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How to pronounce the trickiest English words

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Re: How to pronounce the trickiest English words

#71

Post by z500 »

CoastalCoder wrote: post #64
btilly wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

English is what you got when Anglo-Saxon peasants were forced to serve French speaking nobles. Which is why basic grammar and simple words are Germanic in origin, while words for food, laws, and various complex things have Romance origins. And then went on to become traders who borrow words from everywhere. Add to that constantly shifting pronunciation rules. To pick an example that is only mostly complete, "wear" an…

> Old English had 5 genders, ... Would you mind elaborating on this? I know almost nothing about the topic, but IIUC from Wikipedia, Olde English only had 3 genders: [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_English_grammar#Gender

They probably meant cases. Nominative, accusative, dative, genitive, and vestiges of the instrumental.

Re: How to pronounce the trickiest English words

#72

Post by Scoundreller »

mkingston wrote: post #21
benj111 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>cache, knowledge, repertoire Tbf English is quite consistent on 'kn' having a silent k. The other 2 are french imports.

You and I know that, but it's not important or useful to a non-French speaker learning English. To those people, those are merely English words. And indeed, they are English, even if they're French imports. I think even a lot of English speakers don't realise the depth of this: "cul de sac" is a fun example that a lot of people I ask don't realise comes from French (or another language, for that matter).

Meanwhile in France they generally don’t call it a “cul de sac” anymore but rather an “impasse”. You’ll see a mix of the two in Quebec.

That red octagon sign in France will say “STOP”, but in Quebec, “Arrête”.

Re: How to pronounce the trickiest English words

#73

Post by mnw21cam »

silvestrov wrote: post #67
Bhilai wrote: post #3

Sorry to say this (and I might get some flak for this) but English is a pretty dumb language. I am no linguist and not even a native English speaker and thus this may be my ignorance speaking. I am happy to learn from you all and change my current opinion on English. I am native Hindi speaker and at no time in Hindi can you have a different pronunciations from how the word is written (cache, knowledge, repertoire...)…

My biggest problem with English is the lack of different "you"s. If I say "you can't do that", what does this mean? 1) "you" as a concept: nobody at all can do this. 2) "you" as a specific person: only one person can't do this. Other people can do it. 3) "you" as a group: Nobody in the group (or the group as a whole) can do this.

Number one on that list is covered by the word "one". That usage has mostly fallen by the wayside, and I think that's an indication that we didn't really need to make that distinction. There are also other ways to word it to make the meaning clear.

Re: How to pronounce the trickiest English words

#74

Post by gherkinnn »

Bhilai wrote: post #3

Sorry to say this (and I might get some flak for this) but English is a pretty dumb language. I am no linguist and not even a native English speaker and thus this may be my ignorance speaking. I am happy to learn from you all and change my current opinion on English. I am native Hindi speaker and at no time in Hindi can you have a different pronunciations from how the word is written (cache, knowledge, repertoire...)…

One's own language is never dumb. It is always the other's. Same applies to tech. My stack is great, but what you're using is dumb. Also JS is stupid and now watch me write a CSS-in-RuSt compile to WASM monstrosity. I smell a pattern here.

I wish people would stop calling what is unknown dumb. It stinks.

Re: How to pronounce the trickiest English words

#75

Post by OnlyMortal »

HPsquared wrote: post #32
btilly wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

English is what you got when Anglo-Saxon peasants were forced to serve French speaking nobles. Which is why basic grammar and simple words are Germanic in origin, while words for food, laws, and various complex things have Romance origins. And then went on to become traders who borrow words from everywhere. Add to that constantly shifting pronunciation rules. To pick an example that is only mostly complete, "wear" an…

This feels like reading German.

Well yes. My dialect is somewhere towards German (more so Dutch).

I write, “learnt” rather than “learned”. Past perfect and past imperfect from a Germanic view.

“I learnt” and “I have learned”. “I learned” sounds wrong.

Source: Yorkshuh.

Re: How to pronounce the trickiest English words

#76

Post by coffeebeqn »

crazygringo wrote: post #22
Bhilai wrote: post #3

Sorry to say this (and I might get some flak for this) but English is a pretty dumb language. I am no linguist and not even a native English speaker and thus this may be my ignorance speaking. I am happy to learn from you all and change my current opinion on English. I am native Hindi speaker and at no time in Hindi can you have a different pronunciations from how the word is written (cache, knowledge, repertoire...)…

As far as I'm aware, every language out there is dumb, and English isn't especially dumb. Yes, its particular wart is pronunciation, and then also phrasal verbs especially [1]. But what are the dumb things English doesn't have? Noun genders (why?). A hundred different suffixes for regular verb conjugations (ugh). Subjunctives all over the place (maddening). A character-based script that isn't phonetic at all (e.g. Ch…

English is also pretty forgiving when spoken. You don’t need to know all the rules to mostly make sense. In many other languages the threshold to be understood feels higher. Maybe that’s because everyone knows some English though

Re: How to pronounce the trickiest English words

#77

Post by CollinEMac »

silvestrov wrote: post #67
Bhilai wrote: post #3

Sorry to say this (and I might get some flak for this) but English is a pretty dumb language. I am no linguist and not even a native English speaker and thus this may be my ignorance speaking. I am happy to learn from you all and change my current opinion on English. I am native Hindi speaker and at no time in Hindi can you have a different pronunciations from how the word is written (cache, knowledge, repertoire...)…

My biggest problem with English is the lack of different "you"s. If I say "you can't do that", what does this mean? 1) "you" as a concept: nobody at all can do this. 2) "you" as a specific person: only one person can't do this. Other people can do it. 3) "you" as a group: Nobody in the group (or the group as a whole) can do this.

It totally blew my mind when I found out Spanish has different words for these: "se" (1), "tú"/"usted" (2), "ustedes"/"vosotros" (3)

Re: How to pronounce the trickiest English words

#78

Post by screamingninja »

Bhilai wrote: post #3

Sorry to say this (and I might get some flak for this) but English is a pretty dumb language. I am no linguist and not even a native English speaker and thus this may be my ignorance speaking. I am happy to learn from you all and change my current opinion on English. I am native Hindi speaker and at no time in Hindi can you have a different pronunciations from how the word is written (cache, knowledge, repertoire...)…

> I am sometimes sad that quite a large portion of the world has chosen English to the language of business when there are better languages out there which not only have less complex and confusing rules but are much more expressive and scientific.

Majority of the global decisions today are made through political, and by extension, military dominance. If we resorted to scientific debate in making grand decisions, imagine what kind of a place our world would be!

Re: How to pronounce the trickiest English words

#79

Post by coffeebeqn »

Aloha wrote: post #31
ta23 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>has original sins coming frome its parents Not really. Its biggest sin is melting-potting too many parents, resulting in an irredeemable mess. And even totally unrelated to the parents: The languages around the globe largely agree on the five vocals. There may be one or two missing at times, but they are pretty much the same everywhere you go, European-descent or not, and then you got fucking English. Where an "a" i…

... or PHP Yeah, english is a lot like PHP.

JavaScript . Everyone has to know it but no one who learned it really loves it

Re: How to pronounce the trickiest English words

#80

Post by psunavy03 »

HPsquared wrote: post #32
btilly wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

English is what you got when Anglo-Saxon peasants were forced to serve French speaking nobles. Which is why basic grammar and simple words are Germanic in origin, while words for food, laws, and various complex things have Romance origins. And then went on to become traders who borrow words from everywhere. Add to that constantly shifting pronunciation rules. To pick an example that is only mostly complete, "wear" an…

This feels like reading German.

English is a Germanic language, closely related to Dutch and German, which was later influenced by French and Latin.
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