I'm back, collaborating with the #1 name in linguistics memes, Steve the Vagabond and Silly Linguist! This week we discuss a few reasons why English is so darn weird. More soon!
IMPORTANT CORRECTION FROM STEVE:
"I realised recently that the very end is not 100% accurate. The
technical term for the change discussed in the video is the Ingvaeonic
Nasal Spirant Law (spirant was an old word for fricative). Strictly
speaking this change only affected nasals followed by fricatives such
as n followed by s.
So this part 'The loss of "n" before a consonant was so complete in
English that the only examples of "n" followed by another consonant
are because the words had a different form at the time and only lost a
vowel or consonant at a later point bringing it to its current form
(like the word "month" which was originally "monaþ")' is not strictly
accurate because it should be 'n before a fricative', but we didn't
explain what a fricative is."
