Timeline for Why are the words "lose" and "choose" written differently and pronounced the same way?
Current License: CC BY-SA 2.5
18 events
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| Feb 13, 2019 at 9:49 | comment | added | BoldBen | @mplungjan My belief is that, up until the18th century there was, at least in Eastern England from around East Anglia northwards, a sound which was somewhere between an "eff" and an "ow", that it probably sounded a bit like "ouff" and that it formed part of the sound of words like "bough", "cough", "plough", "slough" and so on. It would then make sense that Dr Johnson and the academics from whom he drew inspiration would have spelt those words like that. As time went on, however, the sounds separated but the accepted spelling remained. | |
| Feb 13, 2019 at 7:55 | answer | added | herisson | timeline score: 0 | |
| Dec 6, 2014 at 2:00 | history | edited | tchrist♦ |
edited tags
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| Jul 9, 2011 at 11:39 | answer | added | Marcin | timeline score: 0 | |
| Feb 27, 2011 at 22:14 | comment | added | mplungjan | @Marcelo: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pet_peeve | |
| Feb 27, 2011 at 22:12 | comment | added | PSU | @mplungjan: Or the Dr. Seuss book (I think) about a hoodlum's respiratory distress as he makes furrows in unbaked bread: "The tough coughs as he plows through the dough." | |
| Feb 27, 2011 at 21:56 | vote | accept | Mr. | ||
| Feb 27, 2011 at 13:13 | comment | added | RegDwigнt | Related: Written English vowels are odd. | |
| Feb 27, 2011 at 7:36 | comment | added | mplungjan | My pet peeve is Slough/Cough | |
| Feb 27, 2011 at 5:05 | comment | added | avpaderno | This question seems a peeve. | |
| Feb 27, 2011 at 4:06 | comment | added | bye | Why would a double o be more logical? One would think that a u would make a lot more sense, since in every language but English, that's the sound that letter makes. The fact is that English spelling was more or less fixed at a time when the spelling made sense. A double o meant "make an o sound for twice as long as normal". Maybe we should have waited until after the Great Vowel Shift, but we didn't know it was coming. | |
| S Feb 27, 2011 at 4:00 | history | suggested | mgkrebbs |
added 'spelling' tag
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| Feb 27, 2011 at 3:58 | review | Suggested edits | |||
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| Feb 27, 2011 at 3:46 | answer | added | Robusto | timeline score: 11 | |
| Feb 27, 2011 at 3:28 | comment | added | mgkrebbs | Of course there's also the word loose, which has an /s/ instead of a /z/. If English's spelling weren't pathetically tangled, we might have looz for lose and loos for loose (and chooz for choose). | |
| Feb 27, 2011 at 2:24 | history | edited | Mr. | CC BY-SA 2.5 |
added 337 characters in body
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| Feb 27, 2011 at 2:23 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/#!/StackEnglish/status/41684800372744192 | ||
| Feb 27, 2011 at 2:12 | history | asked | Mr. | CC BY-SA 2.5 |