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Comment by Aerroon | Hacker News Reader

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Aerroon

Because your pronounce them backwards.

"Loose" is a short word that ends sharply, but "lose" is a long word that slowly peters out.

They should be the other way around imo.

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If we're allowed to make modifications here then it should really be lose => looze and loose => luce

I think that would make "loosely" not work out. Lucely/lucly catch the hard C there. I'm good with loozing/loozer, looks kind of funny though.

I would not pronounce lucely with a hard C

Lucezly

One more step, and we're in Poland.

Lucely absolutely does not catch the hard c. Surely there is no word in the English language where "ce" has a hard c, only loanwords like celt.

Fun fact — English did not have formalized spelling prior to the printing press

https://www.dictionary.com/articles/printing-press-frozen-sp...

So, technically we are allowed to make modifications! We just can't expect others to adhere to our modifications :)

Luce is already a word in English, if a little obscure

This was also the way I felt before I was introduced to "the magic e" (spoiler: it still doesn't make any sense)

https://www.academysimple.com/magic-e-words/

Wow, "magic e" just transported me back to primary school. And I had a little heart flutter fearing that I wouldn't be able to remember/explain it today.

Now that you frame it that way, I'm surprised "lose" didn't evolve to be pronounced like "Lowe's"

I hate discussions like these because then I start reading words in weird ways and then I look at words as a random jumble of letters that don't even seem like words anymore. Is that just me? :)

Some people pay a lot of money to achieve that state of mind.

Loose rhymes with moose, noose, caboose...

Exactly, and we all know those are pronounced mooze, nooze, and cabooze.

I think you mean mose, nose, cabose.

Since English has a glut of loaner words, I'd assume the two words just originate from different languages.

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