1362: Danny Bate | Why English Spelling Is a Beautiful Mess

Coming up next on the Jordan Harbinger Show. Is pretty certain. Based on the way that the image looks and also the name of the letter cop that it's basically the letter Q started out as a kind of hieroglyphic monkey or baboon. And the capital letter Q has its tail. To this day.

Which I love. Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On the Jordan Harbinger Show, we decode the stories, secrets and skills of the world's most fascinating people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you. Our mission is to help you become a better informed, more critical thinker through long form conversations with a variety of amazing folks. From spies to CEOs, athletes, authors, thinkers, and performers, even the occasional neuroscientist, drug trafficker, astronaut, or special operator. And if you're new to the show or you want to tell your friends about the show, I suggest our episode Starter Packs. These are collections of some of our favorite episodes on topics like persuasion and negotiation, psychology, geopolitics, disinformation, China, North Korea, crime and cults, and more. That'll help new listeners get a taste of everything we do here on the show, just visit JordanHarbinger.com/slash start.

or search for us in your Spotify app to get started. Today on the show, the letter A may be an upside down ox head, the tail on Q may be the last surviving piece of a four thousand year old drawing of a monkey, and W is called double U, looks like a double V, and exists because generations of scribes just kept duct taping new sounds. Onto an alphabet that was never actually designed for English. So the alphabet is not a clean logical system. It's more like civilization's junk drawer, ancient Egyptian pictures, Greek modifications, Roman branding, Norman vandalism, and a few linguistic USB cables nobody dares throw away. Today, linguist Danny Bate explains what these twenty six symbols really are, why English spelling is such a disaster, and why fixing it might actually make everything worse. This one is a great companion to the episode we did on Accents a few weeks back. If you like the sort of nerdy language stuff.

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