2007-07-14 12:00:42 · 20 answers · asked by Maroon H 2 in Education & Reference ➔ Words & Wordplay
bcbookworm - character
2007-07-14 12:18:18 · update #1
It's due to the different linguistic roots of the words. 'Machine' has come into the English language from French, where the letter combination 'ch' is pronounced 'sh'. 'Macdonalds', on the other hand, is a corruption of the Gaelic 'Mac Donald' (meaning 'son of Donald'), which is pronounced with a hard 'c'.
By the same token, the French-derived word 'honour' is pronounced with a silent 'h', as in French, but the Old English/Saxon-derived word 'house' is pronounced with a voiced 'h', as was standard for the language.
2007-07-15 03:57:54 · answer #1 · answered by Alfhild 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Because, according to you, "Macdonalds" is pronounced "Macdonalds", so "machine" is pronounced "machine" too! Right?
Not every word in English is regular. In this case, "machine" is a combination of the "ma" sound and the "chine" sound, not "mac" and "hine" as in "Macdonalds" ("mac", "do" and "nalds")!!!
2007-07-15 03:24:50 · answer #2 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Because the Mac means "son of" (and it`s originally MacDonalds anyway) and I don`t think machine means son of hine do you ?.
Historically Mac is Scots and Mc is Irish for the same phrase - son of .
2007-07-14 22:37:42 · answer #3 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
MKCave and others are not wholly correct.
There are qhite a number of Scotch names with an H.
MACHARDY, MCHUGHS for example.(BT doesn't use lower case for surnames) and the C is separate and hard as in McDonald.or MacDonald or Macdonald
2007-07-15 02:13:44 · answer #4 · answered by man of kent 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
English
2007-07-14 19:24:59 · answer #5 · answered by 0 2 · 0⤊ 2⤋
Because most "normal" human beings born inside England are taught from an early age that c and h together make a chu sound and McDonald's ain't got a c and h together doh, can anyone out there even think of a word that has a c and h in the word where it doesn't get pronounced as chu, hmm little task there for anyone wanting to try.
2007-07-14 19:16:04 · answer #6 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 3⤋
because the ch in machine creates a sh sound, whereas the cd in macdonalds can not be converged to make a single sound so the mac and donald parts of the word are said sperately
2007-07-14 19:06:20 · answer #7 · answered by Stephen M 6 · 0⤊ 2⤋
Mc and Mac in the Scottish language means son.
McDonalds would mean son of Donald.
2007-07-14 19:36:44 · answer #8 · answered by yancychipper 6 · 0⤊ 1⤋
Because the combination of the letters "ch" are pronounced che or sh in English.
2007-07-14 20:48:38 · answer #9 · answered by mstrywmn 7 · 0⤊ 1⤋
machine comes from the italian where as mcdonalds is a celtic name.
the english language is made up of a mix of germanic and romantic (italian,french) languages
2007-07-14 19:12:49 · answer #10 · answered by razawire 4 · 1⤊ 1⤋