[XeTeX] Σχετ: Re: Σχετ: Re: Off topic (interesting) question

[Julian Bradfield]

On 2022-08-20, Apostolos Syropoulos via XeTeX <xetex at tug.org> wrote:
> My question is if English language speakerslearn in school why they write
> history andnot istory. The answer seems to be: No.What you say is completely

What do you expect us to learn?
The word is pronounced with /h/ and written with h-.
It's written with h- because we borrowed it from languages which wrote
it with h-, some of which pronounced it (classical Latin, Greek) and some of
which no longer did (French); we borrowed it in writing and pronounced
it accordingly.

That doesn't seem like something one has to learn - it's the obvious.
What one has to learn is why we write some words with an h that we
*don't* pronounce.
The answer to that is a fairly complex sociolinguistic explanation
plus random chance in evolution.