Why is English pronunciation so confusing? The result of a collision of history and culture

When it comes to English, many people say that it is the simplest foreign language, which seems to be unquestionable, but is actually only half true.

It's true that English is very simple in terms of grammar, especially verb conjugation, which doesn't have to change with person, tense, voice, etc. But it's not simple in terms of pronunciation, which is so confusing.

Just one letter, a, is pronounced /? /, in face it's /e?/, in China it's /? /, and in image it's /? /. It can be said that English has almost no pronunciation rules, so we can only read words according to the phonetic symbols.

And let's take Spanish as an example, the letter a has only one pronunciation, which is /ɑ/, and it's pronounced the same no matter what word it's in and no matter where it's in the word. So it's very easy to get started with Spanish phonetics, and you can really read the words as you see them and write them as you hear them.

So why is English pronunciation clueless about rules? I think there are three main reasons.

The first reason, and the main reason, is that the English language does not have a strict orthography, and there is no authoritative body to set the pronunciation of each letter of the English language as only one, but rather a comprehensive absorption of all kinds of languages, and it seems that there is no motivation to maintain the purity of the language. It was left to its own devices, which led to the confusion of pronunciation rules, to the point where the difference between British and American sounds emerged.

For the 2nd reason, we have to look among history. The peoples who lived on British soil were not very simple. There were the original native peoples, the Vikings from Scandinavia, the Romans from Roman times, and the French from the time of French rule. Different peoples left their mark on the English language, and of course left their own peculiar rules of pronunciation, and so the rules of English pronunciation became confused.

The third reason is that after Shakespeare, modern English began to take shape. At this time, Britain was also gradually rising to become the Sunset Empire, with colonies all over the world, and therefore bringing English to all parts of the world. Thus, the road to the global spread of English began, and it was also a long journey for English to absorb other national languages. As languages interacted with each other, the pronunciation of English grammar and vocabulary became more complex. At the same time, in order to expand the specialized terminology, the introduction of a large number of Latin Greek, but also retained the pronunciation rules of these languages.

English pronunciation is so confusing that it has become a no-go area for people to learn English because they can only rely on phonetic symbols to help them pronounce the words. Although school teachers also talk about phonetic symbols, often hastily, students do not know why, and subsequent learning, teachers do not go to the trouble of helping students to correct their pronunciation, which ultimately leads to a generally low level of pronunciation.

Chinese children spend a lot of effort learning English, and as a result, their mouths can't speak and their hands can't write, so it's a waste of life! Therefore, I believe that English learners must learn to pronounce words well, must be able to read words well with the help of phonetic symbols, and then read the article well. Only when the pronunciation is pure, my initiative of reading and memorizing English short essays will not become a source of no water, no wood.