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[Reelya]

Also, pretty sure they got the police-police thing wrong. The Buffalo Buffalo thing has 8 Buffalos, and they claim that the word police 8 times in a row similarly makes sense. However:

Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo

meaning:

Buffalo-city-bison, (who) Buffalo-city-bison bully, (also) bully Buffalo-city-bison

Which is three meanings of "Buffalo". Whereas "Police" only has two meanings to play with, so if you substitute "cop" for the police noun and "control" for the police verb then using the same structure you can only get:

police police police, police police

cops (who) cops control, (also) control cops

Which is 5, and at a stretch you can extend that to 7 "police"

cops (who) cops control, (also) control cops (whom) cops control

But you can do the same with the Buffalo


Buffalo-city-bison, (who) Buffalo-city-bison bully, (also) bully Buffalo-city-bison (whom) Buffalo-city-bison bully

Meaning 11 Buffalos. But there is literally no construction i can find where exactly 8 "police" makes grammatical sense. seems like a research fail.

[Iduno]

"English is a difficult language"

*uses only examples of how geniusly simply English is*

"I before e except after c, and h preceeded by t, go fuck yourself thief."

[scriver]

What? Thief complies with the I before E rule.

Whenever I see English speakers complaining about that rule it's never actually seems to be any complaints that's relevant, like for sounds that the rule isn't even about

[dragdeler]

-

[Iduno]

What? Thief complies with the I before E rule.

Whenever I see English speakers complaining about that rule it's never actually seems to be any complaints that's relevant, like for sounds that the rule isn't even about

If you drop the middle bit that catches Thief, you miss theist/theism-related words and their.

[Reelya]

The main difference there is that "theist" is a double-vowel, the-ist, whereas thief is not. It would actually make it more confusing to force both to conform to the same spelling. How would you say "theif"? The-if? Or just the same as thief? If so, it now makes how to pronounce "theist" less clear.

So, in other words, the fact that "theist" is actually two syllables is a legit reason it doesn't follow the spelling rules for combining vowel letters for single syllables.

[scriver]

What? Thief complies with the I before E rule.

Whenever I see English speakers complaining about that rule it's never actually seems to be any complaints that's relevant, like for sounds that the rule isn't even about

If you drop the middle bit that catches Thief, you miss theist/theism-related words and their.

Reelya already answered satisfactory, but I'll add my words since it's was responded to me: That's exactly what I meant. Theist/theism and their are not the same sound as in thief and chief and grief and so on. The rule is about the ie=ee=i sound.

The only word I can think of off the top of my head that breake that rule is seize.

[Reelya]

Yeah, pretty much.

Any "the letters must be in this certain order" rule is clearly sub-optimal. If letters are always in that order, then it's not actually conveying additional information. You're using more letters than are needed. Any possible ordering of letters should be valid, but they should have a unique meaning depending on the order.

Also, the "words should be spelt like they sound" argument is clearly not practical. Different people speak differently, both individually, regionally, and across time. "Fight" for example comes from the German "Fecht" and "Night" comes from the German "Nacht". They're spelt like that because that is in fact how people used to say them. The spellings are in fact a direct result of the "spell it like it sounds" point of view. We could change the spellings now, however different regions of English pronounce "night" a bit differently, so there would have to be a compromise, and in a couple hundred years the same argument will crop up, again, except now you'll have two alternative spellings for "night" which different people prefer.

[Ulfarr]

Here's one for you: χείρα / χήρα meaning hand / widow respectively. Both are pronounced as "heera", emphasis on on "hee", with the "a" sounding like the a in "back" . And then there is "χοίρος" meaning pig and is pronounced as "heeros" with the "o" like in drop.

Actually since we are at it "η","ι","υ","ει","οι","υι" are all pronounced as the 'ee" sound in "bee".

edit: These are Greek.

[scriver]

οι m8

[Ulfarr]

That would be either "όι m8" or "οϊ m8"

Both are kinda correct with such an informal phrase but the second form would be the most likely to be used.

[Naturegirl1999]

I love how numbers can convey the information letters can 2 shorten words

[Ulfarr]

Is it still considered a number if we don't use it to represent a set amount of units?

[scourge728]

What I love about the i before e rule is weird breaks it for seemingly no reason, I guess you could say its..... a weird word

[scriver]

It makes and eeeh sound not an eee sound