>>151
back when england had this weird inferiority/superiority complex in regards to france and french due to technically being a holding of norman invaders (who in turn took a few centuries to come to grips with how having a kingdom is cooler than having a duchy, even if you regard the place as a backwater that bristles at your ownership), it was mistaken for being related to "île"; an easy mistake to make, seeing how the language of medieval churchly and knightly life is full of shit where stuff got imported while the 's' was considered part of the french word but was still in flux unlike today where in metropolitan french it is silent (esquire, isle, fest, castle, paste). even in the generation following the hundred years' war, a lot of england's printing was done on the continent by people who were by profession printers, not linguists, some of whom still held out unrealistic hopes for a merger (not an uncommon opinion, mind you).

samuel johnson's dictionary recognizes that "aisle" is an error, but by then it was too late--for saving English spelling, it has always been too late. shit was already fucked by the time chaucer rolled around.

but in the wide world of languages, there's always going to be shit that just doesn't work out the way it's supposed to. as crazy as english spelling is, the language has been remarkably stable over the past 500 years as long as you can get over certain issues, and spelling is the big one, which mostly settled down around the time printers decided (mostly on their own, it appears) that having an s that looks like an f is sucking insane.