• PapaStevesy@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      10 hours ago

      Because modern English is a combination of ancient Celtic languages with the various languages of the British Isles’s numerous populators and conquering forces across history, including but not limited to: Latin, German, Norse, and French. And spelling wasn’t really standardized until the printing press was invented, due in part to class stratification. But that’s another story lol. Suffice it to say, it’s more than a bit of a hodgepodge and you just gotta take it for what it is.

    • Capt. Wolf@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      20 hours ago

      Romantic words were incorporated differently into other languages as the Roman Empire’s influence spread. Words like inflammable have more direct Latin roots than words like indebt. So where Inflammable comes directy from the latin inflammo, indebt came from old French and middle English, going from something like endetter and endetten, using the root word dete and dette, but stemming from the root Latin word, debitum. Then en became in at some point.

      That’s how I understood it anyway through a very short amount of google searching. Anyone feel free to correct me.

    • LurkingLuddite@piefed.social
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      16 hours ago

      Where the words come from. Remember: English is many languages in a trench coat, not really its own set of hard rules.

      Hell, even languages with hard rules like Japanese have some exceptions even without the modern trend of borrowing words from other languages!