81–90 of 341 posts
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That's not an English name. It's the name of a spanish river. Wad is river in Arabic. They pronounce it correctly. It's common that foreign words are adopted and adapted to the host language, but sometimes, specially if they're names, the original pronounciation lingers.
I think that's their point. I think the proper (Spanish) pronunciation is gwah-dah-loo-peh.
Just today I noticed how different the US and British pronunciations of Lieutenant are. The British one has an f sound in it, somehow.
Something I’ve learned as someone with high proficiency in another language that I learned in adulthood (I would never say fluent, maybe “functionally” fluent): Poor pronunciation (I.e. thick accent) but good grammar is usually more forgiven by a native than great pronunciation but poor grammar. Because then you sound more native, but you sound a bit… mentally slow. I am in the latter camp. My Mandarin Chinese accent…
This is really interesting! Instead of "here's how you are SUPPOSED to pronounce" any given word or phrase, you show how a bunch of native English speakers actually pronounce it. Maybe everyone is wrong, but if your goal is to be understood then you'd be better mimicking what they do than just being technically correct. :) For example, there's a street in the city I live in spelled "Guadalupe". Natives pretty much un…
reminds me of that "what would a 5th grader say" skit where the "which president" answer was something like benjamin franklin...
As a non-native speaker, I was interested in learning the perfect British accent. Turns out there is no such thing. There are many different accents, but none of them is the default. "Received pronunciation" [1] probably comes closest, but apparently it makes you sound like someone who is a non-native speaker and who tried to learn a default accent. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Received_Pronunciation
As a native speaker, YouGlish is invaluable if you have to do any audio recording or public speaking and want to make sure you pronounce less common names/places correctly. You can't find those in dictionaries, and Wikipedia is only sometimes helpful. It's also super-useful when you want to use words you've only ever seen in print, without an obvious pronunciation, and the dictionary gives multiple versions without a…
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I agree. I've been speaking (American) English 99% of the time for the past thirty years but still have a noticeable German accent, never get any flak for that. Apparently Joseph Conrad spoke with a heavy Polish accent so that's my excuse. What's sad is that educated people look down on people speaking "grammatically incorrect" even if their way of speaking is consistent within their group and conveying meaning perfe…
Henry Kissinger has a heavy German accent that didn't prevent him from becoming one of the most influential American politicians of the 20th century.
My gf's mother told me that joke back in the day, with a very heavy South American accent, but it still worked, maybe a little better because she said "Kissin-gher".
I saw Henry himself just a few years ago, right before Covid, in a NYC restaurant. He's extremely old, but he seemed very together.
You might call him a "statesman", but he wasn't precisely a politician. Also, the post WWII/Cold War era opened the door, so to speak, to a large number of displaced Europeans, scholars, to give advice about East and Middle European issues, advanced science, etc. Zbigniew Brzezinski, Werner von Braun also come to mind.
Something I’ve learned as someone with high proficiency in another language that I learned in adulthood (I would never say fluent, maybe “functionally” fluent): Poor pronunciation (I.e. thick accent) but good grammar is usually more forgiven by a native than great pronunciation but poor grammar. Because then you sound more native, but you sound a bit… mentally slow. I am in the latter camp. My Mandarin Chinese accent…
Related things I've learned after moving to US: - If your accent is not noticable, people will assume you have native-like fluency, speak fast and use colloquialisms that you may have trouble understanding. Try to work on comprehension at least as much as accent. - Everyone in the English-speaking world has an accent anyways. Californians don't speak like Texans, English don't speak like Scottish, there are people th…
Something I’ve learned as someone with high proficiency in another language that I learned in adulthood (I would never say fluent, maybe “functionally” fluent): Poor pronunciation (I.e. thick accent) but good grammar is usually more forgiven by a native than great pronunciation but poor grammar. Because then you sound more native, but you sound a bit… mentally slow. I am in the latter camp. My Mandarin Chinese accent…