Reforming English Spelling(blog.oup.com)
33 points by jruohonen | 93 comments
OUPblog column by Anatoly Liberman arguing for a minimalist, gradual reform of English spelling and describing the English Spelling Society's recent congress.
#english-language on Hacker News
8 stories tagged english-language, newest first.
How many of the 170k English words do you know?(vocabowl-870366514258.us-west1.run.app)
444 points by abnry | 528 comments
VocabOwl is a web quiz that estimates how many of 171,476 English words you know via a stratified 100-question test.
How far back in time can you understand English?(deadlanguagesociety.com)
634 points by spzb | 335 comments
A Dead Language Society newsletter post by Colin Gorrie presenting an experiment on how far back in time readers can understand earlier forms of English.
Why English doesn't use accents(deadlanguagesociety.com)
318 points by sandbach | 528 comments
A Dead Language Society newsletter post by Colin Gorrie explaining why English spelling lacks diacritic accents while French uses many.
Surnames from nicknames nobody has any more(blog.plover.com)
927 points by JNRowe | 430 comments
Blog post from The Universe of Discourse explaining English patronymic surnames derived from medieval nicknames, some of which are no longer in use.
Antarctic English(en.wikipedia.org)
332 points by benbreen | 139 comments
Wikipedia article on Antarctic English, the variety of English spoken by scientists and workers in Antarctica and the subantarctic islands.
Which word begins with "y" and looks like an axe in this picture? (2017)(english.stackexchange.com)
1128 points by flexagoon | 256 comments
A locked English Language & Usage Stack Exchange question asking which word starting with "y" names an axe-like object shown in a picture.
Did English ever have a formal version of "you"? (2011)(english.stackexchange.com)
461 points by ent101 | 391 comments
An English Language & Usage Stack Exchange question asking whether English ever had a formal second-person pronoun like German Sie or French vous.