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How to pronounce the trickiest English words

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Re: How to pronounce the trickiest English words

#201

Post by klyrs »

crazygringo wrote: post #48
Aloha wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hardest part about english as far as I know is vocabulary - which is vast - something like 1/3rd larger than other languages because of the dual parentage of English and French - and thats before you get into words that have three or four definitions. The one nice thing about English is you can totally munge it, wrong tenses, slightly wrong words, wrong word order, and its still intelligible. Like, you can transl…

> something like 1/3rd larger than other languages This is basically an urban legend. Comparing vocabulary sizes between languages is essentially impossible, as what counts as a word is measured differently. (Think those long compound words in German, for example.) And using things like "total dictionary size" is similarly unhelpful because most of the words are technical or archaic, and it mostly depends on how deep…

> There aren't dual words for "head"

Unless you count "chef" and "director"

Re: How to pronounce the trickiest English words

#202

Post by nullhole »

AlexAndScripts wrote: post #150
nullhole wrote: post #146

Related, one of my favourite jokes is to correct another person's pronunciation of pronunciation when they say to a third party "the correct pronunciation of is " (Is pronunciation pronounced "pro-noun-see-ation" or "pro-nun-see-ation"?)

I had this discussion last week. I say the former because it's more consistent (nobody says "prenunced").

In good fun:

Every joke is funniest when it's explained, so:

It can be, I think, pronounced equally correctly either way. So, no matter what the first user of the word says, you can always say that they are incorrect; not only that, but in reference to another, different, word that they said.

Re: How to pronounce the trickiest English words

#203

Post by pard68 »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #197
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…

> English is what you got when Anglo-Saxon peasants were forced to serve French speaking nobles. Are you suggesting that England, the very definition of imperialist settler colonialism, is itself the product of imperialist settler colonialism?

Well it is. Celts are the original peoples and have been invaded at various times by Gaels, Scandinavians, French, and Romans. Probably others too.

Re: How to pronounce the trickiest English words

#204

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

misnome wrote: post #83
mnw21cam wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My feeling is that the use of "one" refer specifically to oneself rather than "anyone" is actually an attempt to gain status through generalization. That is, "one" used instead of "myself" is an indication of social climbing, not synonymity between the terms.

Re: How to pronounce the trickiest English words

#205

Post by OJFord »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #197
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…

> English is what you got when Anglo-Saxon peasants were forced to serve French speaking nobles. Are you suggesting that England, the very definition of imperialist settler colonialism, is itself the product of imperialist settler colonialism?

Many, it's not even a lukewarm take I'm afraid. Different invaders for different times.

Also Jews were expelled for a few centuries, and made to wear particular clothing prior to that.

I'm sure you could find many other examples that we more readily associate to some other country (or in some other direction) today, and they may be different again in centuries to come.

Re: How to pronounce the trickiest English words

#206

Post by OJFord »

tivert wrote: post #51
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...)…

> 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 would hazard to say it's a pretty common feeling to think every language is dumb except your own. You're so used to the weirdness of your own language you don't even notice it, but weirdness in other language is always grat…

On the other hand though, my (especially initial) experience as a native English speaker learning Hindi has been(/was) 'wow this is amazing, so logical, everything makes sense' and 'I can read it! I don't know what it means, but I can read it and say it, I can ask someone', etc.

Re: How to pronounce the trickiest English words

#207

Post by pomian »

dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #193
dragonwriter wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Formality in discussion with others, seems to be very common in other languages, and is very hard for a native North American speaker to use correctly. The whole concept sounds like contrite begging for us. Kind of ironic, in that English lost the ability to make formality distinctions because its speakers were so consistently formal to each other that the language lost its informal second person singular pronoun a…

Living proof of this is the that when translating from English to my local Slavic language Google Translate strips out all instances of "please". I felt like it sounded rude but it actually stops me from sounding overly pleading and a little pathetic.

My solution for good interaction, since I'm fluent, is to state to the person i'm talking to, is right up front and say; I'm not a native, so forgive me if I sound informal. Usually that's enough for the person to be forgiving, and possibly impressed, sometimes I just get a confused or rude look.

Re: How to pronounce the trickiest English words

#208

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

pard68 wrote: post #203
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> English is what you got when Anglo-Saxon peasants were forced to serve French speaking nobles. Are you suggesting that England, the very definition of imperialist settler colonialism, is itself the product of imperialist settler colonialism?

Well it is. Celts are the original peoples and have been invaded at various times by Gaels, Scandinavians, French, and Romans. Probably others too.

There were non-Sapiens species on the islands. Later, after the last ice age, a neolithic culture apparently linked to Anatolia. Subsequently during the Bronze age, the Iberians ("Bell-Beaker people") arrived, preceding the Celts.

So any talk of "the original peoples" in the British Isles is just about as meaningless as it is anywhere outside of some parts of Africa.

Re: How to pronounce the trickiest English words

#209

Post by OJFord »

lotsofspots wrote: post #70
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.

I like how the phrase "I didn't say she stole my wallet." changes meaning completely depending on which word(s) you emphasise.

I believe this is because/relates to English being a 'stress-timed' language; others (such as Hindi) have 'emphatic particles' that emphasise the word they're attached to, and make more use of words like 'too' in 'I too would like some water' for this effect.

Re: How to pronounce the trickiest English words

#210

Post by OJFord »

Izkata wrote: post #187
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.

3 would be "you all" or "y'all"; it's from a particular dialect in the US, so might sound odd, but would be understood.

The non-dialectal way would be 'you can all do this'.

(It's a bit more interesting, or at least more example-dependent, in the negative.)

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