Like when I see encyclopaeia or daemon I say "en-sigh-clo-pay-dee-uh" or "day-mon"

Hmm, I say daemon day-mhen instead of day-mon(like [Mon]day)
As for encyclopedia, it's more en-sigh-clo-pee-dee-ah.

But then again your British.

No I'm not. I was making fun of the British spellings. I say "en-sigh-clo-pee-dee-ah" and "de-min"

o_O
De-min sounds completely off. Who are you making fun of now? :P

I think the old Anglo-Saxon word was haert, and probably pronounced Hay'-art.

I'd have to go to the OED, to check though.

Anglo-Saxon heorte.

Very sleepy, sorry. Just took five kids to Six Flags. No clue what this thread is about.

who cares as long as people understand what you're trying to say conventional spelling, syntax and grammar aren't necessary as you can see by this sentence which is not only a big run-on but also lacks any punctuation whatsoever but clearly gets my point across

OOPS there's a comma and apostrophes but does it really matter as long as you get what i'm saying?

Old English was heorte, pronounced logically. Heart dates back to the 15th-16th centuries, and they only changed one vowel because the Brits are silly about spelling.

onion vs. union is the one I find silly.

I'd spell them union = a nasty tasting vegetable

yoonion = the state of being unified.

So what would be a unified set be?

Who would have thought you would drive on a parkway and park on a driveway?

yoon / if / ide set

I was asking what you would call a union if an onion were spelled union. The word already exists in English and refers to the joining of multiple items into a set.

http://www.plainlanguage.gov/examples/humor/marktwain.cfm

A humourus little letter,from Mark Twain on spelling.

Not to start a thread on why imperialism is bad for the whole world, but: if the English-speakers had not spread out as conquerors of the world, the English language (particularly its spelling, but also its phrasal verbs and silly mass crossings of its Germanic and Latinate predecessors) probably would have been relegated to its rightful place as a minor curiosity. Perhaps in a few centuries or millennia it will rank alongside Latin as a curiousity plaything of linguists and historians rather than as something that ordinary people have to trouble themselves with on a daily basis. This is, in my opinion, exactly the fate the English language deserves -- well, except for its wonderfully broad vocabulary. That is its primary virtue, I think, although it does throw up yet another wall for those attempting to break into English from the outside.

I agree that pot should be legal, but, Dude, that doesn't mean smoking an ounce of pot every day is good idea.

Great link CA, made me laugh.

@Smoker ... start learning Chinese.

"(particularly its spelling, but also its phrasal verbs and silly mass crossings of its Germanic and Latinate predecessors)"

Nonsense. English is one of the few languages where you can actually tell what a word means from its spelling. Combining Latin & German is a recipe for a superior language.

Putin, how is English better at getting meaning from spelling than any language with a single parent language?

Because those languages have standardized, usually phonetic based, spelling conventions and didn't make a point to indicate etymology or meaning through spelling. The problem faced by English language developers is that the spoken English language had more sounds than the alphabet had letters (due to its wide-ranging heritage), so etymological based spellings became the norm.

English is a complete mess, for sure, though I believe that USA-English is more standardised than the mother tongue over here.

English language "developers"? We are now in a clue-free zone.

When languages change phonetics but keep the same alphabet, the changes are almost always consistent across the entire language and easy to trace back.

"English language "developers"? We are now in a clue-free zone."

What would you call them, smart ass? The scribes who standardized the spelling system.

Does the fact that English lacks the absurd verb conjugations of latin languages make it better? I would think so, but of course English as a quite few irregular verbs.

The lack of gender probably makes is easier to learn, also. Not sure what function gendering nouns has.

Verb conjugations are pretty common to most languages. English is definitely the outlier there. Asking whether that makes it "better" or "worse" is silly. What makes a language "better" than another? It makes it harder for English speakers to learn other languages, but the extreme irregularity of English verbs more that counteracts the reduced number of forms in terms of ease of learning.