Curiosity two

This curiosity turned up in the second rate preparatory school chapter of the Eric Gill autobiography first noticed at reference 1.

Gill observes that no language which lengthens the 'a' in the middle of short words by sticking a mute 'e' on the end can claim to have a rationale system of spelling. Lengthening which can be observed in the pairs <fat, fate>, <bad, bade>, <rap, rape> and even <at, ate>. There really do seem to be lots of them - despite which I do not recall ever having formulated the rule in this neat way. The sort of observation that I would not have expected of a Gill: so perhaps the workings of the outfit noticed at reference 3 was very much in the news of his day.

Better men that I could no doubt improvise a theme on the different ways of marking changes of this sort and the reasons why modern English wound up with the way that it did. And the balance between chance and reason in the course of these windings. While I need some notice of the question.

In the meantime, I offer the guess that a language is a finely tuned bit of design comparable to that of a racing car or an animal. So finely tuned, that tinkering with any one part of it is apt to have all kinds of unexpected repercussions. The constraints and mechanisms are too interlocked, too intertwined to admit of casual tinkering. From where I associate to the brows of reference 2.

PS: in the margins of this post, I have just got rid of a whole lot of emails asking me about my preferences, emails which result from some new law for the protection of my data. It struck me that it was a bit like cookies on your PC. From time to time you clear them all out, but then over time, as you tick the boxes of the outfits with which you wish to deal, from which you are happy to take advertisements, they climb right back up again. Another theme.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2018/05/books-from-honiton.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2018/05/whats-it-for.html.

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplified_Spelling_Board.