I’m not sure you meant this as a joke but it is funny.
Learning yet another irregular pronunciation because some N-hundred years ago their majesty Shithead von Cunt wanted to sound fancy and everyone just played along is not funny.
cries, not knowing how to properly pronounce most English words
English is a second language to me, and at this point it's probably the only commonly used word I consistently mess up. It usually ends up something like 'nessecairy'
Totally understandable, one of a handful of English words that I both know are spelled “wrongL and also have to put conscious thought into spelling before I write it.
I would make English as consistent as Spanish is regarding phonetical consistency, or even more.
Oh, you have never seen this word ever before and you don’t know how to pronounce it? No worries, these universal rules will allow you just get it right, because letters always sound the same!
We just really wish when we stole them we changed the spelling to match the pronunciation if we wanted the pronunciation to stay the same of where we stole it from.
The amount of words that are not “stolen” from other languages is neglible…
Cat from German Katze, from Latin catta
Car(t) from German Karren
Kitchen grom German Küche
Bike/Bicycle from French bicycle
Leaf from German Laub
Beef, mutton, pigeon from French boeuf, mouton, pigeon
Cow, sheep, dove from German Kuh, Schaf, Taube
Computer from Latin computare
Sun and moon from German Sonne and Mond
Lunatic from Latina luna
Death from German Tod
Snug from Norse snøggr
Funny from Swedish fånig
Breeze from Spanish brisa
Ranch from Spanish rancha
Brave from Italian bravo
Arcade from Italian arcata
Dildo from Italian diletto
…
The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.
The only one they changed is the double l. ll to sounds like a y. But in some circles they consider that a seperate letter to the Spanish alphabet. Overall it is fairly consistent.
Even better, Spanish words are typically broken into two (or is it to or too) letter syllables.
I mean knowing romance languages makes spelling in English easy. Also knowing something about Greek and Latin. Understanding the root of a word etc makes it a lot easier.
Right about spelling. For a non-native, it becomes somewhat difficult when it is about the “right” pronunciation of the written language. There’s a lot of French influence for example. Now they have a lot of French words, some feel horribly mispronounced and some aren’t. And then there’s a lot of dialects so that mixing pronunciations can hardly be avoided.
English orthography is awful. Hard "c" AND soft "c"? Are you crazy? How about that "k" that is already the hard c sound? It should be "kat" and "kar". And it only goes downhill from there (or their?!?).
We should clean it up someday. But we'll probably end up with LOL-WTF-speak.
Some of the low hanging fruit would just be to pick one pronunciation of “oo” and stick with it:
book
blood
floor
brooch
boot
The problem is that English has far more vowel sounds than vowels. And that’s without even having certain sounds that are common in other languages like “ü”.
Linguistics would teach that it is the orthography that is flawed. The English language has many vowel sounds, more than most languages. But as you demonstrate, the orthography "lumps" many of them together. Which, again, is why I think English orthography is awful.
Thanks, I really like the IPA and I wish it were something that was taught in high school. It would be great if people were competent at reading it and could maybe use it to explain how something sounds. It’s hard enough that English has such flawed orthography. Then you add the fact that there are dozens of English dialects and it only makes things more complicated.
Do you know about Dr. Geoff Lindsey’s YouTube channel?
Recognise. There is a G in it but everyone pronounces it Reckonise. They are actually 2 totally different words so this isn’t really what you meant but I hate that people don’t prounce the letter G.
I pronounce the G, as does the majority of people who grew up on the west coast. Sounds like you live in the midwest (my wife grew up there and omits the G)
The American spelling matches the American pronunciation, and it was one of the original variations of the word. Americans didn’t pick it out of nowhere.
That’s more akin to saying “it’s spelled aubergine, not eggplant, you stupid Americans”.
You talk about it like all scientists could ever agree to something and that it would be possible to poll every single one and properly weight their individual scientific relevance.
An entire country being contrary just because of national pride and arrogance is completely different.
Is it your position that all countries should have the same language regardless of their cultural history?
Also, it isn’t rooted in national pride or arrogance. Aluminum came first and was the name given by the first chemist - a British scientist - to isolate the metal. The variant aluminium came from a reviewer who changed the spelling just because he liked the sound better. Aluminum was recognized by ACS 65 years before IUPAC standardized to aluminum. IUPAC has recognized aluminum as an acceptable spelling since 1993. So yeah, the general concensus is the aluminum is okay even based on your logic because IUPAC says so.
Add comment