And guess who they stole a bunch from? Yes, French. Blame the French. Blame the Franks and the Normans specifically for making the pronunciation weird.
The Celtics got invaded by the Romans, then by Saxons, then by Vikings/Danes, then by Normans in the 11 Century. Then they spent the last 900 years invading everybody else.
Ehh, Normans mostly kept to themselves. The folks didn’t have to adopt any of their language, except to speak to the king and upper administration. But French language was perceived as fashionable, so the vocabulary crept into English — the division between crude everyday Norse/Germanic words and ‘elegant’ highbrow Norman words is still present in the choice of which ones were chosen to stay in the language for any particular topic.
English pronunciation depends on the language they stole the word from.
It also depends who you’re talking to and/or where you are.
That part’s not as unique to English though.
And guess who they stole a bunch from? Yes, French. Blame the French. Blame the Franks and the Normans specifically for making the pronunciation weird.
Stolen from? The English got invaded by the Romans, Normans, Vikings etc. Didn’t have much choice in that word adoption.
Oh, we steal words. And we will continue to steal words until we have them all!
The Celtics got invaded by the Romans, then by Saxons, then by Vikings/Danes, then by Normans in the 11 Century. Then they spent the last 900 years invading everybody else.
Ehh, Normans mostly kept to themselves. The folks didn’t have to adopt any of their language, except to speak to the king and upper administration. But French language was perceived as fashionable, so the vocabulary crept into English — the division between crude everyday Norse/Germanic words and ‘elegant’ highbrow Norman words is still present in the choice of which ones were chosen to stay in the language for any particular topic.
What about Normandy?