English spelling reform has been proposed by many people since Webster, such as George Bernard Shaw, who proposed a new phonetic alphabet for English. In some cases Webster's changes have been widely adopted in Britain: the spelling "programme" came from the French; US "program" is clearly simpler, and more consistent with word endings in English. In our modern world, English orthography is still a problem. In some countries (notably, France) a national committee can give advice and direction as to spelling. English has long escaped from national custody.
Modern British spelling and use was greatly influenced by the two great English dictionaries, Samuel Johnson's "A dictionary of the English language" (1755), and James Murray's "Oxford English Dictionary". Johnson's dictionary was hugely influential, abroad as well as at home. The dictionary was exported to America.
For American lexicographers, the dictionary was impossible to ignore:
Some people argue which language is the easiest to spell. People who learn a second language tend to think that their first (native) language is the easiest. However, for the learner, programmatic languages, with well-defined rules, are easier to start with than English. The spelling of the English language is by far the most irregular of all alphabetic spellings and thus the most difficult to learn. English is, in its origin, a Germanic language. From its early roots as Anglo-Saxon, it has borrowed words from many other languages: French (a Romance language) and Latin are the most frequent donors to English.
Languages that use phonetic spelling are easier to learn to spell than others. With phonetic spelling the words are spelled as they are pronounced. The Italian word "orologio" for instance is pronounced oh-ro-LO-jo ("gi" always making a "j" sound.) In English, one comes across the word "knife". In "knife", the "k" is not spoken, even though in English it's more common to pronounce "K"s when they are in words.
One of the problems we have is that similar sounding words may be spelt quite differently. Rough and ruff; meet and meat; great and grate. Words with complicated spelling may be pronounced simply: Leicester is pronounced 'Lester'. Even what rules we do have are frequently broken. ""i" before "e" except after "c"" has over 100 exceptions. Almost all these problems have come about for historical reasons. English has been changing for the last thousand years, and as the language changes, so parts of it get stuck with different spellings.
Here are some of the causes of English orthography:
English has a huge number of words, but its spelling comes from many different sources. "The large and varied lexicon of English has been bought at the expense of an increasingly deversified graphology".
Some languages have a high correspondence between phonemes and letters. That means they get close to one letter for each sound. If there was a perfect correspondence, that language would have "phonemic orthography". English is highly non-phonemic. It has almost every kind of deviation known:
This field of study is called "orthographic depth". The orthographic depth of an alphabetic script is the degree to which a written language deviates from simple one-to-one letter–phoneme correspondence. It shows how easy it is to predict the pronunciation of a word from its spelling. Shallow orthographies are easy to pronounce based on the written word, and deep orthographies are difficult to pronounce based on how they are written. In shallow orthographies, the spelling-sound correspondence is direct: given the rules of pronunciation, one is able to "say" the word correctly.
Most other international languages have similar problems: in French, Arabic or Hebrew, new readers have difficulty learning to decode words. As a result, children learn to read more slowly. In both Spanish and Italian there is a more direct connection between spelling and pronunciation. Those are languages with low orthographic depth.
Oil
The word oil is used for many different kinds of liquids. Oil usually does not mix with water.
Vegetable oils are made from plants. Many are used in foods and for cooking. Some kinds of plant oils that people use are palm oil, maize ("corn"), olive, peanut, soy, and sunflower.
Other kinds of oil are made from crude oil ("petroleum") which comes from under the ground. People use large oil wells to bring the oil up to the surface. The oil is sent in special ships called tankers or in pipelines to factories called refineries where it is distilled into LPG, gasoline ("petrol"), diesel fuel, and fuel oil. Plastics are among the Petrochemicals made from crude oil or natural gas. Oils from crude oil are also used as fuels for engines or as lubricants to make the parts of machines work together without sticking or stopping.
Different kinds of oils are also used for many other things, for example to make cosmetics, medicines, paints, and detergents, like washing up liquids. Soap(s) are similar to detergents, but they are generally made from animal fat(s) rather than oils.
Oil is also made for various purposes including synthetic fuel and lubricant.
OK
OK (okay) is a word in the English language. It is used to mean that something is good or correct.
It can often be used instead of the word Yes. It is not certain where the word "OK" originally comes from, but some experts say it came from a funny way of writing "Ol Korrect" (All correct).
It is also the two-letter abbreviation for the state of Oklahoma in the United States of America.
You also find the phrase "Ola kala" in Greek, which means something like "Everything fine".
The term appears to have achieved prominence in the United States in 1840, when supporters of the American Democratic political party claimed during the 1840 United States presidential election that it stood for "Old Kinderhook," a nickname for a Democratic presidential candidate, Martin Van Buren, a native of Kinderhook, New York. "'Vote for OK' was snappier than using his Dutch name." In response, Whig opponents attributed "OK", in the sense of "Oll Korrect," to Andrew Jackson's bad spelling. The country-wide publicity surrounding the election appears to have been a critical event in "okay"'s history, widely and suddenly popularizing it across the United States.
Oxymoron
An oxymoron is a term for a figure of speech. It is made up of two or more words that seem to be opposite to each other, or actually are opposite.
For example, the words "Wise fool", "Warm freezer", "Legal murder" all have two words. In each one, the one word looks like the opposite of the other word.
You can have words that look opposite, but are right. For example, a "warm freezer" could be right. A freezer could be warm if it was turned off or left open.
The word oxymoron is an oxymoron; 'oxy' comes from the Greek word that means 'sharp', while 'moron' comes from the Greek word that means 'dull'.
Words that really are opposite to each other, would be words that just cannot be put together. For example, a "round square" could not happen because squares are not round.
Oxymorons sometimes appear in jokes. Sometimes, the joke is just to say that a pair of words are an oxymoron. For example, a joke that says that "honest politician" is an oxymoron. This means that politicians are dishonest, if the word 'politician' is opposite to 'honest'.
Operating system
An operating system (or OS) is a group of computer programs, including device drivers, kernels, and other software that lets people interact with a computer. It manages computer hardware and software resources. It provides common services for computer programs. An OS can be small (like MenuetOS), or large (like Microsoft Windows). Different operating systems can be used for different purposes. Some are used for everyday things like on a personal computer. Others are mobile operating systems or are used for specialized work.