Why English doesn't use accents

Post by tshaddox » Tue, Jul 08, 2025, 4:33 PM UTC

sotix wrote: post #554

tshaddox wrote: post #532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can always tell someone who is well read in English when they mispronounce everything they say. This is a very popular pro-reading sentiment. The trouble is that you can also read about how to pronounce words.

You can indeed. However, if I knew all of the words I would mispronounce, I would have already looked them up! The trouble with mispronouncing words is that often you’re unaware that you’re doing so. Respite got me recently.

Post by lelandfe » Tue, Jul 08, 2025, 6:06 PM UTC

int_19h wrote: post #458

lelandfe wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think castle is bad, wait till you hear forecastle (“fok-sul”)

At least that's often spelled "fo'c'sle" these days, which gives you a good idea of the actual pronunciation. My personal favorite in English is "colonel" being pronounced the same as "kernel". Which is insane even from an etymological perspective because the word is a derivative of "column" (as in, a colonel is someone who commands/leads a column of soldiers).

Post by throaway5454 » Tue, Jul 08, 2025, 9:44 PM UTC

williamdclt wrote: post #540

throaway5454 wrote: post #502

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All those examples follow the linguistic patterns of the languages they come from. They aren't arbitrary, they just don't teach us the context when we're learning as children.

Of course there’s always reasons. Teaching it to children isn’t really a solution: you’d need to know where words come from before reading them correctly, and also many people don’t learn English as children. Phonetic languages do borrow words from other languages too, they adapt them to their own language keeping the pronunciation (the only example coming to mind right now is the Czech for sandwich, sendvič). Englis…

Post by Tagbert » Tue, Jul 08, 2025, 10:31 PM UTC

vintermann wrote: post #546

johnnyjeans wrote: post #312

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2nding this. The "non-phonetic alphabet" is the biggest non-issue I see people raise a stink about. It really doesn't matter, context is the heavy-weight backbone of language. On top of that, I think people really underestimate how inappropriate diacritics would be for English. It has a massive phonemic inventory, with 44 unique items. Compare with Spanish's 24. English's "phonetic" writing system would have to be as…

You don't have to make a perfect pronunciation system. It's OK if a vowel is pronounced slightly differently, as long as its pronunciation can be predicted from context. Even if it can only be predicted 99% of the time. Insisting that the writing system captures every little distinction is a common mistake enterprising linguists do (often when designing an alphabet for a bible translation, or "modernizing" the spelli…

Post by int_19h » Tue, Jul 08, 2025, 11:17 PM UTC

gwd wrote: post #544

int_19h wrote: post #470

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Languages usually have either the voiced/unvoiced distinction as phonemic, or the aspirated/unaspirated distinction. In the former case unvoiced consonants often have aspirated allophones as in English, and in the latter case unaspirated consonants often have voiced allophones especially between vowels, as in Chinese or Korean. Hence why it makes sense to map the two in this manner - if your native language uses aspi…

> Languages usually have either the voiced/unvoiced distinction as phonemic, or the aspirated/unaspirated distinction. Yes, that makes sense -- I certainly learned something from this conversation. It makes sense that speakers would naturally tend to classify things along different lines, and in Chinese the aspirated / unaspirated classification makes sense. That said, after having had some time to sit with the propo…