111–120 of 251 posts
I'm not actually sure how I feel about this. Australian English is distinct, and one of its key features is heavy use of shortened words and dropped letters. For example, the word "going" becomes "goin".
This is amazing, not only for learning english but also for quickly finding videos of a subject you are interested in (which is quicker than YouTube search as this is almost a "Feeling lucky" search).
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It only seems to be some Americans pronounce it nitch, so maybe regional there, though I couldn't guess where or which is most common. Here in the UK essentially always neesh. It is from French after all. Edit: American audiobooks on the other hand seem to go 100% with nitch for some unexplainable reason.
> It is from French after all. This is funny to me because I often see people on the internet mentioning how strange it is that Americans leave off the 'h' when pronouncing 'herb'.
“Allo, allo, what ave we ere,” said the stereotypical constable.
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Seconded. I still can't tell apart the first a's in Ratte vs Rathaus, and Germans assure me they're different and the difference breaks any attempts to make puns based on the two (Rathaus=city hall, but to my ear feels like Ratte-house/haus).
As a German I can assure you that both "a" in Ratte and Rathaus sound the same. The "a" in Rathaus is just spoken a bit longer and the following "t" is hardly pronounced, whereas the "a" in Ratte is spoken very short and the "t" is pronounced strongly. I hope that helps.
I wonder if language pronunciation will drift less over time, given the technology to record the spoken word and play it back at a much later day? Any linguists on HN thinking about vowel drift in the digital age?
I wouldn't normally point this out, but considering the site is about learning languages, the mistake on the homepage: > (Advance search) is glaring. That should be "Advanced search" as in "click here to perform an advanced (adj) search," not as in "click here to advance (verb) [a] search," which is nonsensical.
For example, try comparing UK and US pronunciation of these words:
- herbs
- route
- privacy
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As a German I can assure you that both "a" in Ratte and Rathaus sound the same. The "a" in Rathaus is just spoken a bit longer and the following "t" is hardly pronounced, whereas the "a" in Ratte is spoken very short and the "t" is pronounced strongly. I hope that helps.
So ... can you accept "Ratten raus vom Rathaus" as a pun? Like, I can understand if it's too low-effort or obvious, but is it still a pun?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vowel_length#Contrastive_vowel...