Comments by "Mikko Rantalainen" (@MikkoRantalainen) on "Why is there a B in DOUBT? - THE MEN WHO RUINED ENGLISH SPELLING" video.

  1. Sound a bit similar to Finnish. The written form was mostly designed by a single person and it makes sense. However, learning the language is really really hard because it uses multiple suffixes instead of prepositions. For example, word "istua" meaning "to sit" can be modified to "istuisivatkohan" meaning "I wonder if they would sit", or "istuivatkohan" meaning "I wonder if they did sit". The first example "istuisivatkohan" actually has 5 suffixes -i, -si, -vat, -ko and -han at the same time and you have to use these suffixes in this specific order or the word doesn't make sense. I think every verb can be modified to over 3000 different forms just by using different suffix combinations. On the plus side, there are no silent letters, no vovel modifications nor special hyphenation rules. I think English – if it had spelling fixed to match pronounciation, or pronounciation fixed to match spelling – would be much better language overall. Unfortunately, there's no single entity in the world that could fix the language called English. If British were to try it, everybody else would just ignore such change. If the USA were to try it, everybody else would just ignore such change.
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  2. Whole silent letters thing is totally insane and it's interesting that even US English hasn't gotten rid of those even though they have already simplified spelling of many other words.
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