ENGLISH LANGUAGE - yacht

[gaara]

hello...

 

ive been having an arguement with mates...

 

 

is it actually necessary for yacht to be spelt the way it is defined in teh dictionary... or ... in how ever the english language began.. what would of been the consequence of spelling it "yot" for example.

 

or replacing "ph" with f everywhere. e.g phone with fone.

 

i dont see the big deal.. but me mmates say.. bla bla the structure of the language an all this shit. so yeah

 

someone smart fill a brother in!!!!!

[JesuBungle]

Well I'm not a linguistics expert, and I'm a little drunk, but I believe most if not all the words in the english language stem from latin. So things like the ph in phone were kept....maybe.

[Martin]

hello...

 

ive been having an arguement with mates...

 

 

is it actually necessary for yacht to be spelt the way it is defined in teh dictionary... or ... in how ever the english language began.. what would of been the consequence of spelling it "yot" for example.

 

or replacing "ph" with f everywhere. e.g phone with fone.

 

i dont see the big deal.. but me mmates say.. bla bla the structure of the language an all this shit. so yeah

 

someone smart fill a brother in!!!!!

 

 

Dutch

[Martin]

It was a foreign word that they kept the foreign spelling when they brought it into English. Probably

at some point, when only rich guys had fast sailboats for pleasure sailing, the foreign word had some chic or snob appeal, which is

all the more reason to keep the foreign spelling.

 

I checked to be sure

http://etymonline.com/?term=yacht

 

the etymological dictionary says M.L.G "middle low german" that is essentially dutch, what they spoke in the low countries----the nether lands

 

"...M.L.G. jacht, shortened form of jachtschip "fast pirate ship," lit. "ship for chasing," from jacht "chase," from jagen "to chase, hunt," ..."

 

 

In modern German a "Jäger" (a hunter, a chaser) is the term for a pursuit aircraft---a fighter aircraft whose job is to shoot down bombers and other enemy planes.

 

die Jagd means "the hunt"

 

a "yacht ship" would be a "hunt ship"-------fast maneuverable good for coastal piracy smuggling and the like

 

this is in the days of sail. such a boat would be more exciting and fun to sail than a heavier merchant vessel-----so the fast pursuit vessel got taken over as a pleasure craft

 

after that it just became synonymous with "pleasure boat"

[the tree]

"ph" is pronounced differently to "f", and "yot" is pronounced differently to "yacht", what more do you need?

[gaara]

ummm... i just looked in the dictionary an it said....

 

under the pronounciation section:

 

phone -> fown

yacht -> yot {http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/yacht}

 

so your completley wrong. or being sarcastic! hard to tell...

 

thanks for your replies...

 

soo... basically.. the stupid spelling of stuff in english... is due to the words usually being imported from other languages.

 

thanks team SFN. cept last dude.. just kidding!. but not really.

[the tree]

Random House dictionary isn't great, 'yät' is quite a bit closer a pronunciation than 'yot'.

 

In the case of phone, there being a ph affects the spelling of the whole word. Although the fff bit is also different it's also why the 'o' isn't pronounced as an elongated vowel.

 

Individual words rarely get imported into the English language, but English is of course comprised of French, Greek, German, Aramaic, Latin, Romani et cetera. Hence the contradictions in convention.

 

FYI, the word that is pronounced yot, is spelled յոթ.

[bluesmudge]

You should have seen the state of the english language before the Normans, Romans, Norwegian, etc etc etc invaded . . . we'd be missing many words.

 

Eg. all words accosiated with law come from the french as do works like Pork and Beef instead of just saying Pig and Cow

 

The language has been moulded over the centuries by invaders / changing trends and attitutes.

 

In short you can spell Yacht how ever you like - Just expect to be screened for dyslexia.

 

to confirm above Yacht is from the Dutch

[Dak]

In the case of phone, there being a ph affects the spelling of the whole word. Although the fff bit is also different it's also why the 'o' isn't pronounced as an elongated vowel.

 

if im understanding correctly, isn't it the 'e' that does that?

 

ie, phon = fon != phone = fone?

 

[edit]no, i get what you mean now.

 

photograph != fotograph.

 

it'd be foetograph.

 

so yeah, ph = f, but phV != fV (V=vowel)[/edit]

[Gilded]

I'll have to add that even though Finnish is probably a very hard secondary language to learn, at least there's no spelling problems as all words are sort of written as they're spelled. To the extent that it would be stupid to have a spelling bee as a Finn knows how to spell a word if they hear it. I'm not sure if I've mentioned this before, but it's always a pleasure to bring up good points about an otherwise crappy language. To stay more on topic, yacht is "jahti" (yah-tee?) in Finnish, can mean the ship or hunting, chasing.