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Me: English orthography is the worst. There is no language that has a worse way of writing words that looks nothing like they sound.
French: ...
Me: ...
French: ...
Me: ...
French: "Wingles" is pronounced " [vɛ̃ɡl]"
@peterb *Danish enters the chat*
@christianp There's an entire category of American place names whose origin story is that the locals said "Screw it, we're saying this like the most common words we know." Usually but not always applied to French-origin names.
So in near Pittsburgh there are towns called Versailles (pronounced 'ver-SAYLES'), Dubois ("DOO-boys") and Duquesne ("doo-KAYNE").
@peterb that's not too different from English. I live near a small town called Cambois (pronounced "cammus")
@christianp I'm not a linguist or orthographer (orthographist? orthogranaut?) but I wonder how much ludicrous orthography is an artifact of "Hardly anyone was literate, so spellings did not have to be tested in the so-called marketplace of ideas." It's just "One of the sixteen monks in the country who could write chose this spelling in 1218 and no one was around to say 'wait that's nuts.'"