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#171534 - 11/22/07 11:55 PM little-letter
Pooh-Bah
Registered: 06/23/06
Posts: 1854
Loc: Netherlands, the Hague
I could do the most difficult ones easy but I kept confusing these two. I wrote lettre for letter and littel for little. Even now I sometimes hesitate. Here I've learned to look a bit into etymology and I see that indeed it makes no sense at all.
Little comes from Old English: -- lytel
Letter comes from Old French: lettre
Centuries ago they could have done a better job by making it littel and letter. Is it too late for that?
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#171535 - 11/23/07 12:27 AM 
journeyman
Registered: 11/01/07
Posts: 99
Loc: Hungarian Gypsy
I could do the most difficult ones easy but I kept confusing these two. I wrote lettre for letter and littel for little. Even now I sometimes hesitate. Here I've learned to look a bit into etymology and I see that indeed it makes no sense at all.
Little comes from Old English: -- lytel
Letter comes from Old French: lettre
Centuries ago they could have done a better job by making it littel and letter. Is it too late for that?
Is this theatre of protest, or theater of the mind?
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#171538 - 11/23/07 02:38 AM
Pooh-Bah
Registered: 06/23/06
Posts: 1854
Loc: Netherlands, the Hague
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#171645 - 11/26/07 05:12 PM
Pooh-Bah
Registered: 08/27/02
Posts: 1661
Loc: British Columbia, Canada
You have fallen into the non-English speakers trap of expecting English to operate logically. It doesn't, and the spelling is completely.
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#171657 - 11/27/07 05:10 AM
Pooh-Bah
Registered: 06/23/06
Posts: 1854
Loc: Netherlands, the Hague
I know that is the case. Language is the same mix of logic and irrational as humans are. I only thought the board's P.I. of language Z.M. would have known if there was a why to this. The close home word reverses partly.(lytel-little) And to the word from French(lettre-letter)the same thing happens.Just funny.
lytel-little
lettre-letter
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#171660 - 11/27/07 10:29 AM
veteran
Registered: 08/13/05
Posts: 1523
Loc: R'lyeh
lettre-letter
I'd say it was an accident of history like so much of what's euphemistically called English orthography. Cf. modal, moral, camel, easel, label, model, tunnel, apple, battle, beetle, eagle, ladle, marble, table, etc., all for words ending in unstressed /əl/.
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#171704 - 11/28/07 08:35 AM
Carpal Tunnel
Registered: 03/15/00
Posts: 6379
Loc: lower upstate New York
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