#210 | The Illogicality of The English Language
English Learning for Curious Minds
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The Language of the Early Years
In the era before printing, people who copied scripts or pieces of paper by hand would make changes in order to make it easier for people to read their scripts. In early english, the letters i and m were all drawn using a very similar downward stroke of the pen called a minim. This word itself, minim, which is spelt m i n i m, would have looked simply like ten identical downward strokes of the pen. Instead of changing the way the letters were written, they made some simple changes to spelling. For example, the word for the bit of flesh in our mouths went from being spelt t u n g e to t o n g u e tongue. So they changed
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