Why is the word "phonetic" not spelled like it sounds??

Answer 1

I know this is often said just as a joke, but maybe you'll still find this explanation of some value.

Since there's no problems with the vowels, the n and t are pronounced "normally", and the 'hard-pronunciation' of c is quite common, I assume you are mainly concerned with the use of "ph" with the same sound as "f", so I'll focus on that.

The "ph" spelling for the /f/ sound is found in MANY European languages, and for the same reason. It is used for Greek words borrowed THROUGH Latin. SO it was in LATIN that certain conventions for representing the Greek sounds was developed. One of these was "ph" for the Greek letter "phi". (Originally, in the Latin borrowing the sound of "ph" was different from Latin "f", which explains why this new convention developed.) By keeping the "historical orthography [=spelling]" in these cases it is still possible to recognize words of Greek origin, and sometimes to tell something more about how the word is pronounced.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_words_of_Greek_origin#The_written_form_of_Greek_words_in_English

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But WHY did Latin use "pH" for this sound? They got the idea from the Greeks themselves!

See the end of this article:

"H"
"The use in digraphs (e.g. -sh-, -th-) goes back to the ancient Greek. alphabet, which used it in -ph-, -th-, -kh- until -H- took on the value of a long "e" and the digraphs acquired their own characters. The letter passed into Roman use before this evolution, and thus retained there more of its original Semitic value."
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?l=h

Explanation of the above note and MODERN Greek (in fact, Biblical Greek!) -- AFTER Latin had borrowed a form of an ancient Greek alphabet (there were some variants -- Latin borrowed a 'western' form, through the Etruscans), the Greeks invented NEW letters for these sounds. So if you know the letters "phi", "chi" and "theta" you realize that each has ONE symbol for the sound now, but the NAMES we use (along with other European languages) use the old Greek "digraphs"** "ph" "ch" "th"


**A "digraph" is a combination of two-letters to stand for one sound, a common device for handling sounds of a language not represented in the alphabet they borrowed from a language (usuually because the original language did not HAVE these sounds!) English uses a set of them very common across Europe -- th, sh, ch AND ph. Notice that there is little if any confusion about how to pronounce these combinations when we see them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digraph_(orthography)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H#Value

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One note on the pronunciation of c -- true, it is the same as that of "k", but in general "K' is found in words of Germanic origin, whereas "c" is the letter used in Latin-based words (esp. words borrowed from French). But there's nothing terribly hard about it. The pronunciation of c here is following its normal pattern -- it is USUALLY 'hard' (pronounced as a stop, related to the g-sound but without the voice) except before e and i, where it is soft (most often pronounced with an 's'-sound).

For those who answer "that's just English; it's weird that way", this word is a very poor example. The only two letters that are at all complicated (the ph and c) behave EXACTLY the same way in MANY European languages (which), for basically the same historical reasons. (Example: Italian, which is generally regarded as a fairly phonetic language, has the same basic 'hard-c before a,o,u, soft-c before e,i' rule.)

So "C" should NOT cause a lot of confusion either. But, if you wonder 'why does it have two different "values"?' it's rather simple. Originally it had ONE pronunciation, but language CHANGES! And so, influenced by general changes in language (e.g., the development of 'vulgar' forms of Latin -- that is, the "Romance" languages), the sound began to be pronounced differently in certain situations. But not every sound-change leads to a SPELLING change. Notice that if the change is consistent --as it is when c is 'hard' or 'soft' by a specific rule-- there may not be much NEED for a change. Also, if spelling is not too quickly changed for every change in pronunciation, it allows us to continue to see RELATED words in the written language (not only within our own language, but between languages, making it EASIER to learn to read French, for instance!) and to read older English texts. So "historical spelling" DOES have its advantages.

(Note that if we DID adopt one new phonetic spelling system for English we would no longer be able to read older texts. AND we'd have a major problem in that there is a wide variety of different pronunciations across English dialects... so just WHOSE spelling will become the standard? Or will we ALL write phonetically, and so be incapable of clear written communication across the English-speaking world!?)

Answer 2

English doesn't use a phonetic spelling system.

It did in the past, about 1,000 years ago, but since then, elements of French and Latin have been included into the language, and all the vowels changed their values, causing the present confused system. Given that "ph" is almost always pronounced as "f", the word "phoentic" is almost completely pronounced as it is spelled.

Answer 3

Because it's based on word segments that are not originally English.

That's pretty much the same reason why anything is spelled differently than how it sounds in English.

Answer 4

The same reason a lot of words are not spelled how they sound. It's just the English language.

Answer 5

It comes from a Greek root, and there's no "f" in Greek, only phi.

The "o" is not pronounced "o" because in English, unstressed vowel sounds tend to turn into "uh".

Bisaids, pipl get rilly anoid wen yu spel evreetheeng fuhnetiklee in Eenglish. Wen yur breyn has bin treynd tu rid eeregyulurly speld wurds, reedeeng fuhnetickly speld wurds iz streynzhlee difikuhlt.

Answer 6

That is a matter of opinion I suppose.

To me it is spelled like it sounds.

Answer 7

Probably because it was derived from Latin and Greek words.

Answer 8

for the same reason the word "umlaut" is spelled without one.

Answer 9

Same reason there is no mouse flavored cat food.... Just doesn't make sense...

Answer 10

Why is the word abbreviation so long?