Originally Posted by
noveltyjunkie
That is a head scratcher alright. I have been told that inflammable was the original word (related to inflame) but because 'in' often means 'not' (invisible, inescapable, etc) someone decided not to use 'inflammable' on warning signs and made up 'flammable' instead.
Has anyone else heard that? I don't know if it is true or not.
For me though, one if the craziest things about English is not a spelling thing but a pronunciation thing. Why do 'can' and can't' sound almost exactly the same in the middle of a sentence?
Sloppy diction. There is no reason they should sound the same, no matter where they fall in the sentence. Although, in something like "The baby can't talk yet." it could be elision with the two t's together, but again... sloppy diction. Sometimes we're forced to depend for meaning on other (limiting) words in the sentence, like "yet" in that sentence.