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This is a set of lists of English personal and place names having spellings that are counterintuitive to their pronunciation because the spelling does not accord with conventional pronunciation associations. Many of these are degenerations in the pronunciation of names that originated in other languages.
Most of the pairs listed below are closely related: for example, "absent" as a noun meaning "missing", and as a verb meaning "to make oneself missing". There are also many cases in which homographs are of an entirely separate origin, or whose meanings have diverged to the point that present-day speakers have little historical understanding: for ...
The English word "kraken" (in the sense of sea monster) derives from Norwegian kraken or krakjen, which are the definite forms of krake ("the krake"). [6] [7]According to a Norwegian dictionary, the root meaning of krake is "malformed or overgrown, crooked tree". [8]
English orthography comprises the set of rules used when writing the English language, [1] [2] allowing readers and writers to associate written graphemes with the sounds of spoken English, as well as other features of the language. [3] English's orthography includes norms for spelling, hyphenation, capitalisation, word breaks, emphasis, and ...
The first published English grammar was a Pamphlet for Grammar of 1586, written by William Bullokar with the stated goal of demonstrating that English was just as rule-based as Latin. Bullokar's grammar was faithfully modeled on William Lily's Latin grammar, Rudimenta Grammatices (1534), used in English schools at that time, having been ...
For English words, transcriptions based on English spelling ("pronunciation respellings") such as prə-NUN-see-AY-shən (using {}) may be used, but only in addition to the IPA ({}). Whatever system is used, any transcription should link to an explanation of its symbols, since such symbols are not universally understood.
The number of vowels is subject to greater variation; in the system presented on this page there are 20–25 vowel phonemes in Received Pronunciation, 14–16 in General American and 19–21 in Australian English. The pronunciation keys used in dictionaries generally contain a slightly greater number of symbols than this, to take account of ...
In English grammar, orthoepy is the study of correct pronunciation prescribed for Standard English. This originally was understood to mean Received Pronunciation specifically, but other standards have emerged and been accepted since the early 20th century (e.g., General American, General Australian). [citation needed]