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Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation
191–200 of 341 posts
Re: Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation
#192Earlier quoted context omitted.
aaand that reminds me of "Torpenhow Hill". > When the Saxons arrived and asked the Welsh the name of that hill, the Welsh said “pen” which means "hill" in Welsh. So the Saxons used their word for hill, “tor,” and called it Torpen (hill hill). > > Then the Norse arrived and the same process added the their world for hill “Haugr”. So now it was Torpen Haugr (Hill Hill Hill). > > Later, the English called it Torpenhow H…
This is a fun hoax that was invented 70 years ago, in 1953. It was debunked at least 20 years ago, but it's still more popular than facts. There is a Tarpenhow place in the UK, but it has no hill. So Tarpenhow hill does not exist . No mention of Norse either in the Oxford Concise Dictionary which describes the word as "Torr pen", top of the hill, from the Welsh "pen", and Old English "hoh", ridge.
I don't see any contradiction between saying something comes from "old english" and saying it comes from norse.
Re: Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or, if you are from New York / New Jersey, the correct pronunciation is 'budder'. :)
As a Canadian living in the US, this is the bane of my existence. The disappearance of Ts from so many words and phrases irks me: - bouny hunner - innerview - alannic ciddy - Rocky Mounins - haunid house - udderly - budder (the bagel topping) - winner (the season) - bidder (the taste) - invennive - annie-American - bedder - odder (the cute wadder mammal) The inventive ways that Ts are dropped in favor of: - Ns - Ds -…
Fwiw this was highly amusing to read. All of these I read in isolation and thought "no I pronounce the t there" then said in a sentance and yeah... youre dead on
Re: Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation
#194This 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…
Oh man, one of the worst examples of this.
Versailles missouri. They pronounce it "ver-sail-ees"
Re: Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation
#195This 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…
Nucular . It's pronounced nucular .
Nah its pronounced nuclear. A lot of people mess it up but most people pronounce it correctly. Its sorta like library -> libary. Its a common mispronounciation but it is pretty universally recognized as wrong.
Re: Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or, if you are from New York / New Jersey, the correct pronunciation is 'budder'. :)
As a Canadian living in the US, this is the bane of my existence. The disappearance of Ts from so many words and phrases irks me: - bouny hunner - innerview - alannic ciddy - Rocky Mounins - haunid house - udderly - budder (the bagel topping) - winner (the season) - bidder (the taste) - invennive - annie-American - bedder - odder (the cute wadder mammal) The inventive ways that Ts are dropped in favor of: - Ns - Ds -…
> I've mused about publishing a compilation of these words with dropped Ts, but it's hit-or-miss whether the other person in America who cares would buy the book.
There are probably more people than that that care, but most of them would probably prefer something more like the broad description of https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonological_history_of_Engl... rather than a catalog of words exhibiting one (or, rather, parts of a couple, related vy the starting sound) of the listed consonant shifts.
Re: Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s not grammatical accuracy on their part, it’s the opposite, it’s a calque, a word by word translation from their native tongue. If it was actually perfect grammatical accuracy on their part they’d be saying “Who were you talking to” or “Who were you speaking to”. Correct is what the people say, not the opinion of literal singular English language teachers.
> If it was actually perfect grammatical accuracy on their part they’d be saying “Who were you talking to” or “Who were you speaking to”. There is a sizable contingent of English speakers out there that continue to insist that it’s incorrect to end a sentence in a preposition. (I am not part of this group and it is fortunately shrinking over time.)
There's an old joke:
Texan: Where are you from?
Harvard Student: I'm from a place where we don't end sentences with prepositions.
Texan: OK. Where are you from, jackass?Re: Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation
#198Awesome. My kids will love this one. I signed up but I needed to have a password that is less than 20 characters, no special characters (only alpha numeric characters). I also had to prove that I'm a special robot every time I try to fix their password requirements, which they won't say until you make the mistakes. You should be able to do in about 4 tries at worst.
Re: Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation
#199As a non-native English speaker, the "randomness" of English pronunciation has been a source of frustration for me for many years. I realized there are two types of issues: 1. Some sounds in English don't exist in other languages and you have to learn them "from scratch". For example the "flap T" in butter. Or the particular American "r" (constrast it to the Spanish rolled r for instance). 2. Certain sounds I DID kno…
A word of note: In British English "color" is spelt "colour"
One of the things UK front-end developers really hate is they have to use "color" instead of "colour" to write CSS. :-)
Re: Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation
#200This 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…
When I first landed up in Austin, Texas that's what I look around the street and went hmmmm, perhaps, I need to learn a tad bit of Spanish -- at-least swear words.