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The letters "gh" in the word "ought" are silent but "ought" is not pronounced like "out"
(self.showerthoughts)
this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2024
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The oddities of the English language will lead you down a strange and fascinating historical rabbit hole. It's great reading, but be ready to spend some time.
I would highly recommend the History of English Podcast. This particular observation made by OP is thoroughly covered in this particular episode: https://youtu.be/T0ED-FV7O50
tl;dr once upon a time everyone spelled words guided only by vibes, then spelling was standardised-ish, then after that there was a great vowel shift where the now standard-ish spelling became less intuitive. add the linguistic influence from French and latin (sprinkle in some germanic & a pinch of skandinavian), add the power balance between classes favouring fancier words (the nobles ate pork, beef, poultry, the peasants tended to pigs, cows, chickens). add some more stuff and there you go! a "functional" language of ~~Anglonic~~ ~~Britonic~~ English!
Also, the first printing presses that came to England were accompanied by Dutch type setters. They sometimes made spellings more Dutch (changing gost to ghost for example). They were also paid by the line, so would occasionally add unnecessary letters to words.