Why is 'laugh' written with -ugh while it ends with an [f] sound?
It's because the spelling 'laugh' reflects how the word was pronounced in Late Middle English, some 500 years ago.
Click the video to listen to a phonetic reconstruction of how this verb evolved from 3rd-century BC Proto-Germanic to modern-day Standard English.
The Middle English to Early Modern English stages are based on the dialect of the region of London.
@yvanspijk
No, that is why »laf« was written that way 400 years ago.
It is written that way now because nobody except Webster managed to do any kind of spelling reform for English, end his one only stuck in America.
The big reform that went nowhere being the Simplified Spelling Board.
#simplifiedSpelling #SimplifiedSpellingBoard
I blame King James (6/1) and his bible. Nobody dares change from that spelling
Altho that doesn’t work too well, either. Germans update Luther’s bible all the time. 1996 spelling reform? New Luther edition!
@ospalh That doesn't change the fact that 'laugh' reflects the Late Middle English pronunciation /laux/.
There have been numerous spellings of the word, including 'laf', but that's not what this post is about.
@ospalh @yvanspijk To see what "simplified" spelling (which could also be considered "rational" rather than historical) look at the Introduction to the Dewey Classification of 1922. https://archive.org/details/decimalclassifi09dewegoog/
In his correspondence, Dewey (aka Dui) took his spelling reform even further.
Book digitized by Google from the library of University of California and uploaded to the Internet Archive by user tpb.
Yoïn van Spijk
ospalh
kcoyle checking the perimeter