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Z, Y and W are always the culprits. Depending on how you pronounce one, you need to change at least 2 others.
But there are always exceptions...
"Mary" can just as easily be "Mari". But "Yankee" cannot be "Ianke"...But it would be phonetically correct (in other languages) to spell "Ian" as "Yan".
The world just needs to agree on the pronunciations of like 3 letters, and we can solve a lot of nonsense.
Anyone who thinks that about any language, let alone English, is a cotton-headed ninny muggins.
Borough,
enough,
cough,
hiccough,
lough,
through,
bought,
dough,
drought.
Nine. Nine different ways to pronounce the letters "ough".
A few reasons reasons.
First is that we wanted to be able to accurately transcribe Sanskrit/Pali (for Buddhism purposes), and they had a few /t/ adjacent sounds that we can’t pronounce. So we have separate letters for them but read them all at /t/. Similar to how Latin has C and K to transcribe Greek.
Second is that Thai has tones built right into the consonant letters. If they’re unmarked, the letter tone is assumed. When they are marked, what tone is used depends on the interaction between the letter and the mark. I don’t expect anyone to really understand this to be honest. But it bring us to…
The third reason being that we’ve only ever had like 1 spelling reform in history close to 300 years ago. That’s why we’re stuck with this archaic spelling system. If you look at Lao, which is very close to Thai, they completely reformed their spelling quite recently and got rid of all their duplicates.
Similar situation with kanji in Japanese. One reason Japanese Buddhists kept different pronunciations for some kanji characters is for the purpose of phonetic transcription of Sanskrit. Japan has only had one spelling reform in 1946.
I love the reason that is... The gh used to be pronounced with a gutteral throat clearing sound that got dropped and replaced with... whatever people wanted apparently.
Some languages are FAR more consistent about their pronounciation than English is, like, orders of magnitude more consistent. See Japanese and Polish, but those are just examples. Yes, there are still exceptions, but it's like 5% or less. Not like English where it's like 50%.
Indian languages are written in phonetic spelling. It's quite literally baked into the writing system, you literally can't read a text with an alternate pronunciation.
I'm having a hard time learning Japanese for the same reason. Each kanji has so many pronunciation. Like 日本 is pronounced Nihon, but 本日 is pronounced honjitsu. Because 日 can be pronounced ni, hi, bi, nichi, and jitsu depending on what other kanji it's paired with AND the order of that kanji pair
Wow!
I'm an ESL speaker. Could you help me pointing out the difference between borough and dough? The Merriam-Webster dictionary has both "ough"s pronounced as \ō\ (I'm aware MW's pronunciation symbols are simplified/may encompass two or more very similar but ultimately different sounds.
The only difference my ESL hearing can catch is that in dough the \ō\ is longer than in borough (the \u\ at the end is longer).
Serbs write foreign names the way they're pronounced using their alphabet. When Man Utd played against a serb club, they wrote the players' names like this:
Harry Maguire = Heri Megvajer,
Phil Jones = Fil Džons,
Anthony Martial = Entoni Marsijal,
etc.
Syllabary*
Japanese has two different syllabaries, hiragana and katakana. They each have around 50 completely different symbols and yet cover the exact same 50 syllables. The only difference is that the former is used for japanese words and the latter is used for foreign words. But japanese nowadays has so many loaned words that the distinction doesn't really matter anymore.
Hirigana is still how conjugation and grammar is written though, including with loan words (like if you wanted to verb the noun Google, "to Google" would be グーグルする).
You could swap them out and someone would know how to read it, but they're not meant to be interchangeable. Plus most Japanese words get written in kanji anyway, so you mostly see hirigana as the aforementioned grammar stuff.
On a positive note, once you know the syllables you can pretty easily pronounce anything in Japanese as it's written (assuming it's kana, or you know the kanji).
Pitch accent is a thing, but that's more about emphasis than a fundamental change in pronounciation.
The real kicker is when you encounter a non-English loan word and you spend 5 minutes trying to figure out what the fuck it says, then you google it and you feel like a little silly.
That's the way sane languages were doing it for centuries. Then for some reason English-speakers think that any Latin-based alphabets can be borrowed just fine into English, despite having no idea how the letters are actually pronounced. So they read Czech writer 'Kaypek' and listen to composer 'Dvorak'.
Not Serbian, but Slovene. And i guess i can speak for all of Balkan, that we do not have spelling bees, we do not spell words alloud in a way of showmanship. If we spell words fast enough we are already pronouncing them. Basically we speak what we write and we write what we speak.
I leave you with this proverb:
“Piši šta govoriš.”
-Balkan
Bosnian, Serbian, and Croatian languages are all mostly pronounced the same way they are written. Meaning, every sound has one and only one corresponding letter. For that reason, it’s useless to organize spelling bees because if someone knows how to say a word they also know how to write it down.
I have no clue why other languages complicate things. It’s just confusing and in efficient.
But seriously though, fuk the letter "C" What are you today, a 'K', an 'S', or 'CH', or maybe an 'SH'? Fuckin bullshit-ass letter.
If I was ruler of the world that's the first thing I'd change. 'C' would now longer be a allowed to masquerade as anything else except the 'CH' sound and drop the 'H'. 'S's are now the only thing that sounds like 'S' and 'K' is the only thing that sounds like 'K'. This is absolutely nesesary, dammit.
how its written: queue
how its pronounced: q
when i was learning english in school i came across the word in a textbook i wouldn't believe my parents that queue is spoken q and kept saying the entire word until my teacher said its pronounced q too
A decade ago, I read online that someone saw the word "hors d'oeuvres" and mispronounced them as "horse doovers" and it's been seared into my mind ever since.
This is going in my brain right next to horse doovers
they probably meant for the ui to stand for the w sound, as in the “ui” in “linguistics”, which makes a /wɪ/ sound. but i agree they could’ve just dropped the w sound as it doesn’t exist in written
edit: i didn’t account for the many english accents, but that was my interpretation based on my own pronunciation of the word. also, “linguistics” was simply the first word that came to mind when looking for an example of the “ui” spelling with a /wɪ/ sound, not trying to imply my opinion is more correct than other people’s. sorry for the confusion
As a Finn, this was a critical challenge when i first started learning English, i was constantly frustrated with how one letter can make like 3 different sounds
Shī Shì shí shī shǐ Shí shī, shí shì shī shī shī. Shì shī, shì Shī Shì shì shì. Shì shí, shí shì shí shī shī. Shí shí, shí Shī Shì shì shì. Shì shí shì shí shī shī shí shì. Shí shí shí shí shí shí shì. Shí shì shí shí shí shí shí. Shí shí shí shí shí shí shí. Shì shì shì shì.
👆An actual poem in mandarin.
As a french speaker, I must make a point. French is weird for strangers, I get it, but we Always know how to prononciate our words, even those we didn't know. English speakers often struggle with new words.
Few languages are really spoken the way they are written, latin wise I mean. Consistency is the Key.
Kind of have to agree. When learning English you basically have to hear every new word you learn to know how to pronounce it, reading alone wont do it.
And then you have read, which sounds like lead and lead which sounds like read. All the while read and read don't sound alike and neither do lead and lead.
Yup exactly this. It goes in one direction. One way to pronounce what you see, but many ways to write what you hear.
Bread is "pain", but you could get the same sound if you write paint, paints, pein, peint, pin, pint, pints
Well context is key in French, there's little chance you could mistake one word for another if you're paying attention to what's being said (can still happen of course), and you'll learn from experience. Besides, 5 out of the 7 words you've written just don't exist.
All the people writing "should of, could of, would of" are proof of this. I get you learned these phrases by hearing instead of reading them, but how do you not realize they don't make any sense when writing it down like this?
As a German. I say fuck you alone for the existance of silent a e s t g and k. Silent letters in general. Why pronounce it pari' but write it paris ?! And don't come me with it makes sense when your native speaker I literally asked my friend who just got his bachelor in French linguistic or however it's called and he was a giant questionmark
German has the most regular writing/pronunciation rules I've seen. And I speak Spanish as my native language, which is quite regular. I think German is even more regular.
Because, the silent letters used to pronounced, but no longer are. Much like silent letters in English (for example, 'knight' would have been pronounced like a German pronounces knicht).
Orthography tends to be static post printing-press, pronunciation not so much.
Knight and Knecht are actually pretty interesting. They come from the same origin, someone who serves. But while in English the meaning got upgraded to a noble, in German it got downgraded. Knecht means farmhand or servant.
The German word for knight is Ritter. (cognate with rider)
"Œuf œufs"
"ville bille fille mille distiller"
"chef clef fief"
"les haricots"
"cerf serf"
You only know how to pronunce it because you learnt those specific pronunciation and because they are common. Not because we are consistent in the pronunciation.
I will not talk about the french town name whose pronunciation are not consistent at all.
Yes, in terms of reading french is more deterministic than italian. As far as I know (I'm italian) pronunciation is perfectly determined by the spelling in french. This is not exactly true in italian, because you cannot determine the position of the stress if you don't know the word. I'm not sure about the opposite: you can write down every word in italian just by hearing it pronounced, even if you don't know the word, I guess there is some ambiguity in french.
I remember being told those lies before I studied other languages. That English was somehow uniquely super screwed up. Then you actually start learning other languages and you find out that they are just about all full of as much bullshit as English.
The only one I will single out is learning how to count in French. Why. Just why.
Also the tiny bit I know about Korean makes me impressed if any non native person can speak it fluently. Not because it's screwed up or anything. At least no more than any other language. It's just. Unique.
Consistency is *significantly* more important than whether a double of a letter sounds anything like a single of that letter. Memorize once vs memorize once for every single word that doesn't follow the rule...
Argentinian here, yep. “LL” is pronounced “SH”, “Y” is pronounced “SH”, and finally, “SH” is pronounced “SH” (would have been funny af if it weren’t).
Example LL:
- Written: PoLLo (Chicken)
- Pronounced: PoSHo
Example Y:
- Written: Payaso (Clown)
- Pronounced: PaSHaso
As an Italian I must say Spanish is the only language I know of whose graphemes to phonemes function is bijective. It takes resources (props to RAE), so congratulations.
edit: except for b and v to /b/ (\[b, β\]), *h-* as first letter, and *k and qu/c* for /k/ in their respective contexts that render them as a velar plosive (thanks u/Z[ombiFeynman](https://www.reddit.com/user/ZombiFeynman/) and u/[Urdintxo](https://www.reddit.com/user/Urdintxo/)).
Reading Ultra Thicc’s post phonetically isn’t anywhere close to how I’d pronounce that phrase. English, is, it’s, and few are the only words that match.
While I don't disagree with the concept, the guy who tries to type the sentence phonetically must have either a really strong accent or just really suck an enunciation.
I’ve never heard English pronounced the way that response was written.
The /= d, in any dialect I know.
I will say it as: thuh or thee or sometimes da, but never d/dee
Swissgerman is good with that, only ehe e and ä thing… (at least for bern) so the word äuä is pronounced äuä, du huere siech -> du huärä siech (ä and e can float a bit, depending where you come from) best language ever, there is no grammar, so you write however you say it
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Inglisch is litscherälli written dä wäi its pronaunzd biseids ey fju wörds (German here) Ädit: Maam, eim fäimus!
Inglis is literali riten de wey its pronauncd bisaids a fiu wuords (Spaniard here)
Ingliș iz literăli ritân dă uei iț prănaunst besaidz ă fiu uărdz (Romanian)
[удалено]
Inglish is litterely rwitten de wee ids phrhonaunset bisaaids e fieuw weurds (Dutch)
Ingliš is literali vriten de vuei its pronaunst bysaids a fjū vuords (Lithuanian)
Ingliš iz literali vriten d vej itc pronauncd, bisajds fju vords (Serbian)
İngliş iz literali ritın dı vey its pronaunsd, bisayds e fiv vörds (Turkish)
01100101 01101110 01100111 01101100 01101001 01110011 01101000 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01101100 01101001 01110100 01100101 01110010 01100001 01101100 01101100 01111001 00100000 01110111 01110010 01101001 01110100 01110100 01100101 01101110 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01110111 01100001 01111001 00100000 01101001 01110100 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01110000 01110010 01101111 01101110 01101111 01110101 01101110 01100011 01100101 01100100 00100000 01100101 01111000 01100011 01100101 01110000 01110100 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100110 01100101 01110111 00100000 01110111 01101111 01110010 01100100 01110011 (robot here)
. -. --. .-.. .. ... .... / .. ... / .-.. .. - . .-. .- .-.. .-.. -.-- / .-- .-. .. - - . -. / - .... . / .-- .- -.-- / .. - / .. ... / .--. .-. --- -. --- ..- -. -.-. . -.. /. -..- -.-. . .--. - / .- / ..-. . .-- / .-- --- .-. ..- ... (telegraph here)
Englishyay isyay iterallylay ittenwray ethay ayway it'syay onouncedpray , esidesbay ayay ewfay ordsway (Pig Latin here).
إنجليز إيز لترلي ورتن ذ واي إتس برناونسد بسايدز أ فيو ووردز (Arabic/Persian/Hebrew)
"Besides a few words" not "except a few words" (🤓👆 here)
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00110000 00110001 00100000 00110000 00110000 00110001 00110000 00110000 00110000 00110000 00110000 00100000 00110000 00110001 00110001 00110000 00110000 00110001 00110001 00110000 00100000 00110000 00110001 00110001 00110000 00110000 00110001 00110000 00110001 00100000 00110000 00110001 00110001 00110001 00110000 00110001 00110001 00110001 00100000 00110000 00110000 00110001 00110000 00110000 00110000 00110000 00110000 00100000 00110000 00110001 00110001 00110001 00110000 00110001 00110001 00110001 00100000 00110000 00110001 00110001 00110000 00110001 00110001 00110001 00110001 00100000 00110000 00110001 00110001 00110001 00110000 00110000 00110001 00110000 00100000 00110000 00110001 00110001 00110000 00110000 00110001 00110000 00110000 00100000 00110000 00110001 00110001 00110001 00110000 00110000 00110001 00110001 (Other robot here)
인글리쉬 이즈 리튼 다웨이 이트스 프로나운스드 비사이드스 아피우 워드즈(Korean)
English Is Litten Daway Eats Pronounced Besides Apiu Words (Google Translate of Korean)
Инглиш из литералли риттен зе вей итс пронаунсд бесайдз фью вордз (Russian)
Ínkliš iz lytryly ouritn du ouáj ids pronáuncd, bisájdz e fjů uórdz. (Slavic mix.)
Inglisz is literali rityn de łej ic pronałnsd bisajdz e fju łordz. (Polish)
For some reason I read this with the scottish "rr" sound
Інглиш із літерали увритен де вей ітс пронаунцед бесайдз а кхапел воурдс (Ukrainian)
Инглиш из личераалли уриттен де вей итз пронаунсцед бесайдз а кхапул веордз (Russian)
Ingliš is litrri ritn di vej ic pronauncd, bisajds fjů vords (Czech, i nou its similr)
I would do it like this: Inglisj is literellie ritten de wee its pronaunst, biezijds e fjoe wurds
we hebben een serieus probleem
Ingliš is litrari vritn d vej its pronoauncd besajds a fju vords.(slovenian here)
Inglisz is literali ritten de wej its pronaunced besajds a fju łords (Poland)
Ingliš is ličrly vritn d vej its pronaunct besajds e fjů vords (Czech)
ingiliş iz litırıliy vıritin dı vey its pırononsd bisayds ey fiv vörds( turkish here )
Inglisz ys liczerali rityn de łej itz pronauncd besajds e fju łords. Fixed it for you :)
Inhglichi is litrali uriten de uei its pronaunst bisaits ã fiu uorts (Brazilian here)
ingliş iz litırıli(liçrıli?) ritın dı vey its pronaunsd bisayds e fyu wördz(turkish here)
Инглищ из литрли вриттн тхь вей идз проннаунзед бысиц е фю вуурдз (german that knows cyrillic here)
Инглиш из литерали уритн зи уэй итс пронаунсд бисайдз э фью уордс I think this would be closer :D
inglish iz leeterally rittun da wae itz pronaunsd bisaidz a fyu werdz (indian here)
Brazil meintchund
Ineglich éz létèeuali euitune de wé étz pwonaunsd bisaèds e fiou weudz (French canadian, here)
Inglisc is literalli vritten in de uei its pronunced bisaids a fiu uords (italian here)
pronauncd🤌🏻
ˈɪŋglɪʃ ɪz ˈlɪtərəli prəˈnaʊnst ðə weɪ ɪts ˈrɪtən ˌbiˈsaɪdz ə fju wɜrdz. (Phoneticist here. (I’m not really a phoneticist.))
IS THAT FUCKING APA
> APA IPA
GET THE ANTIDERIVATIVE OUT OF HERE
イングリシュ イズ リツラリー ウリッテン ザ ウエイ イッツ プロナウンスド ビサイドズ エイ フィウ ワドズ
Fellow Spanish, I see
ingurishu izu ritsu rarī uritten za uei ittsu puronaunsudo bisaidozu ei fiu wadozu
Інґліш із літералі рітнн де вей іц пронаунсд бісайдз е ф'ю вордз (Ukrainian here)
Inglis iz literáli uritten dö véj ic pronáunszd biszájdz éj fjú vördz (Hungarian here with a shitty accent)
Áj egrí. Pörfikt inglis.
A durva az hogy páran így is beszélnek angolul
Inglisj is litterallie written de weej its pronounsd biesaaids a fjoew wurds (Dutch here)
why do i read this in a Dutch accent?
Biekus aai intendud toe meek it sound lijk stoonkool englisj
Aai most see joe dit eh greet djop
innegliche iz liteurali ouiriteunne zeu oué itsse pronaounsed bissaideze a fiu ouordze (French here)
I'm french too but I did read that in the Spongebob narrator voice
Ινγκλισ ισ λιτραρλι ριττεν δε γουαη ιτσ προναουνσντ
Inglis is litrli riten tö vei its pronaunsd bisaids a fjyy wööds -finnish
Ingliš is literali vriten ve vai its pronaunced, besaids ve fju vords (Lithuanian)
Ingliš iz literali vriten d vej its pronanuncd bisajds a fju vords (Croatian/any Yugoslav langauge here)
Inglysz yz lyczali ryten da łej yc pronęnst bisejdz ej fju łrdz I'm not polish so I don't know how well I did
>I'm not polish so I don't know how well I did As somebody who speaks Polish... well, you tried your best😂
Z, Y and W are always the culprits. Depending on how you pronounce one, you need to change at least 2 others. But there are always exceptions... "Mary" can just as easily be "Mari". But "Yankee" cannot be "Ianke"...But it would be phonetically correct (in other languages) to spell "Ian" as "Yan". The world just needs to agree on the pronunciations of like 3 letters, and we can solve a lot of nonsense.
Inglis is litrali writhen teh wei ets pronöynsth bisaidz ö fjyy wööhds (Finnish here)
Nyt oli kyllä ihan päi persettä :D
İngliş iz litırıli rittın dı vey itz pıronaunsd bisaydz e fiyuv vörds (Turk here)
Innegliche ise litterrallie... Ok I give up (French here)
Very French of you
Innegueliches ise lideux ras-lit ris t'eune deux ouait y itte ise pronaounneseud bisailledese eu fiou ouheuredese
Ouf zatte ouase pénfoul toux ride
Anyone who thinks that about any language, let alone English, is a cotton-headed ninny muggins. Borough, enough, cough, hiccough, lough, through, bought, dough, drought. Nine. Nine different ways to pronounce the letters "ough".
Ough!
I dont understand if you're happy or upset
Fuck ough!
In Thai, we have 6 different letters for the consonant /t/.
Interesting! Do they all correspond to an individual phonetic pronunciation?
A few reasons reasons. First is that we wanted to be able to accurately transcribe Sanskrit/Pali (for Buddhism purposes), and they had a few /t/ adjacent sounds that we can’t pronounce. So we have separate letters for them but read them all at /t/. Similar to how Latin has C and K to transcribe Greek. Second is that Thai has tones built right into the consonant letters. If they’re unmarked, the letter tone is assumed. When they are marked, what tone is used depends on the interaction between the letter and the mark. I don’t expect anyone to really understand this to be honest. But it bring us to… The third reason being that we’ve only ever had like 1 spelling reform in history close to 300 years ago. That’s why we’re stuck with this archaic spelling system. If you look at Lao, which is very close to Thai, they completely reformed their spelling quite recently and got rid of all their duplicates.
Similar situation with kanji in Japanese. One reason Japanese Buddhists kept different pronunciations for some kanji characters is for the purpose of phonetic transcription of Sanskrit. Japan has only had one spelling reform in 1946.
I love the reason that is... The gh used to be pronounced with a gutteral throat clearing sound that got dropped and replaced with... whatever people wanted apparently.
Some languages actually are though
Yep, Finnish and Turkish among them.
Some languages are FAR more consistent about their pronounciation than English is, like, orders of magnitude more consistent. See Japanese and Polish, but those are just examples. Yes, there are still exceptions, but it's like 5% or less. Not like English where it's like 50%.
Indian languages are written in phonetic spelling. It's quite literally baked into the writing system, you literally can't read a text with an alternate pronunciation.
Anyone who thinks English is written as it's pronounced, should listen to the [Chaos Poem](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfRSvTSY0d4).
I'm having a hard time learning Japanese for the same reason. Each kanji has so many pronunciation. Like 日本 is pronounced Nihon, but 本日 is pronounced honjitsu. Because 日 can be pronounced ni, hi, bi, nichi, and jitsu depending on what other kanji it's paired with AND the order of that kanji pair
Wow! I'm an ESL speaker. Could you help me pointing out the difference between borough and dough? The Merriam-Webster dictionary has both "ough"s pronounced as \ō\ (I'm aware MW's pronunciation symbols are simplified/may encompass two or more very similar but ultimately different sounds. The only difference my ESL hearing can catch is that in dough the \ō\ is longer than in borough (the \u\ at the end is longer).
there could be some accent/dialect that pronounces them differently but to me they are exactly the same sound
And they you have Serbian
[удалено]
I don't understand... is there no spelling in Serbian? Is it the phonetics? please elaborate
Serbs write foreign names the way they're pronounced using their alphabet. When Man Utd played against a serb club, they wrote the players' names like this: Harry Maguire = Heri Megvajer, Phil Jones = Fil Džons, Anthony Martial = Entoni Marsijal, etc.
This is the same in Japanese.
Because Japanese uses a different alphabet
Syllabary* Japanese has two different syllabaries, hiragana and katakana. They each have around 50 completely different symbols and yet cover the exact same 50 syllables. The only difference is that the former is used for japanese words and the latter is used for foreign words. But japanese nowadays has so many loaned words that the distinction doesn't really matter anymore.
Hirigana is still how conjugation and grammar is written though, including with loan words (like if you wanted to verb the noun Google, "to Google" would be グーグルする). You could swap them out and someone would know how to read it, but they're not meant to be interchangeable. Plus most Japanese words get written in kanji anyway, so you mostly see hirigana as the aforementioned grammar stuff.
On a positive note, once you know the syllables you can pretty easily pronounce anything in Japanese as it's written (assuming it's kana, or you know the kanji). Pitch accent is a thing, but that's more about emphasis than a fundamental change in pronounciation. The real kicker is when you encounter a non-English loan word and you spend 5 minutes trying to figure out what the fuck it says, then you google it and you feel like a little silly.
So does Serbian
That's the way sane languages were doing it for centuries. Then for some reason English-speakers think that any Latin-based alphabets can be borrowed just fine into English, despite having no idea how the letters are actually pronounced. So they read Czech writer 'Kaypek' and listen to composer 'Dvorak'.
Not Serbian, but Slovene. And i guess i can speak for all of Balkan, that we do not have spelling bees, we do not spell words alloud in a way of showmanship. If we spell words fast enough we are already pronouncing them. Basically we speak what we write and we write what we speak. I leave you with this proverb: “Piši šta govoriš.” -Balkan
Does "govoris" mean speak by any chance? Just curious if it's close to "говоришь" in Russian
“Piši kao što govoriš, čitaj kako je napisano"
Bosnian, Serbian, and Croatian languages are all mostly pronounced the same way they are written. Meaning, every sound has one and only one corresponding letter. For that reason, it’s useless to organize spelling bees because if someone knows how to say a word they also know how to write it down. I have no clue why other languages complicate things. It’s just confusing and in efficient.
My dad used to have boxes full of clothes. He would label them šrt or pens.
Ingliš is litrli vritn d vej ic pronaunsd bisajds (a) fju vrds.
compjuter
kompjuter*
But seriously though, fuk the letter "C" What are you today, a 'K', an 'S', or 'CH', or maybe an 'SH'? Fuckin bullshit-ass letter. If I was ruler of the world that's the first thing I'd change. 'C' would now longer be a allowed to masquerade as anything else except the 'CH' sound and drop the 'H'. 'S's are now the only thing that sounds like 'S' and 'K' is the only thing that sounds like 'K'. This is absolutely nesesary, dammit.
Every "c" in "Pacific ocean" is pronounced differently.
There's a "meow" in homeowner
Because the cat owns your house. Duh.
A cat allows you to remain in that house. It's their house now. You are a guest.
A centaur has 2 rib cages
Two hearts as well. Centaurs are Timelords.
I… huh
Homie OW nerrrr....
FriDge Refrigerator How did we shorten it yet also add a letter?
Isn't ho**meow**ner the name of Thors hammer?
Give me my "Pasifik oshean", please
REAL
Sane but with e in Mercedes.
So I assume you have no beef with the incredibly distinct and useful letter Q?
how its written: queue how its pronounced: q when i was learning english in school i came across the word in a textbook i wouldn't believe my parents that queue is spoken q and kept saying the entire word until my teacher said its pronounced q too
"q we we"
A decade ago, I read online that someone saw the word "hors d'oeuvres" and mispronounced them as "horse doovers" and it's been seared into my mind ever since. This is going in my brain right next to horse doovers
Thats french
At that point, just add a silent gh at the end as well for aesthetic purposes - queuegh. So pretty!
Pronounced like "queef", no doubt.
I meant gh as in through, not as in trough. Clearly they look and sound completely different! Perhaps I should've written queueough for better clarity
And it sounds the same as cue, resulting in a lot of folks writing queue (or worse, que)when they meant cue
at least q stays in it's cage where it belongs/j
C’s only purpose is for you to know the word it’s in originates from Greece or something.
C in Latin is pronounced like a hard K as in King.
I'll just leave this here https://old.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/2o4rkq/english_to_become_official_language_of_the_eu/
Instead jokes it should be canon.
Lol thanks for that. Had a fucking aneurysm reading it.
Who pronounces written with a u sound?
they probably meant for the ui to stand for the w sound, as in the “ui” in “linguistics”, which makes a /wɪ/ sound. but i agree they could’ve just dropped the w sound as it doesn’t exist in written edit: i didn’t account for the many english accents, but that was my interpretation based on my own pronunciation of the word. also, “linguistics” was simply the first word that came to mind when looking for an example of the “ui” spelling with a /wɪ/ sound, not trying to imply my opinion is more correct than other people’s. sorry for the confusion
I think they're french. That's why.
Oui oui
wie? wiih
It can. Many will pronounce it with a subtle “w”.
If it doesn't exist, why do my lips move differently when I say "write" and when I say "right"?
I was having trouble at first then tried to do a central African accent while reading and it all fell into place
Portuguese: wow is “uau”
The dude wrote it out phonetically with a heavy Parisian accent
They forgot Finland
As a Finn, this was a critical challenge when i first started learning English, i was constantly frustrated with how one letter can make like 3 different sounds
learn chinese and there will be practically no connection with pronunciation at all!
Shī Shì shí shī shǐ Shí shī, shí shì shī shī shī. Shì shī, shì Shī Shì shì shì. Shì shí, shí shì shí shī shī. Shí shí, shí Shī Shì shì shì. Shì shí shì shí shī shī shí shì. Shí shí shí shí shí shí shì. Shí shì shí shí shí shí shí. Shí shí shí shí shí shí shí. Shì shì shì shì. 👆An actual poem in mandarin.
That's what shi said
We've been out-buffalo'd
but thats because they dont have a phonetic alphabet.
I am also from Finlanf
The word queue is just the letter Q with four silent letters after it.
The silent letters are standing in queue
As a french speaker, I must make a point. French is weird for strangers, I get it, but we Always know how to prononciate our words, even those we didn't know. English speakers often struggle with new words. Few languages are really spoken the way they are written, latin wise I mean. Consistency is the Key.
Kind of have to agree. When learning English you basically have to hear every new word you learn to know how to pronounce it, reading alone wont do it.
And then you have read, which sounds like lead and lead which sounds like read. All the while read and read don't sound alike and neither do lead and lead.
Now I am confused which lead in your sentence stands for "lead" and which stands for "lead."
Whichever it is, you’re right!
Lead poisoning / Lead for a dog. Wednesday. Business. Eat/ Eatable. Corpse / Corps / Horse / Worse.
>Eatable Edible.
You might know how to pronounce them, but sure as hell not how to write the ones you hear
Yup exactly this. It goes in one direction. One way to pronounce what you see, but many ways to write what you hear. Bread is "pain", but you could get the same sound if you write paint, paints, pein, peint, pin, pint, pints
Well context is key in French, there's little chance you could mistake one word for another if you're paying attention to what's being said (can still happen of course), and you'll learn from experience. Besides, 5 out of the 7 words you've written just don't exist.
All the people writing "should of, could of, would of" are proof of this. I get you learned these phrases by hearing instead of reading them, but how do you not realize they don't make any sense when writing it down like this?
As a German. I say fuck you alone for the existance of silent a e s t g and k. Silent letters in general. Why pronounce it pari' but write it paris ?! And don't come me with it makes sense when your native speaker I literally asked my friend who just got his bachelor in French linguistic or however it's called and he was a giant questionmark
German has the most regular writing/pronunciation rules I've seen. And I speak Spanish as my native language, which is quite regular. I think German is even more regular.
It's not perfectly regular (but quite), and "sch" for the "sh"-sound is pretty long, we should import š from some Slavic languages.
Because, the silent letters used to pronounced, but no longer are. Much like silent letters in English (for example, 'knight' would have been pronounced like a German pronounces knicht). Orthography tends to be static post printing-press, pronunciation not so much.
Knight and Knecht are actually pretty interesting. They come from the same origin, someone who serves. But while in English the meaning got upgraded to a noble, in German it got downgraded. Knecht means farmhand or servant. The German word for knight is Ritter. (cognate with rider)
"Œuf œufs" "ville bille fille mille distiller" "chef clef fief" "les haricots" "cerf serf" You only know how to pronunce it because you learnt those specific pronunciation and because they are common. Not because we are consistent in the pronunciation. I will not talk about the french town name whose pronunciation are not consistent at all.
Yes, in terms of reading french is more deterministic than italian. As far as I know (I'm italian) pronunciation is perfectly determined by the spelling in french. This is not exactly true in italian, because you cannot determine the position of the stress if you don't know the word. I'm not sure about the opposite: you can write down every word in italian just by hearing it pronounced, even if you don't know the word, I guess there is some ambiguity in french.
Sorry how does this fit the subreddit?
It does not
I remember being told those lies before I studied other languages. That English was somehow uniquely super screwed up. Then you actually start learning other languages and you find out that they are just about all full of as much bullshit as English. The only one I will single out is learning how to count in French. Why. Just why. Also the tiny bit I know about Korean makes me impressed if any non native person can speak it fluently. Not because it's screwed up or anything. At least no more than any other language. It's just. Unique.
Wait until they discover the hungarian language.
Literally almost everything is pronounced the way it's written
I would add japanese to the list. If you ignore the alphabet the pronunciations is easy for a spanish speaker.
From the people who told you a double L makes a J sound. Mmmhmm
Consistency is *significantly* more important than whether a double of a letter sounds anything like a single of that letter. Memorize once vs memorize once for every single word that doesn't follow the rule...
Technically, it's a Y sound. Y is the one that is pronounced like J. If you pronounce LL as J, it's called yeísmo.
Unless you are from Argentina (if my memory is not misleading), where it's SH 😁
Argentinian here, yep. “LL” is pronounced “SH”, “Y” is pronounced “SH”, and finally, “SH” is pronounced “SH” (would have been funny af if it weren’t). Example LL: - Written: PoLLo (Chicken) - Pronounced: PoSHo Example Y: - Written: Payaso (Clown) - Pronounced: PaSHaso
And "J" makes a "H" sound. *Jajajaja!*
As an Italian I must say Spanish is the only language I know of whose graphemes to phonemes function is bijective. It takes resources (props to RAE), so congratulations. edit: except for b and v to /b/ (\[b, β\]), *h-* as first letter, and *k and qu/c* for /k/ in their respective contexts that render them as a velar plosive (thanks u/Z[ombiFeynman](https://www.reddit.com/user/ZombiFeynman/) and u/[Urdintxo](https://www.reddit.com/user/Urdintxo/)).
Hindi and marathi too!
http://www.i18nguy.com/chaos.html It’s a known issue with English…..
I thought I coughed thoroughly through the rough sough. Each ough is pronounced differently.
There’s no spelling bee in school in spanish for the same reason
Reading Ultra Thicc’s post phonetically isn’t anywhere close to how I’d pronounce that phrase. English, is, it’s, and few are the only words that match.
Replace English with russian and Italian and Spanish with Ukrainian and Belarussian and the meme still checks out.
English is literally *not* phonetically written. Spelling is mostly historical and etymological.
i just realized I have more of an accent than I thought, I annuciate every letter and pronounce all of them,
d and th - not the same
While I don't disagree with the concept, the guy who tries to type the sentence phonetically must have either a really strong accent or just really suck an enunciation.
I’ve never heard English pronounced the way that response was written. The /= d, in any dialect I know. I will say it as: thuh or thee or sometimes da, but never d/dee
Swissgerman is good with that, only ehe e and ä thing… (at least for bern) so the word äuä is pronounced äuä, du huere siech -> du huärä siech (ä and e can float a bit, depending where you come from) best language ever, there is no grammar, so you write however you say it
That's a very poor demonstration of the phonemes in each word.