• apolo399@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    English grammar and conjugation is quite consistent compared to its spelling, and it’s quite purely Germanic. It got simplified by it’s contact old norse, which resulted in middle english being starkly different from old english.

    • themeatbridge@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      Sure, sometimes it is. But frequently it isn’t. But let’s conjugate two very similar words and then pronounce them. How about “go” and “do”?

      I do
      You go He does He goes She did She went

      How about the words “rove,” “move,” and “shove”? They are all conjugated basically the same, spelled almost the same, but each is pronounced differently.

      Knowing how one word is conjugated and pronounced does not necessarily inform on any other. The phrase “sometimes it’s consistent” is self-contradictory.

      • apolo399@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        I never mentioned pronunciation. I only talked about the untrue claim that english grammar was inconsistent because it was mixed with other languages. The mismatch between pronunciation and spelling is the fault of the printing press.

        • themeatbridge@lemmy.world
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          2 days ago

          Ok, but that’s the topic of conversation. And even if we set aside pronunciation, English grammar is inconsistent. There are far more irregular verba than there are rules.