Every day I begin with comic strips at the computer. One of my favorite sources is comics.com, and I guess I should expect that my daily fix is paid for by advertisements. Because I'm eating cereal, I haven't had the nerve yet to click the ad for "Overactive Bladder Videos." (What would they put in such a video? People running to the loo? Graphic depictions of what's happening?)
Anyhow, MSN has a banner ad for their service, complete with their slogan, "Know now." That one would be lost on my students. They can't tell the difference between know, now, and no. I guess I can see some of that. The "k" hasn't been pronounced for hundreds of years. In Old English, the word for "know" was cnawan, so our spelling does make sense. Sort of. And "no" comes from the Old English nay. (Just to be complete, "now" comes from the Old English new.) My students see the three words as completely interchangeable. That stuns me. Yes, I understand that know and no sound the same today, so the sentence "I know no Englishmen" would sound like it has a repeated word in the beginning. But who pronounces now that way, especially in Ohio? Who would pronounce words two, three, and four alike: "I now know no Englishmen." It's bizarre.
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