Something You Should Know
Ridiculous Rules of the English Language & How Infrastructure Keeps Cities Moving
Mon, 19 May 2025
People prefer to pay for things with plastic more than cash today. While it is convenient, it creates a problem that is likely costing you quite a bit of money. This episode begins by explaining the problem and how to solve it. https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/software/people-twice-likely-spend-using-card-than-cash/ So many English words are pronounced nothing like they are spelled. Cough, salmon, laugh, doubt, and calf are just a few examples and I am sure you can come up with more. Why is this? Why can’t the spelling of words match the pronunciation? Well, that’s an interesting question with multiple answers. It’s not that people haven’t tried to fix this problem. Joining me to explain why English spelling is so bizarre is Gabe Henry who is author of the book, Enough Is Enuf: Our Failed Attempts to Make English Easier to Spell (https://amzn.to/3GP36VT) It’s mind boggling to think about the infrastructure of a city - all the systems that must work for that city to function. There is water, waste, electricity, transportation, communications and more. How does it all work? Here with some insight is Sybil Derrible, a professor of urban engineering and director of the Complex and Sustainable Urban Networks Laboratory at the University of Illinois Chicago. He is author of the book, The Infrastructure Book: How Cities Work and Power Our Lives (https://amzn.to/3Fb6utx). There is a stigma about doing things alone. Many of us would feel uncomfortable going to a restaurant or the movies by ourselves. While the thought of it might feel odd, it could actually be quite pleasurable – at least that is what some interesting research says. Listen as I explain https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/05/the-unexpected-pleasure-of-doing-things-alone/392486/ PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS!!! MINT MOBILE: Ditch overpriced wireless and get 3 months of premium wireless service from Mint Mobile for 15 bucks a month at https://MintMobile.com/something ! FACTOR: Eat smart with Factor! Get 50% off at https://FactorMeals.com/something50off TIMELINE: Get 10% off your order of Mitopure! Go to https://Timeline.com/SOMETHING ROCKET MONEY: Cancel your unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster! Go to https://RocketMoney.com/SOMETHING QUINCE: Elevate your shopping with Quince! Go to https://Quince.com/sysk for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns! INDEED: Get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at https://Indeed.com/SOMETHING right now! DELL: The power of Dell AI with Intel inside is transforming the world of pro sports! For the players and the fans who are there for every game. See how Dell Technologies with Intel inside can help find your advantage, and power your wins at https://Dell.com/Wins Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is the problem with paying with plastic instead of cash?
I mean, as you say, people have tried throughout history, but are people trying now or have we pretty much thrown in the towel and we've just said, this is the way we spell these words, live with it.
There is a version of the simplified spelling movement that still exists. It doesn't have momentum, but there is a community of people that are continuing to try to simplify it.
Well, like so many things that never get off the ground, there's no money in it, right? There's no profit motive for changing the language, at least not directly, that anybody could probably see. And so if there's no payoff, then there's no payoff.
There were profit values, there were profit motives for this, specifically among businessmen in the late 1800s. They viewed simplified spelling as, something that would increase productivity and efficiency in their workforce. Let's say you owned a publishing company or a newspaper or even a factory.
You would look at simplified spelling and see it as a way to save time, save money, because these words are shorter to write.
you would save ink you would save paper and all in all you would be able to accelerate the productivity of your workforce that drove a lot of these people noah webster made some calculations back in 1789 and he concluded that his version of spelling reform which was actually kind of a more moderate
he calculated that it would save printers about one page out of every 18, which doesn't sound like a lot, but for a 180-page book, that's 10 pages. For a 360-page book, that's 20 pages. And this is the kind of marginal profit calculation you're trying to make if you're running a business. So there was money in it, but I think the aesthetics of simplified spelling were always working against it.
I know one of the things that confounds people who don't have English as their first language are some of the weird silent letters we have, like the B in doubt, or the B in debt, or the L in salmon. Do other languages have silent letters like that?
There are languages with silent letters. French has silent letters. The problem or the distinction between those languages and English is that You can learn a set of rules for those languages and the rules apply in most cases. So you can teach a child that in this word, you're going to have a silent letter after your S. In every case, you're going to have this following this.
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Chapter 4: How does infrastructure support the functioning of a city?
Chapter 5: Is it more enjoyable to do things alone?
Right. There are reasons that people have proposed for this. One is that K doesn't begin many words naturally in the English language. And often when it does begin a word, it's silent. So there's a novelty to seeing K begin a hard C word. So it catches your eye a little bit. it draws your attention to that aisle in the supermarket, the snack foods, the the Krispy Kremes, the Kit Kat bars.
And then there's another possibility, which is that anyone who has dabbled in comedy or humor knows that K is an inherently funny sound. It's considered to be to have some quality about it that is just funny to the ear.
It would seem to me you could make the case that there is kind of a simplified language movement in the sense that texting tends to get simplified. People use the letter U for the word U. People abbreviate in ways to make it quicker, and yet you still know exactly what they mean. And yet if you try to put that in a document, in a letter, in a report...
You're chastised for that, but in texting, it's completely acceptable.
Well, we are living in the digital world, and the digital world moves fast. And generally speaking, the internet breeds shorter and quicker content, shorter and quicker communication, just to meet our pace of life. And historically, a lot of these simplified spellers had the same motive. Efficiency, speed, a more direct... one-to-one correspondence, more direct one-to-one communication.
If you can shorten that time it takes to communicate an idea to someone, that's probably the best, most efficient form to communicate with them. So a lot of the simplifications we see today in texting and in social media, words like though spelled T-H-O, through spelled T-H-R-U, these were initially proposed hundreds of years ago.
and the irony is that these words never caught on when it was some kind of elite class imposing it upon the population but when it came from the bottom up when it came from texters and social media users and people typing it out with their thumbs for an informal conversation these did start to catch on so
In a way, the simplified spelling movement has these downstream effects in today's world, but the difference is no one is trying to turn it into the authoritative way of spelling, the way that those reformers tried to do.
Is the resistance to simplified spelling more of a resistance of, oh, it's just too much trouble, it's going to cause trouble, and let's just not bother? Or is the resistance coming from real gatekeepers who want to keep English the way it was written, the way it was intended, the way that they're purists, in other words?
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