Answers you shall have. “Joe” is generally short for “Joseph.” As a shortening of “Joseph” it is pronounced as the first part of the name- it sounds like: “Jo.” In fact- it’s traditionally common in western names that a male Joseph is Joe and a female Josephine is Jo. Both sound the same- but the “Jo” is diminutive and this is seen as the feminine. It’s rare to find a English surnamed male Joseph who goes by “Jo” and uncommon but less so to find a female using “Joe.” The exact reasoning for the adding of the “e” is unknown save for possibly aesthetics or linguistic conventions if the time the name came to popular use in codified writing- it is believed the distinction is merely based on tradition and custom.
Now- Zoe can be a stand alone name or a shortening of Zoey. Zoe comes from the Greek word for life, it is a transliteration of the word- and as such, the “e” is merely a stand in for the last letter in Greek of which our Latin alphabet does not have but was determined to be “close enough.” “Zoey” takes this further and is a phonetic spelling using the language structure of English- and is generally pronounced as “Zo-ee” (like “joey” with a “Z” instead of a “J”). The more traditional spelling is some variant of “Zoe” but “Zoee” “Zoë” and so on all exist for like reasons that for whatever person or language- those seemed the best transliteration of the Greek.
In summation- the overall pronunciation of Zoe is meant to be a specific languages “best attempt” to replicate the Greek word for “life,” and the spelling is the best attempt to replicate the Greek spelling under the rules of the host language- with variations of spelling for different languages and the changes within the use of a language and the adoption and customs of the pronunciation of the word as it got further from Greek and was adopted to the new language. As an example- the Japanese language doesn’t say “Hamburger.” The word and good are foreign to them. They say Hanbāgā. Japanese as a language doesn’t support the sounds for “Hamburger.” Hanbāgā is their closest version of that- a transliteration from English to the writing and spoken sounds of the language. Any native speaker who has ever heard a non proficient foreigner speak their language knows that certain language groups usually have difficulties pronouncing certain sounds correctly that aren’t native to them.
Refrigerator could be LOOONG but I’ll try and keep it short-ish for a millennium of language. The origins of Refrigerator are Latin. It is a loan word and the spelling was kept mostly in tact (English in general tries to stay close to Latin spelling but it changes the sounds made. For the most part.) There was no “J” in Latin. There was an “I”. The French added the “J” and made the “J” sound. Before the French- “Jesus” in Latin started with “I” and would sound more like “Yesus.” Anyone remember Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade? Yeah... no J. So the “Ja” sound in refrigerator falls to the “G”- side note you will commonly see in Western Language J or G used interchangeably. There are a host of conditions for this- but the confusion over “j” and “g” is tied largely to Latin roots.
Now- one other thing to note is how branding shapes language. Most English speakers call pocket tissues “Kleenex” or cotton swabs “Q-tips.” As the memes attest- whatever console or even phone a game is being played on is a “Nintendo” of a “Gameboy.” So a VERY popular and wide spread brand of refrigerator was the “Frigidaire.” debate exists as to wether or how closely the shortening to “Fridge” is to originating in the brand name- but regardless- to the spelling and the refrigerator not having a “D”...
If we shorten “refrigerator” to “frige” it appears to follow French rules and would be pronounced more like “frizh.” This is where our language lesson comes in from earlier. The English language was formulated off Latin to adopt Anglo Saxons from a linguistic mix of traditional language and Germanic language infused through conquest. Very few at the time were literate and “English” at the time as one might call it- used runes as writing. Since this charge to proto English was led by monks looking to convert “pagans”- they wanted to dump these “pagan” tunes and get them onto a Latin alphabet since Latin was the language closest associated with the church.
So English as we know- carries loan words strongly from Latin and French and German among others- but these 3 languages have the most history and diffusion to the language of English. Refrigerator keeps its traditional spelling based in the Latin loan word, “fridge” is a much newer word and so it gets a letter “D” because the Germanic spelling rules underlying English were used on fridge and demand that to keep the “ij-uh” sound, we use the “dg”. This is another concept from the Latin. When English was created in writing, it required paired letters from Latin to make sounds used in spoken language. “Th” is an example.
Tl:DR/ summation: “fridge” has a “D” because it is a newer word and even as a derivative of an existing word it is a new word- and being newer “Fridge” follows modern conventions based in Germanic rules versus the Latin applied to refrigerator due to its Latin roots. “Zoe” is a transliteration of A Greek word for “life” and the “E” is a stand in for a Greek letter our alphabet doesn’t have but is meant to best approximate. “Zoey” is a different spelling of “Zoe” which is made to spell phonetically in English- “spelled how the word sounds.” Joe is short for Joseph and sounds like “Jo.” The “e” is silent in Joe. “Joey” is the diminutive for Joseph as “ey” is a common diminutive sound in English.
Why “Joe” is spelled “Joe” and not “Jo” is the only actual question here. There isn’t a universal answer beyond custom and aesthetics as the “e” is silent in “Joe.” Joey needs the “e” unlike “Lenny” or “Benny” because otherwise it would be “joy” and pronounced “joi.” At some point “Jo” became feminine and “Joe” became masculine- so in the present day “Joe” is likely used as custom because to change it to “Jo” would either seem feminine or ambiguous in most modern cases.
@funkmasterrex- lol. There’s always more questions! The more answers we get- the more questions we end up with! That’s likely why you are so knowledgeable.
It’s somewhat relative I’m sure- to both the subject and as well the reader what is long or short. But-Today we shall create a new internet acronym to supplement the Tl:dr. We shall call it the BFI- “basically functionally illiterate.” It will serve to note a synopsis in which it has been stripped to the point that even the most reluctant reader should be able to digest it.
People had spoken language before written language, so phonetically we say it like "fridge" but it originated from the latin word "refrigerator" and that came from "frigus", meaning cold. Much like other english words borrowed from other languages, the origin gets lost and we can't speak latin very well so we just end up spelling it how we say it.
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Word origins are crazy, phonetics and linguistics is complicated especially english, I mean look at the word "apron" that thing is a mess.
The first refrigerators were made by the Frigidaire division of GM (first car with A/C also). Note that in the UK a vacuum cleaner is typically called a hoover (but this may change to Dyson over time).
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Word origins are crazy, phonetics and linguistics is complicated especially english, I mean look at the word "apron" that thing is a mess.
Am I not pronouncing Joey-Joe right...?