or-card?
Answers:
Oh yeah I know what you mean!
The english language is terrible for this. I am a pre-service teacher and to try to explain the differences to a year 2 class is on of the harder things about the profession.
I found this poem recently that really hits the nail on the head.
If an S and an I and an O and a U
With an X at the end spell Su;
And an E and a Y and an E spell I,
Pray what is a speller to do?
Then, if also an S and an I and a G
And an HED spell side,
There's nothing much left for a speller to do
But to go commit siouxeyesighed.
cindy
I'm from the southern US and it is orchid. (or-kid)
I have never heard it pronounced as orcard.
i don't c-are, i don't c-ore
English is a really screwed up language, that's all! It is so inconsistent because we have words from so many other different languages.
Yeah...
It was George Bernard Shaw who famously pointed out that 'fish' can be spelled 'ghoti' - /f/ as in 'cough', /i/ as in 'women', and /sh/ as in 'nation'.
Surprisingly enough, English spelling is about 75% regular. The problem is that the most commonly-used words are the most irregular!
Most inconsistent English spellings have reasons. For example, the word 'sign', which perhaps you might like to spell 'sine', is obviously related to the word 'signature', in which the 'g' is actually pronounced. It is a fault of the pronunciation and not the spelling which causes the inconsistency.
There have been attempts over the years to reform English spelling. However, there are strong arguments against doing this. One argument is the loss of a great deal of information about relationships between words, as illustrated by the example of 'sign' and 'signature' given above.
Additionally, the current spelling system preserves an enormous amount of information about the etymology of words. Take as an example the word 'debt'. The Latin for 'debt' is 'debitum'. The Old Frence for 'debt' is 'dette'. The seemingly ridiculous 'b' in the word 'debt' reflects the fact that the word passed into English via Latin and not French. Similarly, the silent 'k' in words such as 'know' shows that their origin is in Old English, when the 'k' was actually pronounced. The Old English for 'know' is 'cnawan'. The Latin is 'noscere'.
The word 'quiver' has two meanings - the verb meaning 'to tremble' and the noun meaning 'a case for arrows'. The noun comes from the Old French 'cuivre' (the 'cui' in French often became a 'qu' in English - cf. 'quarry' from OF 'cuiree'). 'Quiver' meaning 'to tremble' probably comes from the Old English 'cwifer'. The orthographical difference between these two totally different words has been lost because of French scribes after the Norman conquest, who replaced the Old English 'cw' with 'qu' (cf. OE 'cwen' = 'queen'), causing the two quivers to be spelt identically - a great loss to our history. :-(
It's worth looking in a good dictionary to discover why we pronounce things inconsistently - at the end of the definition, it will give you the source of the language in brackets. I say, let's embrace our inconsistency as a reflection of our glorious history!
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