A MOTLEY MANY TENTACLED BEAST

English pronunciation is a motley many tentacled beast whose phonetic peculiarities present themselves early in the language learning process. Parents who teach their children to read soon discover that the two “is” sounds in the sentence “What is this?” are not pronounced the same. They discover that the two “at” sounds in the sentence “What is that?” are not the same, either.

As a dilettante writer and language fan I wonder a lot at how weird English is. English simply does not spell like it sounds. Its orthographic irregularities and exceptions are apparently everywhere and endless. They confound even the careful and curious native speaker of our error-autocorrecting information age.

To be Modern is to experience everyday the triumph of the eye over the ear. This, English orthography exemplifies.