• Nelots@lemm.ee
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    4 months ago

    I don’t mind silent e’s, they do actually change the way words are pronounced at least.

    • eatham 🇭🇲@aussie.zone
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      4 months ago

      They work like an e after a vowel, making it a long vowel, but with a letter in between. They have absolutely no reason to exist as haet is pronounced the same as hate but has the letters in a more logical order.

      • Nelots@lemm.ee
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        4 months ago

        In that persons comment, they removed several “silent” e’s, but all but one changed the word’s pronunciation. I was talking about them. Like the E in hate. It doesn’t make a sound itself, so isn’t it still silent?

        • optional@sh.itjust.works
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          4 months ago

          It’s not silent, but in the wrong place. Haet would be more correct, as it changes the pronunciation from [hæt] to [heɪt]. Hait might be an even better way to write it (see also: bait, maid, laid etc.)

          English is a weird language.

          • bleistift2@sopuli.xyz
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            4 months ago

            English is three languages wearing a trench coat and pretending to be one.

            [Off topic:]

            I just now realized that the word “trench” is in “trench coat”.

            […] heavy-duty fabric,[1] originally developed for British Army officers before the First World War, and becoming popular while used in the trenches, hence the name trench coat.

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trench_coat

              • bleistift2@sopuli.xyz
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                4 months ago

                In my mind, “trench coat” was always a single word. I never noticed that it is two words, one of them being trench, as in war infrastructure. It was interesting to find that out.