Highly Irregular Quotes

“The best-known example of this split is in our animal names. In the fields and farms, where the Anglo-Saxon peasants worked, they get their old Germanic names. On the tables where the Anglo-Norman nobles dined, they get their Romance names.”
― Arika Okrent, Highly Irregular: Why Tough, Through, and Dough Don't Rhyme—And Other Oddities of the English Language

“The English lexicon: it’s big. Also large, sizeable, substantial, huge, enormous, hefty, immense, extensive, and voluminous. English is not unique in having synonyms—most languages do—but it is notable in being rife, teeming, overrun, and crawling with them.”
― Arika Okrent, Highly Irregular: Why Tough, Through, and Dough Don't Rhyme—And Other Oddities of the English Language

“Meaning is not something contained in a word but a habit of usage that emerges over time by consensus.”
― Arika Okrent, Highly Irregular: Why Tough, Through, and Dough Don't Rhyme—And Other Oddities of the English Language

“There are twelve or sixteen or maybe even twenty vowels in English, depending on your dialect.”
― Arika Okrent, Highly Irregular: Why Tough, Through, and Dough Don't Rhyme—And Other Oddities of the English Language

“Whole syllables have disappeared from words like chocolate (‘choklit’), vegetable (‘vegtible’), favorite (‘favrit’), and many others.”
― Arika Okrent, Highly Irregular: Why Tough, Through, and Dough Don't Rhyme—And Other Oddities of the English Language

“There was another group of clusters that look much more familiar to us, because even though we don’t pronounce them anymore, they live on in our spelling. The ‘wr’ of wrist, wrong, and wrath. The ‘kn’ of knot, knit, and knee. The ‘gn’ of gnaw and gnat, the ‘mb’ of comb and lamb, the ‘wh’ of what, where, and why. These were fully pronounced, with both sounds in the cluster, sometimes for hundreds of years after their spellings were established in print. Sometimes, in some dialects, even until today.”
― Arika Okrent, Highly Irregular: Why Tough, Through, and Dough Don't Rhyme—And Other Oddities of the English Language

“But even when they’re part of your system, clusters can be a challenge. Children tend to acquire them later than other aspects of the sound system, and may even keep a cute baby pronunciation like ‘pider’ for spider long after they’ve mastered most parts of the language. And even among adults who are fully competent native speakers, clusters will be reduced in all kinds of situations. When you say hands in a sentence, do you really pronounce the ‘d’ in there? Are you sure? Whether you perceive it or not, it probably comes out as ‘hanz.”
― Arika Okrent, Highly Irregular: Why Tough, Through, and Dough Don't Rhyme—And Other Oddities of the English Language

“Caxton was a merchant, a member of a growing class that was able to acquire a certain amount of education and literacy. He was working in Flanders when he started a printing press in Bruges. Printing had been spreading through Europe for a few decades, but most of the works produced were in Latin. The first work that Caxton printed was in English: his own translation from French of a retelling of the legend of Troy. He had written a manuscript translation that had become so popular among the English-speaking courtiers of the Burgundian Netherlands (the duchess was the sister of the king of England) that he couldn’t keep up with demand.”
― Arika Okrent, Highly Irregular: Why Tough, Through, and Dough Don't Rhyme—And Other Oddities of the English Language

“Some standards started to emerge after the Court of Chancery, the court that handled contracts, trusts, and land disputes, switched to English in about 1430. A large number of official government documents were created in London over the next few decades. This loose, emerging standard came to be known as Chancery English, and though it doesn’t use all of our modern spelling conventions, it’s readable to us today.”
― Arika Okrent, Highly Irregular: Why Tough, Through, and Dough Don't Rhyme—And Other Oddities of the English Language

“Even though we no longer form the plural with -as, we see that old pattern reflected in pairs like wolf-wolves (also elf-elves, self-selves, knife-knives, loaf-loaves, etc.).”
― Arika Okrent, Highly Irregular: Why Tough, Through, and Dough Don't Rhyme—And Other Oddities of the English Language

“Intellectual discussions of matière philosophique or matière esthetique kept their basic form (and more of their high intellectual flavor) in English discussions of matters philosophical and matters aesthetic. It has that same fancy sheen when extended to jokey phrases that never occurred in French at all, as in “I’m an expert in matters mixological.”
― Arika Okrent, Highly Irregular: Why Tough, Through, and Dough Don't Rhyme—And Other Oddities of the English Language

“Other official domains like the academy (professor emeritus, poet laureate) and the church (friar minor, mother superior) also carried over titles in the French way of doing things. Latin was also used in these domains, and the adjective ordering was reinforced by the similar Latin way of doing things, where phrases like diabolus incarnatus gave rise to devil incarnate.”
― Arika Okrent, Highly Irregular: Why Tough, Through, and Dough Don't Rhyme—And Other Oddities of the English Language

“femme fatale, film noir, carte blanche, cause célèbre. When the French-speaking Normans conquered England, French became the language of official institutions and practices. That happens to be the area where we find a large number of noun-adjective phrases today. Terms like attorney general, heir apparent, body politic, notary public, court martial, fee simple, and ambassador plenipotentiary all belong to the domain of officialdom. As does time immemorial, which originally referred to time “out of memory,” or before recorded time, a concept that mattered in considering whether certain customs had the force of law.”
― Arika Okrent, Highly Irregular: Why Tough, Through, and Dough Don't Rhyme—And Other Oddities of the English Language

“Fail and fault, in both English and French, have a long history of converging, diverging, swapping, and expanding meanings, but sans faille got Anglicized to without fail and stayed that way.”
― Arika Okrent, Highly Irregular: Why Tough, Through, and Dough Don't Rhyme—And Other Oddities of the English Language

“The noun failure came much later, in the seventeenth century. It was formed in English from the verb faillir, but the end syllable was confused with a different suffix, -ure in words like figure, pressure, and closure. Due to this confusion, faillir became failure. But before that the gerund form failing was used as the noun, in failing of teeth, failing of eyes, failing of the spirit, and also without (any) failing. For a while, there was also another noun form, faille, taken directly from French. Sans faille meant without fault, lack, or flaw, and it worked its way into medieval English along with other common set phrases like sans doute, sans délai, crier merci, en bref, au large, par cœur. We made the words more English but kept the basic structure: without a doubt, without delay, cry mercy, in brief, at large, by heart.”
― Arika Okrent, Highly Irregular: Why Tough, Through, and Dough Don't Rhyme—And Other Oddities of the English Language

“When it comes to nouns, if it has two syllables, the stress is probably on the first one. If it’s clearly from French, it might be stressed differently (baguette, ennui), but it has long been the case that as words lose their obvious connection to French, they can shift their stress. This can lead to dialect differences where British and American speakers differ on where they put the stress in ballet or debris, or where some American speakers say POlice or JUly, or “CEEment.” It causes a whole lot of trouble for pecan, which we got from an Algonquian root through French explorers who said paCAHN and English speakers can’t quite decide how to pronounce.”
― Arika Okrent, Highly Irregular: Why Tough, Through, and Dough Don't Rhyme—And Other Oddities of the English Language

“But the pull of the first-syllable pattern is strong. And plenty of verbs waver between second- and first-syllable stress. What about research? (“Did you REsearch the question? Did you resEARCH the question?”) Transform? (“Did it TRANSform your understanding? Did it transFORM your understanding?”) And there are plenty of paired nouns that seem to be in the midst of this wavering too (my REsearch/resEARCH, my ADdress, my adDRESS). Even some of the late borrowings that are clearly French (homage, mustache, perfume) can go either way. In many later borrowings, the British and American stress preferences differ.”
― Arika Okrent, Highly Irregular: Why Tough, Through, and Dough Don't Rhyme—And Other Oddities of the English Language

“Then came the French vocabulary onslaught. The earliest borrowings were quickly assimilated to the English way. French final-syllable stress became English first-syllable stress: monTAGNE-MOUNtain, jarDIN-GARden, forÊT-FORest, citÉ-CIty, monNAIE-MONey, jourNÉE-JOURney. But later borrowings often didn’t adjust (maCHINE, diVORCE, balLOON). They kept their French ways but still became fully English words. (French stress rules are more complicated than “final-syllable stress,” but to the English ear words appear final stressed.)”
― Arika Okrent, Highly Irregular: Why Tough, Through, and Dough Don't Rhyme—And Other Oddities of the English Language

“Words like purify, ignorance, temptation, accomplishment, and changeable came in with French words that were rooted in Latin, but their endings became independent enough for English speakers to attach them to Germanic roots in words like speechify, utterance, starvation, fulfillment, breakable, and many others.”
― Arika Okrent, Highly Irregular: Why Tough, Through, and Dough Don't Rhyme—And Other Oddities of the English Language

“Many of the French words that were adopted displaced older English words (e.g., beauty replaced wlite, clear replaced sweotol), but the old words sometimes carved out specialized corners of their own where they could survive (see “Couth, Kempt, and Ruthful”; “Elegantly Clad and Stylishly Shod”). Ruth was replaced by pity, but ruthless managed to continue to live alongside pitiless. Seethe was replaced by boil, but in figurative uses, like seething with anger, it hung on. Worldly was not replaced by mundane, but the senses separated.”
― Arika Okrent, Highly Irregular: Why Tough, Through, and Dough Don't Rhyme—And Other Oddities of the English Language

“In the centuries following the French rule of England, the English language spread back into all areas of life, common and official, in a new mixed form with a vocabulary full of words that had come from French but were completely Anglicized. Words like farm, city, village, fruit, and flower now belonged to both the nobility and the folk. But the language continued to expand under the influence of French and Latin as literacy and education spread and people adopted new words to indicate a similar elevated status or prestige.”
― Arika Okrent, Highly Irregular: Why Tough, Through, and Dough Don't Rhyme—And Other Oddities of the English Language

“We can blame the French for this one, or at least for getting it all started. When the Normans took over, they brought their language, but they didn’t use it everywhere. French was the language of ruling elites and their institutions of administration, government, and law. The elites also used Latin for education and in the church. Often it can be hard to tell whether a word in English came through French or through French speakers using Latin.”
― Arika Okrent, Highly Irregular: Why Tough, Through, and Dough Don't Rhyme—And Other Oddities of the English Language

“The vocabulary explosion is not the only thing we can blame the French for (see “A Sizeable, Substantial, Extensive Vocabulary”). It introduced new word stress patterns that created confusion and splits based on stress alone (see “Don’t InSULT Me with That INsult!”). It left behind old word forms and phrase ordering (see “Without Fail,” “Ask the Poets Laureate”). It even encouraged the development of a new English speech sound with its own letter, v (see “Of Unrequited Lof”).”
― Arika Okrent, Highly Irregular: Why Tough, Through, and Dough Don't Rhyme—And Other Oddities of the English Language

“In many cases it is unclear whether an English word came in from French or from Latin. Hundreds of words that have a Latinate prefix (pre-, de-, sub-, in-, etc.) were imported into English by people familiar with both French and Latin. An educated person using English could form prepare from préparer or praeparāre, decide from decider or dēcīdere.”
― Arika Okrent, Highly Irregular: Why Tough, Through, and Dough Don't Rhyme—And Other Oddities of the English Language

“Naturally, because the ruling elite were still educated in French, they often reached for terms from French when speaking English. And as written English, which had all but disappeared for a while, returned in literature, education, court records, and town ordinances, people had to figure out how to use English in these formal domains.”
― Arika Okrent, Highly Irregular: Why Tough, Through, and Dough Don't Rhyme—And Other Oddities of the English Language

“After the conquest, English and French were divided by social class. The ruling elite spoke French and the lower classes spoke English. Eventually, French influence spread to English, but English remained a Germanic language in its basic structure and grammar and much of its most basic vocabulary. French was layered into it, mostly in vocabulary, but in a few other subtle ways. It wasn’t because the ruling class imposed the French language on the lower classes and forced them to speak it. It was because over time the ruling elite adopted English as their own language.”
― Arika Okrent, Highly Irregular: Why Tough, Through, and Dough Don't Rhyme—And Other Oddities of the English Language

“The graven of graven images doesn’t even have a corresponding verb anymore. It was originally from the Germanic root that became graben in German and grafan in Old English and meant dig or engrave. In the sixteenth century, English, under the influence of French, which had itself borrowed the Germanic root and formed engraver out of it, started using engrave as the verb and jettisoned the original—except in the case of graven images, where the old past participle lives on as an adjective in one, very specific, biblical context.”
― Arika Okrent, Highly Irregular: Why Tough, Through, and Dough Don't Rhyme—And Other Oddities of the English Language

“So why does English stop you from moving fastly or stepping hardly? While most adverbs in English are formed with -ly, a few stay bare in this role. Come again soon. Lie low. Aim high. Walk tall. These would be strange as come again soonly, lie lowly, aim highly, walk tally. On the other hand, it’s not very strange at all for adverbs that can take -ly to show up as bare.”
― Arika Okrent, Highly Irregular: Why Tough, Through, and Dough Don't Rhyme—And Other Oddities of the English Language

“It Goes By So Fastly Why Do We Move Slowly but Not Fastly? And Step Softly but Not Hardly? Adjectives say something about the qualities of nouns. A cheetah is fast, a sloth is slow. A pillow is soft, the floor is hard.”
― Arika Okrent, Highly Irregular: Why Tough, Through, and Dough Don't Rhyme—And Other Oddities of the English Language

“Every act of language use involves a mix of enforcing old habits, applying rules to new situations, and economizing effort.”
― Arika Okrent, Highly Irregular: Why Tough, Through, and Dough Don't Rhyme—And Other Oddities of the English Language