Spurious/quotes/curios/2/24/2024

The Canada Goose Chin Strap

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Spurious

Occasionally, spurious letters are consciously inserted in spelling to reflect etymology (real or imagined). The ⟨b⟩ in debt and doubt (from French dette, doute) was inserted to match Latin cognates like debit and dubitable. A silent ⟨s⟩ was inserted in isle (Norman French ile, Old French isle, from Latin insula; cognate to isolate) and then extended to the unrelated word island. The ⟨p⟩ in ptarmigan was apparently suggested by Greek words such as pteron ('wing').

wiki, Silent Letter

Despite being rather phonemic, Spanish orthography retains some silent letters:

wiki, Silent Letter

Occasionally, spurious letters are consciously inserted in spelling to reflect etymology (real or imagined). The ⟨b⟩ in debt and doubt (from French dette, doute) was inserted to match Latin cognates like debit and dubitable. A silent ⟨s⟩ was inserted in isle (Norman French ile, Old French isle, from Latin insula; cognate to isolate) and then extended to the unrelated word island. The ⟨p⟩ in ptarmigan was apparently suggested by Greek words such as pteron ('wing').

wiki, Silent Letter

Empty
Inert
Dummy
Magic e
Endocentric
Nonendocentric

Endocentric" digraphs, where the sound of the digraph is the same as that of one of its constituent letters. These include:

Most double consonants, as ⟨bb⟩ in clubbed; though not geminate consonants, as ⟨ss⟩ in misspell. Doubling due to suffixation or inflection is regular; otherwise,[clarification needed] it may present difficulty to writers (e.g. accommodate is often misspelled), but not to readers.

Many vowel digraphs, as ⟨ea⟩, ⟨ie⟩, ⟨eu⟩ in leave (cf. accede), achieve, eulogy (cf. utopia).

The discontiguous digraphs, whose second element is "magic e", e.g. ⟨a_e⟩ in rate (cf. rat), ⟨i_e⟩ in fine (cf. fin). This is the regular way to represent "long" vowels in the last syllable of a morpheme.

Others, such as ⟨ck⟩ (which is in effect the "doubled" form of ⟨k⟩), ⟨gu⟩ as in guard, vogue; ⟨ea⟩ as in bread, heavy, etc.; ⟨ae⟩, ⟨oe⟩ as in aerial, oedipal. These may be difficult for writers and sometimes also for readers.

wiki, Silent Letters

The phrase "correlation does not imply causation" refers to the inability to legitimately deduce a cause-and-effect relationship between two events or variables solely on the basis of an observed association or correlation between them.[1][2] The idea that "correlation implies causation" is an example of a questionable-cause logical fallacy, in which two events occurring together are taken to have established a cause-and-effect relationship. This fallacy is also known by the Latin phrase cum hoc ergo propter hoc ('with this, therefore because of this'). This differs from the fallacy known as post hoc ergo propter hoc ("after this, therefore because of this"), in which an event following another is seen as a necessary consequence of the former event, and from conflation, the errant merging of two events, ideas, databases, etc., into one.

wiki, correlation...

Notes: oh, silent letters are a difficulty...and there is another use in Linguistics for endocentric (exocentric)-for sometime...and posing the question: Is Nature Spurious?-no luck...but that search brought up, "correlation does not imply causation", which I use all the time in dust up back and forth political comment flames as a cudgel!

Aloha,

:)

DavidDavid