Explore · Spelling and grammar
Why is English so irregular?
It isn’t, if you know the history. It is, if you don’t.
English is built in layers. Each wave of speakers brought its own words, its own sounds, and its own spelling habits, and English kept almost all of them. Most of what looks random is a fossil from one of these layers.
The layers of English
↑ newestoldest, the foundation ↓
Ask the history
The questions students ask most, about spelling and grammar. Tap one to see what happened.
Three ways to say it
Because English kept its native words and borrowed French and Latin ones for the same ideas, it often has three words where other languages have one. They sort themselves by formality: the plain English word for everyday talk, the French word for polished speech, and the Latin word for the textbook. Read across each row and listen to the tone rise.
Explore · The alphabet
Letters we lost
Old English was written with a few letters that modern English has dropped.
They came from runes and Irish handwriting. French-trained scribes and, later, printers who had no type for them pushed them out. Choose a letter to hear its story.
Explore · Side by side
One prayer, a thousand years
The Lord’s Prayer is one of the few texts translated into English in every period, which makes it a perfect measuring stick.
Pick a word to trace it through the centuries. Watch fæder become father and rice give way to the French-flavored kingdom.
Explore · Sound change
The Great Vowel Shift
Between about 1400 and 1700, every long vowel in English moved. Spelling stayed behind.
Pick a word, then drag through the centuries. The chart shows where in the mouth the vowel is made: front to back, and high (tongue raised) to low. Each vowel climbs one step, and the two at the top have nowhere to go, so they break into the diphthongs in bite and house.
Stages after Roger Lass (1999), as given in Elly van Gelderen, A History of the English Language (2006). Pronunciation hints are approximate. Why do great and steak rhyme with mate? They stopped one step early, and the older pronunciation stuck.
Explore · Vocabulary
Where everyday words come from
English borrowed so many French and Latin words that they now outnumber native ones in the dictionary. But not in conversation.
Of the thousand words English speakers use most often, more than four in five come from Old English: the, and, have, mother, water, love. French takes the lead as the words get rarer and more formal.
Percent of words in each frequency band. Data from Williams (1975), as given in van Gelderen, A History of the English Language (2006), Table 1.2.
Explore · Etymology
Word journeys
Every word is a small history. Some changed their meaning entirely; some changed their shape by accident.
Nice once meant foolish. A nickname was once an ekename. Filter by where a word began.
Finale · Test your ear
Which English is it?
Read the line and pick its period. Look for the clues you have met along the way: lost letters, old endings, thee and thou, and spellings that have not settled yet.
Question 1 of 8
Score: 0
Choose an answer to see the explanation.