Blurt!Commonplace Book

Gretchen McCulloch

“Respondents explained that they found spellings with u to be less confusing because that spelling kept the initial letter in common with usual — as long as a silent e was there at the end to cue the pronunciation of the u away from the sound in untie. I find this resolution elegant in its clunkiness: Solving the problem of two unwritten sounds by writing a further, unpronounced letter is a truly Englishy solution.”

posted Dec. 26, 2022, 8:00pm

“In other words, when you see a new word starting with ‘gi,’ your previous exposure to ‘gi’ words is basically telling you to flip a coin—it’s just as likely that you’ll decide to pronounce it with a hard g as with a soft g.”

(It’s a hard g.)

posted Mar. 7, 2020, 10:45pm