why is aardvark spelled with 2 a's and art with one?

Question

who decides such things?

Answer 1

The two words come to English from diferent languages that have diferent pronounciations and spelling traditions. Often when English borrows a word it often keeps some or all of the original spelling.

Aardvark comes to English from the Afrikaans language and before that from Dutch. Double "a"s are normal in writing words in Afrikaans (as you probably noticed the language name itself has a double "a") and in writing Dutch. Accoding to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_orthography#Doubled_vowels_or_consonants "Since Dutch has many more vowels than the Latin alphabet, a system has come into use indicating vowels by an intricate system of single and double vowels or consonants."

Art comes from a different family of languages. Art comes to modern English from Middle English, which got it from Old French, which got it from the Latin word "ars."

Answer 2

1

Answer 3

Aardvark is a Dutch word, and the Dutch use two 'a's at a time to designate a change in the sound of the vowel, like the English double 'o's and 'e's, as in "boot' and "eel".
Update: this is an Afrikaans word, a dialect of Dutch used in South Africa mostly by persons of Dutch origin . "Aard" is not an African word. It is both a Dutch and Afrikaans word.

Answer 4

Well, aardvark is actually an Afrikaans/Dutch word and art is Latin. So it's really a language thing... kind of like Americans spell color and flavor and Brits spell them colour and flavour and it's all pronounced the same.

Answer 5

It all comes from etymology, or the history of the word. Because the English language is a new language, most of our words come from other sources.

For example, aadvark is comprised of the African word for earth, which is aarde and the dutch word for pig, which is varken. So some Dutch South African guy named this beast an earth pig. And the name stuck.

Art, on the other hand, comes from the Latin word ars, which refers to the human effort to imitate nature.

African languages like double vowels. Latin doesn't. That's why.

Answer 6

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Answer 7

When the animals lined up two by two to get on the ark, the aardvarks didn't want to get wet, so they added an extra "a" to cut to the head of the line. (Noah had them alphabetized, and with only one "a", they would have been stuck behind the alligators, amoebae, anteaters, ants, aoudads, apes, and aphids.)

Answer 8

Linguistics is rooted in history, English is a hybrid language. "Aardvark" is Dutch, "art" is rooted in Latin.

Answer 9

Because the English language delights in making no sense. Even to the people for whom it is their first language.

"All rules are made to be broken" should be the English Language's motto.

Answer 10

The same people who decide what words go into a dictionary. I think his name was Webster. You might want to ask him.