I could BOW to a king or tie a BOW. I could walk THROUGH a door made of ROUGH wood. Don't you sometimes wish English was spelt more phonetically?
by 
Brian I
ANSWERS: 7
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duh ;)
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Yes, it's hard to learn. But I still want to learn French, too!
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It would be nice - but whose phonetics? If you will make it phonetic the way *I* speak, no problem. But none of your funny foreign accents please.
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The problem is that spelling has not kept up with pronunciation. In Middle English, the -ough was pronounced the same way. Also English is such a hybrid language that words have come in from different origins and been spelt as they sounded to the first people who used them. We cannot have phonetic spelling, however, because there are so many dialects. If each reflects its own pronunciation, then there would be different written LANGUAGES...we would not be able to read each other's written word, even if we understood the spoken one.
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It would be easier but it wouldn't be nearly as much fun!
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If you know the origin of the word, than more times than not, it is spelled phonetically. Of course, that is providing that the person is pronouncing it correctly. The exception would be homophones which are words that sound the same, but are spelled differently.
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I just wish English (as we use it in America) made more sense... More than one mouse is 'mice', but more than one house is 'houses'... not 'hice'. More than one goose is 'geese', but more than one moose is 'moose'... not 'meese'. I don't get the English language... if K's are silent, how do you pronounce KKK? Makes no sense to me.
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