The English language has many layers, like a cake:

✔️Etymology

✔️Morphology

✔️Phonology

❕ When we try to examine it we see many words with different spellings, like these:

✳️ Anglo-Saxon (Old English)Short, one-syllable words, sometimes com .sky, earth, moon, sun, water, sheep, dog.

✳️ Norman French ou for /ū/ Soft c and g when followed by .amuse, cousin, cuisine, country, peace, .

✳️ Latin/Romance Multisyllabic words with prefixes, roots .firmament, terrestrial, solar, stellar,

✳️ .Greek Spellings ph for /f/, ch for /k/, and y ...hypnosis, agnostic, neuropsychology,

📢 Structured word inquiry digs deep into the language: it examines how word parts, structure, origin, and history over time tell the story of what words mean, how they're connected, and how they're written.

❕ A simple example is the root *bher- to bear, and now we have a burden; in OE it was byrðen :-).

❕ Language makes sense; when we treat it like science, we are empowered and make connections, and all of a sudden, we break through that plateau that was holding us back❕

🔊Join my Free Masterclass on September 5th and learn how to break through B2 and be a confident user of English ➡️ https://polcalanguages.kartra.com/page/eHN32

references:

Bowers, P. (2022). Structured word inquiry (SWI): literacy instruction that makes sense of English spelling for students of all ages and abilities. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/aktzw

Nicolai, G., & Kondrak, G. (2015). English orthography is not "close to optimal". Proceedings of the 2015 Conference of the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Human Language Technologies. https://doi.org/10.3115/v1/n15-1056