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Why don't we spell it the way it sounds?

lfbno7 posted on May 11, 2008 | views: 176 | Tags: spelling, pronunciation
Why do we spell it Iraq. They say ee-rock. Why don't we spell it Erock. Seems simple enough.

Why do we spell it Iran. They say ee-ron. So, why not spell it Eron.

Paree. If the flippin French choose not to pronouce the S, why are we stuck with it? They let it go to waste. They clearly don't want it.

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Comments

  • diabolicdame said on May 11, 2008....
    I have always wondered about this! English is not a phonetic language I guess.
  • Lucytorial said on May 11, 2008....
    But you see Ifbno, americans pronounce things differently from the rest of the english world anyway.

    Iraq as you say is pronounced here as Erack not erock?? tehehehee

    Although what about thorough, it could be spelled thurah...

    I kind of think though that word spelling has a lot to do with the movement of the tongue in the mouth creating th' sounds, or ph' sounds, LLrrrrr sounds and khhh' sounds, then you have cxxx' sounds, ssss' and shttt sounds.  Thats where all those odd words come from I think.  So in a way it is phone-etic.... te he e
  • lfbno7 said on May 12, 2008....
    Here we pronounce it Eye rack.
  • crybabylu said on May 12, 2008....
    Interesting, I don't know why.
  • silverwhisper said on May 12, 2008....
    mainly those things are a function of the fact that an awful lot of english words are corruptions of words in foreign languages--e.g., iran & iraq.

    in other cases, the spelling of a word has remained the same while over centuries of use, the pronunciation changes: this can be seen in the case of names like "worcester" (pronounced: "wooster").

    i understand that spelling bees are almost exclusively an english-language phenomenon.

    ed
  • exhibit_c said on May 13, 2008....
    On the web, I have trouble making myself spell out 'through". I nearly always just type "thru". Looks better to me every time.
  • lfbno7 said on May 14, 2008....
    Lucy, Aussies talk funny.
  • Lucytorial said on May 14, 2008....
    We do not talk funny!... mate.!

    Silver, being literate is very important, as far as communication goes I still hold true the fact that there isn't enough of the "spelling bee" phenon we have by far more removed family structures than most European countries so there isn't that foundation of the whole family helping with literature and vocabulary.  Just MHO
  • silverwhisper said on May 18, 2008....
    o, i agree that as a rule, spelling appears to be a dying art. i'm sorta not seeing where the family structure rant is coming from. ?

    ed

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