great vowel shift

Why It’s ‘Feet’ Not ‘Foots’: The Logic of I-Umlaut

Why do we say "feet" instead of "foots"? It isn't a random quirk of English grammar, but the result of…

6 days ago

The Great Vowel Shift: Why English Spelling Is Broken

Between the 14th and 18th centuries, English speakers radically changed how they pronounced vowels, engaging in a massive linguistic game…

6 days ago

The Dolch List: 220 Words You Need to Read

The Dolch List consists of 220 high-frequency "sight words" that comprise up to 75% of all juvenile reading material. This…

1 week ago

Why Is English Spelling So Crazy?

Why do 'through', 'tough', and 'though' sound so different? The answer isn't random chaos but a journey through history, from…

3 months ago

A Time Traveler’s Guide to Old English

Forget Shakespeare. If you traveled back to 1000 AD, you'd find a language that sounds more like German and has…

3 months ago

Why Is English Spelling So Weird?

Ever wonder why 'knight' has a 'k' or 'island' has an 's'? The answer isn't that English is illogical, but…

6 months ago

The Press That Froze Language

The invention of the printing press was a revolution not just for knowledge, but for language itself. Before Gutenberg, language…

6 months ago

The Great Vowel Shift: How it Transformed the English Language

The Great Vowel Shift, a term coined by the Danish linguist Otto Jespersen, is a pivotal moment in the annals…

2 years ago

Why Are Many English Words Spelled Differently Than They Are Pronounced?

English is a peculiar language in many ways, and one of its most baffling features is the inconsistency between pronunciation…

2 years ago

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