My mom would say it is because "ski" is not a true English word, because one of the rules of the English language is that no word ends in "i". Thus, ski comes from another language originally, and we add on our own English rule for making a verb take action, which is to add "ing" to the end. Since English does not have any precedent for a word ending in "i" that must then be made active, we default to leaving both "i"s in the word.
And I do say both of them. I don't pronounce it the same as I would "sking". The "i" sound is drawn out and jostled just a bit.
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and equally vexing: why don't fingers fing?
My question would be, why do we pronounce skiing as if it only had one 'i'?
My mom would say it is because "ski" is not a true English word, because one of the rules of the English language is that no word ends in "i". Thus, ski comes from another language originally, and we add on our own English rule for making a verb take action, which is to add "ing" to the end. Since English does not have any precedent for a word ending in "i" that must then be made active, we default to leaving both "i"s in the word.
And I do say both of them. I don't pronounce it the same as I would "sking". The "i" sound is drawn out and jostled just a bit.
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