I spend a lot of my time reading, and whenever I read about something of especial interest I make a note of it. Here is an example:
There are seven mutated plurals in English of three types: (1) foot, goose and tooth; (2) louse and mouse; and (3) man and woman. Woman is the most remarkable because both its vowels are pronounced differently in the plural. These are like fossils: remnants of the languages from which English is derived.
The ‘O’ sound can be spelt in ten different ways, as in so, sew, sow, oh, owe, dough, doe, beau, soak and soul.
The letter O can be pronounced in six different ways, as in honey, on, so, to, woman and women.
The sound ‘sh’ can be spelt in nine different ways, as in nation, shoe, sugar, mission, suspicion, conscious, chaperon, schist and fuchsia
The word-ending ‘ough’ can be pronounced in five different ways, as in bough, cough, rough, though and through
It has been suggested that fish could be spelt ‘ghoti’ if ‘f’ is pronounced as in ‘rough’, ‘o’ as in ‘women’ and ‘ti’ as in ‘nation’.
It’s no wonder that foreigners have difficulty learning English.
I have now added my collection of matchbox labels to my website. It can be found under ‘Scrapbook’. The collection is featured in my autobiography, in the sixth paragraph of Chapter 4.