“Language is Chaos”

Musings from a Tangled Mind, taking on some of our language’s strangest words: Some words are just silly. “Queue.” Now this is nonsense I can respect. A queue is, fundamentally, just a line. A very simple concept. Yet the word itself contains four silent letters standing around doing absolutely nothing. Kind of like the poor suckers at the back of a line. Q is carrying the entire operation on its back while U, E, U and E trail behind like middle management. It’s absurd. It’s inefficient. It looks like it should take several minutes and a French lesson to pronounce. And yet… there’s something almost impressive about it. That level of confidence isn’t a spelling choice. It’s a decision. A theatrical little power move. Words Behaving BadlyThe post “Language is Chaos” first appeared on Uncorrected.