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How to pronounce the trickiest English words

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Re: How to pronounce the trickiest English words

#81

Post by FrankoDelMar »

InCityDreams wrote: post #61
bestouff wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno. I'm French and perfectly aware that my language is difficult to master. I wouldn't say it's dumb but it's just because I'm stupidly proud of my country.

As a very strict anti-nationalist - what is it about your country you are proud of? Nb I travel a lot and ask the question a lot (when appropriate). When i think of 'my country', i see nothing to be proud of. I didn't do it. I believe George Carlin summmed it up best: be proud of things you did, not countries, and stuff (sorry, can'tfind link)?

Besides nationalistic propaganda, I would imagine the root cause is a form of tribalism — the same reason people tend to root for their home sports team. For that reason, I also think being proud of something you had no choice in is understandable, but irrational. There is no way to be proud of one’s immutable identity without making a value judgement of the out group. Maybe unsurprisingly, Germans tend to be allergic to nationalism since they’re intimately familiar with its natural outcome.

Re: How to pronounce the trickiest English words

#82

Post by psunavy03 »

iainmerrick wrote: post #63
crazygringo wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 also seems very amenable to loanwords from other languages -- you can usually just drop foreign words directly into English without any special twists. It seems much more fiddly in French, German, etc. In Japanese you always have to modify the pronunciation of English words (though maybe that comes easily with practice); in English you just go ahead and say "karaoke", "tsunami", etc. Am I right in thinking En…

"English doesn't borrow from other languages. English follows other languages down dark alleys, knocks them over and goes through their pockets for loose grammar."

- Terry Pratchett

Re: How to pronounce the trickiest English words

#83

Post by misnome »

mnw21cam wrote: post #73
silvestrov wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I mean, "one" can also mean "Myself" (which is in my mind more immediate than "one" as a general group). So it doesn't exactly solve and possibly makes it worse.

Re: How to pronounce the trickiest English words

#84

Post by psunavy03 »

oneshtein wrote: post #45
crazygringo wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I learned how to read and write in my native language in 2 weeks at age 6, when I learned half of alphabet, because I figured out rest of alphabet on my own. I'm reading non-stop since then. How much it takes to learn how to properly read, write, listen, and speak in English? It took me about 20 years in total, but I still cannot talk properly.

Languages are more easily absorbed in childhood due to brain development. It's biologically harder to learn a language as an adult, because that part of your brain is more fully developed. Doable, just harder.

Re: How to pronounce the trickiest English words

#85

Post by crazygringo »

Paul-Craft wrote: post #62
crazygringo wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Oh, really? Let me introduce you to the "order of adjectives" rule: https://www.inc.com/minda-zetlin/grammar-bizarre-weird-rule-... Talk about bizarre! Every native speaker has this internalized, but they never teach it in school.

Oh believe me, it's definitely taught in school -- it's a part of every standard ESL curriculum. Generally third or fourth year. (Although if you miss class that week you might never see it again.)

It's a weird one, but also pretty easy to internalize just through experience. It's not like anybody's usually stringing together five adjectives in regular speech. If you just learn a single prototype phrase like "ugly little green wool sweater", that will probably get you 99% of what you need in daily usage.

Re: How to pronounce the trickiest English words

#86

Post by winnit »

iainmerrick wrote: post #63
crazygringo wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 also seems very amenable to loanwords from other languages -- you can usually just drop foreign words directly into English without any special twists. It seems much more fiddly in French, German, etc. In Japanese you always have to modify the pronunciation of English words (though maybe that comes easily with practice); in English you just go ahead and say "karaoke", "tsunami", etc. Am I right in thinking En…

In languages which are truer to spelling in pronunciation than English, changing the spelling of loan-words is usually necessary. For example, the French word bureaucracy is used in English with the French spelling, whereas in Norwegian it is written 'byråkrati' which, pronounced according to Norwegian spelling rules, sounds roughly the same. One result is that Norwegians tend to pronounce any word they see as if it were Norwegian, resulting in a kind of 'Norwenglish' where words, after being loaned, seemed to take on a second life. In this way, I feel English spellings 'reference' their origins where possible and English speakers often learn to detect the roots of words and adjust pronunciation appropriately.

Re: How to pronounce the trickiest English words

#87

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

Re: How to pronounce the trickiest English words

#88

Post by firebat45 »

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.

It is precisely because English is the language of business that it is such a mess of rules and exceptions. The complexity of English is due to all the loanwords and influence it gets from other languages, when native speakers of those languages start using English and put their own spin on it.

If the world had chosen some other language instead of English, that language would be equally confusing and English would be much simpler than it is today.

Re: How to pronounce the trickiest English words

#89

Post by btilly »

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

The way I learned about it, in addition to masculine, neuter, and feminine, there was also a distinction between weak and strong. So a man would be strong masculine, a body weak masculine, a girl weak feminine, and a woman strong feminine. Add in neuter and you get 5 genders.

But reading https://oldenglish.info/wam2.html, there were also 2 weak neuter nouns, eage and eare. Which are now eye and ear. Not sure how that fits with what I was taught.

Re: How to pronounce the trickiest English words

#90

Post by yurishimo »

avgcorrection wrote: post #59
yurishimo wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, the vocabulary thing I don't think is unique to English. If you look at this Wikipedia article, the first entry for English when sorting by headwords is around 140k. German by example is around 100k for it's lowest entry. At the high end it's approaching 400k for German and 470k for English. I'm omitting the Wikipedia dictionaries for all languages. I suppose that doesn't disqualify your point either. For me, the…

> native speakers are excellent at understanding accents when compared to other nations where non-standard accents are not as common So you assert.

I apologize. As a native English speaker now living among one of these cultures, it seems to follow. From the few limited interactions I've had and seen elsewhere online in a similar scenario, it seems to track.

Obviously it will differ per person as well, but as a whole, in my experience, this tends to be a trend amongst homogenous language countries. I suspect it could also be true for countries like Luxembourg and Belgium where it's normal for many people to speak 2-4 languages all within a very close proximity to each other. These people need to listen to competent speakers whose home language may differ from that used by their neighbors and business contacts on a daily basis.

At the end of the day, my hypothesis is that proximity breeds tolerance. Based on other social experiments and observations, I don't think I'm too far off, but thank you for (validly) checking my bullish assertions.

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