cas (04/20/83)
The original point I was trying to make is this: The English language,
perhaps more so than most other natural languages, is derived from many
sources. The two major sources are Anglo-Saxon (which is more similar
to modern German than modern English) and Norman French (which is also
more similar to modern French than modern English). Over the years these
merged together in more or less equal proportions (I have heard claims
for each of these languages being more heavily used). Additionally,
especially in America, many many words from many other languages have
been incorperated into English.
I tend to agree however that a greater influence on modern day spelling
is probably the fact that until a couple hundred years ago, spelling was
very unstandard, and the words compiled by the dictionaries of the time
did not help matters - they contained a particular spelling for a particular
word with little concern for the spelling of similar words.
All this leads up to the point which I was (and still am) trying to make,
that all of our "rules" of English spelling are simply based on the
statistics - a certain number or percentage of English words follow any
given rule. However, all these rules are going to have many exceptions,
in almost all cases a majority of the words will be exceptions to the
rule which is trying to cover them.
For this reason, I find it rather amusing to see people trying
to list the exceptions to any given rule, or expect the rule to be
followed.
Anyway, is this a bit clearer?
Cliff Shaffer
...{mcnc,we13,seismo}!rlgvax!cvl!cas