I’ve long found women confusing. And I don’t just mean women in general. I mean the word women.

Man is one of those words that takes an unusual plural. The a becomes an e. One man becomes two men. And woman, conveniently, follows the same pattern: one woman, two women. Fine.

What’s weird is how we pronounce them. Man/men — obvious. But what about woman/women?

We pronounce the singular form wuhmən.

But how do we pronounce the plural version? wihmən. Has it occurred to you that we leave the vowel o the same, but pronounce it differently (wuh to wih), then we change the a to an e, but pronounce it the same way in both words? Weird.

I told you women were messed up.

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