181–190 of 248 posts
> while ti would only resemble sh when followed by a vowel sound ("mention", "martian", "patient", "spatial"). ti isn't "sh" in "mention," it's "ch," at least in any dialect I'm aware of. Cf. slang for Twitter mentions, "menchies."
As a non-English speaker, I find the English spoken by non-native speakers far easier to understand and deal with than the English spoken by Americans/British. I work with Germans, Italians, Spaniards, French, Dutch and I understand them 99% of the time. We use "normal" words (we are not fancy regarding vocabulary) and pronounce them in a non-native way (the way all Europeans that speak English understand)... But the…
Plus, native speakers tend to use a lot more idiom. Which generally makes things much harder to understand (but arguably more fun) -- this is even quite noticeable when encountering English from different regions.
By analogy: elements, valance bonds, and van der Waals forces in chemistry. All matter, some are stronger, subtle variances can have profound differences.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Off the top of my head, "nigh" is a counterexample.
Yes, you are right. I should have said «..."ough" at the end of a word hints heavily ...» I am kind of pissed off how article attacks english language. Of course if you interpreter a letter without a context you will have silly results!
That is one of the reasons why I think Esperanto has too much more to offer to the World as an international language than English. I'm not an activist. Besides, I enjoy so many features of English. But the resources one must invest to learn it as a second language make it unreachable to a huge amount of people around the globe, providing breeding ground to the formation of "linguistic elites" and deepening social an…
Forget Esperanto, give Toki Pona a look
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Riiiiight, so obviously you personally have no problems with the spelling rules of English (which do, in general, exist, contrary to popular belief). But, we need to ask ourselves: if it is at all conceivable that "ghoti" could be sounded out as "fish", just what the fuck is going on here? Sure, you don't have a problem dealing with this nonsense - I don't have one neither! But I struggle to believe that you've faile…
Do you object to the fact that the spelling "th" invariably means /þ/ or /ð/, and not /th/? Or mapping "sh" to /ʃ/ and not /sh/? I highly doubt you do. Here's the thing: spelling rules are context-sensitive, and if you actually understand the underlying sound rules, spelling in English is often not that bad. For example, there is a fricatization process for /t/ and /s/ sounds convert to a /ʃ/ or a /ʒ/--this is how "-…
Given how useful writing is, I just feel we should be asking ourselves whether any part of the process could be simplified.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
American English speakers can have trouble understanding British English speakers too, fwiw. Mostly due to some dramatically different slang and pronunciation rather than use of more obscure words though.
I worked in California for a while and something that kept throwing people off was that I pronounce my "t"s in the English way rather than drop them to "d"s. So it's buTTer and not 'budder', thirTy not 'thirdy', etc. Once I started dropping them to "d"s too, things improved significantly, and I can see why a lot of British YouTubers and geeks develop this 'trans-Atlantic' affectation. Another funny one I ran into a f…
So for instance if I might say “These three things,” he would say “these tree things.”
He was clearly able to make the sounds but in some cases he couldn’t. I never felt comfortable asking about it because I thought it might be a class thing.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This spelling reform was pioneered by Mark Twain[1]. [1] http://www.i18nguy.com/twain.html
That attribution to Twain is bogus. I believe it started as a letter to the editor in some mid-20th century magazine. Let me see if I can dig up the citation. (Edit 2: the Economist came later! see downthread) Edit: the joke originated as a letter to the Economist in 1971: https://web.archive.org/web/20200807181810/https://lettersof... . The classic internet version (referencing the European Commission) was a later r…
Twain did write "On the Awful German Language", on which the false atribution likely leaned strongly.
Ghoughphtheightteeau
Let's call the whole thing off.
This is because in English it's not always that you speak what you write. Pronunciation is different for the same letter in different cases. In some languages (mainly Indian) like Hindi, we speak what we write and we write what we speak i.e. Our letters have a definite and unique sounds.