scribes, (1066) caused the most problems with spelling,
then in the 1400s, the printers were invented with their new printing presses changed words and spelt them how they wanted,
and then the 16th Century English academics determined to make spelling more like its Latin roots and added all sorts of silent letters in words.
Then in 1828, American Noah Webster decided to simplify American spellings and brought out his American English dictionary and he changed many spelling rules to decrese the French influence.
This has made huge change in the way we spell words.
how did English spelling become so 'weird' with its unusual spellings?
The English spelling system developed over the centuries and the irregularities came about because of various invaders and writers trying to fit their alphabet and sounds to English:
English developed from the Romans, Anglo-Saxons & Vikings,
the French scribes, (1066) caused the most problems with spelling,
then in the 1400s, the printers with their new fangled printing presses changed words and spelt them how they wanted,
and then the 16th Century English academics decided to make spelling more like its Latin roots and added all sorts of silent letters in words.
Then in 1828, American Noah Webster decided to simplify American spellings and brought out his American English dictionary.
This lot changed and brought 'strange' ways of spelling words.
Also pronunciation changed over the centuries but the spelling remained the same. especially with the words with silent letters in them like knee, knock, light, cough, calm, daughter... we didn't change the spelling because that was set.
60% of English words have silent letters in them. If you know they're not there to mess with your head but to show the history of the word it helps. For example: knock, knee, gnaw, gnat are all Viking (Old Norse) words, the 'k' and 'g' were pronounced but not now.
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