Typos, tricks and misprints
English has never been standardised because England didn&#x27;t suffered an invasion (post 1066) or had a strong central authority the way other countries have had.<p>English isn&#x27;t a &quot;real&quot; language. English started as old German (Angols and Saxons brought it over). Then the Norman invasion added a bunch of French words. And the grammar got massively simplified. Both these factors are to suit the invaders for instance cow is from the German Kuh, because peasants keep the cows. But Beef is from the French Boeuf because aristocrats eat the cows so they use the French word.<p>Over time we have added some Latin and Greek and basically any other language we could &quot;borrow without asking&quot; from.<p>The result is that every rule is at best a guideline. That the same sound is spelt differently in different words. And that different sounds and spelt the same in other words.<p>I&#x27;m a native English speaker and it must be a nightmare for anyone learning it. I speak ok German but I can spell most words in German effortlessly because German spelling makes sense. Because it was nice ver such a mess and it&#x27;s regularly standardised.