Why is sugar pronounced with an "sh" and salt with an "s"?

Question

Why is sugar pronounced with an "sh" and salt with an "s"?

Answer 1

who knows?

Answer 2

because of the u and a vowels in sugar or sumthin like that lol

Answer 3

Why isn't there an 'h' in sure? I'm not sure. d**n those words! *kills words*

Answer 4

Because that is just one of the thousands of quirks in the English language, which makes it one of the hardest languages in the world to learn.

Like the "silent k" in knight. Like "i before e except after c" except sometimes.

Like "a, e, i, o, u and SOMETIMES Y are vowels."

Like putting an "e" after a word gives the vowel the "long" sound and the "e" is silent.

Like how some words SOUND the same, but are spelled differently and have different meanings (their, there, they're).

English has literally thousands of "exceptions" and one just has to learn them.

Which makes it all the more silly that we expect OTHER people to "just learn the d**n language" when Americans themselves can hardly read and write themselves.

Answer 5

Same reason stupid is pronounced with an "st"

Answer 6

I????

Answer 7

because the english language is odd

Answer 8

hahah i never noticed that, but i don't know why its like that. sorry.

Answer 9

'Sugar' is from the Latin 'zuccarum', in which the 'z' was probably pronounced more like an SH.  Salt is from 'sel' which began with an S sound.

Answer 10

That's pretty funny to think about.  Good question!