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How to pronounce the trickiest English words

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Re: How to pronounce the trickiest English words

#121

Post by callmeal »

Koshkin wrote: post #115
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...)…

The variability in pronunciation is a blessing in disguise. How else would one distinguish between 'a row' and 'a row', or tell 'a sow' from 'to sow'? The American English is an infinite source of pride for me, because of how different it is from other related languages. Where everyone else is using 'ss' to stress the need for the sound 's', we proudly say 'z' when we see 'ss'. Scissors: 'sizerz'! I even hear 'azum'…

>How else would one distinguish between 'a row' and 'a row', or tell 'a sow' from 'to sow'?

You have different words for those meanings?

Re: How to pronounce the trickiest English words

#122

Post by fragmede »

callmeal wrote: post #121
Koshkin wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The variability in pronunciation is a blessing in disguise. How else would one distinguish between 'a row' and 'a row', or tell 'a sow' from 'to sow'? The American English is an infinite source of pride for me, because of how different it is from other related languages. Where everyone else is using 'ss' to stress the need for the sound 's', we proudly say 'z' when we see 'ss'. Scissors: 'sizerz'! I even hear 'azum'…

>How else would one distinguish between 'a row' and 'a row', or tell 'a sow' from 'to sow'? You have different words for those meanings?

row: a line of items (vs column)

row: a fight

bonus (to) row: verb meaning to propel a boat with oar(s)

(a) sow: female pig

(to) sow: scattering seeds for planting

bonus (a) sow: block of metal ingot

Re: How to pronounce the trickiest English words

#123

Post by kergonath »

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 Japanese you always have to modify the pronunciation of English words

I can assure you that the way foreign words are pronounced in English is usually quite far from how they would sound in their original language. There is a simple reason for that: foreign words have sounds that do not exist in English and that English-speaking people don’t know how to pronounce without training, about which most people don’t bother. English words sound weird in Japanese, but the opposite is also true.

> in English you just go ahead and say "karaoke", "tsunami", etc

This is no different than many other languages. In fact, Karaoke and tsunami are used exactly the same way in French, German, Dutch and Spanish.

> Am I right in thinking English is unusual in that respect? I'm not expert enough in any other languages to know for sure.

It is not really. English is completely inconsistent because of its history as an amalgamation of very different languages, but apart from that it is not really remarkable in the way it treats loan words.

Re: How to pronounce the trickiest English words

#124

Post by computator »

clauderoux wrote: post #33
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...)…

Among European languages, English is maybe the language with the less consistency, when it comes to writing, but it is far from being the only one. French is another one, and English borrowed not only a lot of French words, but a lot of them were borrowed with their old French spelling. To understand why English and many other European languages have such weird spelling rules, you have to start with the initial reaso…

> every decision to change the spelling of your language should be the result of international comities

Your use of comiti reminds me of this "joke" that committees often make things much worse:

'Committee' was the spelling decided upon by the first Komiti.

Re: How to pronounce the trickiest English words

#125

Post by ahoka »

Koshkin wrote: post #115
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...)…

The variability in pronunciation is a blessing in disguise. How else would one distinguish between 'a row' and 'a row', or tell 'a sow' from 'to sow'? The American English is an infinite source of pride for me, because of how different it is from other related languages. Where everyone else is using 'ss' to stress the need for the sound 's', we proudly say 'z' when we see 'ss'. Scissors: 'sizerz'! I even hear 'azum'…

You guys get it all wrong: it’s not that different words are pronounced the same, but some words sound like each other, but written differently.

Re: How to pronounce the trickiest English words

#126

Post by Koshkin »

popularonion wrote: post #97
iainmerrick wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

We do Anglicize pronunciation of loan words, heavily. "Karaoke" is actually a good example of that: https://forvo.com/word/karaoke/#ja

Curiously, we also anglicize, to a large degree, the pronunciation of words even when the intent is to approximate the native pronunciation as closely as possible, such as in popular phrase books for travelers - to the point that I often ask myself if the native speaker would be able to understand me if I speak like that (which I try not to). 'Pway-day ayoodar-may', anyone?

Re: How to pronounce the trickiest English words

#127

Post by dragonwriter »

benj111 wrote: post #9
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...)…

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

> Tbf English is quite consistent on 'kn' having a silent k

initial “kn” consistently has a silent “k”.

“kn” in the middle of a word, is less consistent: “unknown” has a silent “k”, “pyknotic” does not.

Re: How to pronounce the trickiest English words

#128

Post by lainga »

btilly wrote: post #11

Try to read The Chaos aloud to demonstrate that you, too, do not know how to pronounce English: https://ncf.idallen.com/english.html Just as an example, did you know that the placement of a comma can change the pronunciation of a word? It can, and that poem has an example where it does!

Sorry... just imagine this comment in 2pt font...

Ԁɹ uᴉ ʇᴉ ƃuᴉpɐǝɹ ǝq oʇ pǝsoddns ǝɹ,noʎ ʇǝƃ noʎ ǝɔuo ʎsɐǝ sʇǝƃ ʇI ¿ʇsǝʇ lɐǝɹ ɐ ǝq oʇ pǝsoddns ʇᴉ sᴉ

Re: How to pronounce the trickiest English words

#129

Post by dragonwriter »

dfawcus wrote: post #119
mkingston wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

I always preferred "Dead End", but "Cul-de-sac" seems to have taken over with the road sign planning departments since the 70s.

I've seen both, with an apparent fairly-consistent consistent semantic distinction: a “cul-de-sac” has a rounded turnaround at the end which is convenient for reversing direction without entering any driveway off the road, a “dead end” has a straight end which doesn't provide that affordance.

Re: How to pronounce the trickiest English words

#130

Post by jandrewrogers »

hinkley wrote: post #117
psunavy03 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

As a native English speaker, it can be distracting to hear someone speaking Dutch in a movie. Your brain keeps trying to make it into accented English, because it sounds almost like it due to pacing and common syllables. The brain latches onto a handful of borrowed words and tries to interpolate the rest.

Same. Dutch sounds like unintelligible English to me, which is useful for identifying it as Dutch (once I realize it is, in fact, actually unintelligible).
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