Why English spelling looks like it lost a bar fight with history
English spelling did not standardize. It fossilized with the confidence of a middle-aged suburban parent at their child's soccer game.
English spelling is not broken so much as visibly injured. A video by Airlearn Language Show explains how the printing press, the Great Vowel Shift, dead gods, French-Italian beef, Dutch typesetters, and Renaissance Latin nerds left English looking like it staggered out of a tavern with “Wednesday” in one pocket and “colonel” in the other.
The video’s best trick is showing that English spelling is not random. It is worse: historical. “Knight” once had a spoken “k.” “Wrong” once used its “w.” “Wednesday” still carries Woden around like a fossil in a school worksheet. “Salmon” got a fake Latin “l” because scholars could not leave a perfectly good fish alone.
600 and 1.5 billion. Two numbers that explain how English spelling became an absolute nightmare. The first is how many years ago English spelling was completely frozen in time by the arrival of the printing press. The second is how many people struggle to speak and write it today. Those two numbers are connected. Because while the printing press took a permanent photograph of 15th-century speech, our spoken mouths kept moving. The spelling system we use today is an uncleaned graveyard of dead sounds, forgotten invasions, and ancient history. In this episode of the Airlearn Language Show, we dive deep into the fascinating history of how English spelling and English pronunciation got completely divorced centuries ago—and why nobody ever bothered to fix it. You will discover:
Why the word “Colonel” is spelled with an L but pronounced like a “kernel” due to a 15th-century French and Italian linguistic war
How the “Great Vowel Shift” between 1400 and 1700 rapidly rewired how English sounded while written letters stood completely still
Why the “D” and “N” in Wednesday aren’t mistakes, but fossils of a forgotten Anglo-Saxon god named Woden
The graveyard of silent letters—how medieval speech required us to fully pronounce the “K” in knight and the “W” in wrong
How well-meaning Renaissance scholars ruined words like “salmon” by adding letters back in just to make them look more like Latin
How homesick Dutch typesetters hired in 1476 accidentally altered English spellings (like adding the ‘H’ to ghost) forever
This is not just a dry recitation of historical dates and textbook charts. It is a snapshot of global influence, tracing how an unprecedented chaotic accumulation of history altered who holds linguistic power on our planet today. If you enjoyed this deep dive, like the video, leave a comment sharing which linguistic historical fact surprised you the most, and subscribe to the Airlearn Language Show so you never miss an episode.
English spelling did not standardize. It fossilized with the confidence of a middle-aged suburban parent at their child’s soccer game.
While we're on gods and days of the week, Thursday (which is appropriately Donnerstag) in German.
As my memory fades, expect my posts to become more phonetic or foo*ne*tick