The wonders of English spelling

It just says "This man can pronounce every word in the dictionary".

It doesn't say "This man can pronounce every word in the dictionary correctly".

My favorite version of this is that spelling bees don't exist in most (any?) other language, because their systems are more intuitive and consistent, but with English, if you can consistently spell words they give you a fucking trophy and you get money for college

Stupid question: Doesn't a dictionary also contain the phonetic spelling?

Two things about English.

First, English is not one language, it's a mix of several different languages with loanwords stolen from eveey culture encoutered. Grammar and conjugation is entirely inconsistent because it is based on Romance languages, Germanic languages, and Greek.

Second, English is descriptive, not proscriptive. In other words, there are no rules to pronunciation or spelling. English words are spelled and pronounced the way English speakers spell and pronounce them. That's how England and America can end up with such disparate spellings and pronunciations. If you are understood, you have spoken English. When new pronunciations and spellings become commonly used, they are added to the dictionary. When speaking and writing styles change, so do the rules of grammar.

I seriously never got the concept of a spelling bee competition until I learned English.

I’m really awful at spelling, or pronouncing words I’ve read but haven’t heard before. I’m not dyslexic so I thought I was just weirdly bad at spelling. Then I started learning Spanish and it turns out I can spell just fine - English is the problem, not me.

People will really say shit about the silent letters in French and then completely ignore the unbelievably inconsistent pronunciation of "gh" in English.

Imagine living in a country where spelling bees cannot exist

Don't most dictionaries have IPA next to the word?

And on the opposite end is Korean. Hangul basically instructs you how to make the sounds and then you try to make the 으 sound but it comes out 어

Listen pal, you spend several centuries invading others and looting their vocabulary and see how much sense your language makes!

Orthographic reform now! Our movement is dozens strong!

people who speak a language with a decent spelling system

So not the fuckin' French then 🧐 😂🤣😂 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🇮🇪🇬🇧 🫖🎩 laughs in Her Majesty's English

(On a related note, does anyone else have this much fun lampooning British nationalism?)

Edit: Only Parisians are downvoting this, glory to Britannia

I'm pretty sure someone fucked up this timeline because that's definitely something from Idiocracy (2006)

Name a language without weird exceptions. I think in most this is still impressive.