1325: Spelling and Loan Words: Countries Jul 28, 2018

Spelling is extremely influential to the way that people speak. This occasionally happens when words are loaned from language to another, and was especially true before audio-recordings were readily available. This is why the country Laos is often pronounced with an [s] at the end, even though neither the French colonists nor the locals ever did so, yet Kiribati—only called such since 1979—is known to be pronounced with an [s] at the end even though it is spelled with none. In both cases, the spelling is from non-English orthography being adopted directly, Laos from French which often has silent terminal letter, and Kiribati, which is from the native language whose alphabet has no S and instead uses TI.
Check out the new video, out today: https://youtu.be/2u5SP0tg6Fs