I've learned English as a second language by myself throughout my life just by watching and hearing it from movies, videogames, music and TV shows. I've searched for this specific issue several times and I couldn't find a clear answer for it. Is there an actual set of rules for vowel pronunciation other than short and long sounds? Can't take a "is an exception to the rule" as an answer anymore lmao.
Think about it like this England had ancient Germanic tribes, the Romans (parts of which used Greek), the anglicans, the saxons, a bunch of Germanic tribes and Vikings, the French, the Dutch, and then the old English. Add on the new terms from globalization and Native American words and you get American English
But in general, look for the origin of the word: Germanic, Latin, or Greek (and sometimes Anglo-Saxon)
There are a lot of reasons why English is messed up, but the biggest reason I'd say would be because of French. About 60% of English has Romance origin (French and Latin). A lot of words were imported by the Norman upper class, which then later had to be pronounced by the English, who spoke a Germanic language. Sometimes, the same words were even reintroduced again but with a slightly different pronounciation/spelling.
Another big reason was also the Great Vowel Shift, where some vowels started being pronounced more and more like different vowels, which in turn shifted those vowels to be pronounced differently, and so on it went. The spelling of the words often remained, but the pronunciation was now different.
27
u/Fartout92 1d ago
I've learned English as a second language by myself throughout my life just by watching and hearing it from movies, videogames, music and TV shows. I've searched for this specific issue several times and I couldn't find a clear answer for it. Is there an actual set of rules for vowel pronunciation other than short and long sounds? Can't take a "is an exception to the rule" as an answer anymore lmao.