Why is there no letter "U" in the word "forty"?

Question

Help this debate between my father and I

And PLEASE use spell check! My father and I sit here shaking our heads because of the pure ignorance with some responses.

Answer 1

To really understand this, you have to go back to the origins of the English language.

In 1066, there was no English at all, nothing even close. You had French (or something like it) and German (or something like it.) The people of what is now England basically spoke German. Then the French invaded and took over, and you had a two language culture; the rulers spoke French, and the ruled spoke German.

As time passed, they developed a single language, and not always with perfect consistency. The language was still in early development when the "new world" was discovered, which made even more problems. As uniform spellings were more or less agreed on, there were some exceptions between the different sides of the Atlantic, which is why Americans spell many words without a 'u' such as "color" and "honor", while the English use "colour" and "honour".

If this explains why there are inconsistencies between two English speaking countries, surely it will suffice to explain the inconsistency between "four" and "forty".

Answer 2

Like so many things in English that people call "weird", "irregular", etc. when they don't understand it, this follows a very common and natural pattern for words in Germanic languages.

The vowel change goes back to Old English and beyond - and is caused by the adding of the suffix.

In Old English (and many other Germanic languages) adding of an ending with and i/y type vowel (in this case it was originally -ig, now -y) caused a type of "vowel harmony" (or "metaphony") in which the vowel of the accented syllable became more like that of the suffix. This specific type is called "umlaut" or "i-mutation" --because the vowel of the suffix was an i-type vowel, and the changed vowel would become or move closer to an i-type vowel. In any case, the changed vowel typically become shorter and/or moved toward the front of mouth ("fronting")

German did the same sort of thing. One of the best examples that English speakers may know is the word "Frau" ("woman") which is pronounced "frow", but when it adds the suffix "-lein" to became "Fräulein", pronounced "froyline" (notice the i/y sound in the first syllable!)

This shift in English is also the origin of some of our unusual plural forms: goose > geese; foot > feet; mouse > mice; man > men. Also a result of this change: long > length; hale > health; old > elder.

Answer 3

Sex, Silver, Suck, Seven, September, Sassy, So, Sports, Soccer, Softball, Severe, Scotch, Sparkle, Sell, Sister, Siamese, Solar System, Survey, Stand, Selena, Strawberry, Sand, Sorrow, Syrup, Swallow, Snowball, Snowflake, Snowman, Snowboard, Skateboard, Spelling, Sick, Stick,Start, Serve, Sandwich, Snake, Smile, Sly, Slime, Secret, Strap, Sandals, Shoes, Sneakers, Speakers, Sleep, Soar, Sore, Sticky, Strip, Soup, Sauce, Sorbet, Sandy, Sonic, Sears, Spear, Sony, Salt, Sugar, Spice, Soda, Sheets, Scarlett, Science, Social, Spanish, Six, Stir

Answer 4

Because English spelling is inconsistent. Perhaps it was more helpful for the word to look like it was spelled. We might as well wonder why we have thirty and thirteen rather than threety and threeteen. Dictionaries created standard spellings before consistent rules were established.

The USSR regularized the spelling of Russian during the Soviet regime. It isn't apt to happen to English, although many folks–including Bernard Shaw–have tried.

Answer 5

Also I heard there was no 'I' in 'team' ?

Copied from link:

Bill Bryson, in Mother Tongue (pgs 113,114) explains the loss of the "u" in forty. Why is there no "u" in forty? Four, fourteen, and fourth all have it. So did fourty in the writings of Chaucer. In fact, until the 17th Century when, as Bryson says, "But then, as if by universal decree, it just quietly vanished. No one seems to have remarked on it at the time."

This doesn't seem like any kind of explanation to me, but that just shows that Bill Bryson is no kind of scholar.

Answer 6

"between my father and I"? It should be "me". As to the reason, English evolved through the ages; French and Spanish (and most other languages) did not evolve. In English it used to be "ten, eleven, twelve, ten and three, ten and four, etc." But as English evolved, it became "thirteen, fourteen, fifteen..."
Try this website: it does a good job of explaining it.

Answer 7

U Be Forty

Answer 8

mr webster forgot the letter u in forty when he's listing the words.and instead of o he mistakenly put e in twenty..

Answer 9

Because it is diffret?

Answer 10

becase