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As a german the commentary here strikes me as sadly defensive. I'm in contact with and kinda familiar with a lot of languages, and out of the ones i know Engli

As a german the commentary here strikes me as sadly defensive. I'm in contact with and kinda familiar with a lot of languages, and out of the ones i know English is the weirdest one, if only by its most basic property: English text does not remotely map to english pronounciation. This may sound weird to native english speakers, but it's the truth. To give a more concrete example: With many languages in movies, it is easy for me to listen to them, i.e. in a movie, even when whispered, and accurately transcribe them into script; even when i don't actually speak them. English movies consistently keep me getting subtitles because i can't make out what's being said even at normal volume. His mention of the existence of a "spelling bee" as a sign of how weird english is was spot-on.

m12k 11y ago
Here's a contrived but hilarious example of just how wrong you can get it, if you assume pronunciation and spelling are aligned in English: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghoti https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghoti
switch007 11y ago
As a native English speaker, I struggle with many modern movies. I find the speech very muttered and scripts full of quick, short retorts. English /can/ be perfectly clear. There must be other explanations.
- Mithaldu 11y ago
  Maybe it's a bit of both? If you're curious, try having a listen to this and transcribe some of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpawK7gm2tM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpawK7gm2tM I'm sure you'd get most of it correct.
- nommm-nommm 11y ago
  I know quite a few non hard of hearing native English speakers who watch movies with the closed captioning on for that reason as well. Movies are unique in that sense, not sure what it is about them.
  - DrScump 11y ago
    Heck, I leave CC on all the time, even as a native speaker. There are enough mumbled lines or poor audio or varying volume (thanks a lot, Comcast) to make it useful. I found "The Following" to be one show I relied on captioning a lot. I bet it would be helpful for children learning to read, too, with the constant matching of text with corresponding dialog or narration. It's a funny metric for engineering sloppiness as well. For example, many programs (especially sports) make poor choices with respect to placement of the CC lines; most major sports networks end up covering the scoreboard insert with CC, for example. One bizarre botch going on now is that our local CBS affiliate (KPIX) is sending captioning from the wrong program in the 10PM hour more often than not -- clearly a news program. Sometimes, it will be back to the correct show upon return from a commercial break, then fail back again later. It's happened the last 2 weeks in a row during Elementary, for sure. Anybody else seen this?
  - cooper12 11y ago
    Yeah this perplexes me too because my hearing is otherwise decent but I almost always need subtitles. I've looked into it a bit and some people are surmising that it has to do with poor audio engineering for home release. Films audio is recorded to be played back in a spacious theater with surround sound, good acoustics, and speakers with high range. Then you have people's home audio setups: noisy listening environments with people right next to the audio source, poor acoustics and stereo sound, and poor speakers from laptops, smartphones, or those built in to flatscreen tv's. The sound mixing also relies on these factors as well as the theater experience so explosions are super loud and quiet moments are eerily silent. (Not to mention that dialogue takes a backseat in many modern films) The audio might be poorly remixed, if at all for home release and the poor playback equipment exacerbates the issue. It's similar to developers saying "works on my machine", where in this case the machine is properly calibrated, thousands of dollars, and top-of-the-line.
    - nitrogen 11y ago
      This is what the Dynamic Range Compression setting is for on Dolby Digital decoders. Do the new Blu-Ray formats have a similar option? If you aren't in a quiet home theater with no neighbors to bother, you want DRC on maximum compression.
thaumasiotes 11y ago
English text and English spelling would refer to the same thing any way I can understand them, but it's true that English spelling is more loosely coupled to pronunciation than Italian spelling is. That reflects the fact that English hasn't had a spelling reform in a while; spelling always starts out perfect and fails to drift while the spoken language does drift. If Italian had no written form, and everyone there made all their written communications in classical Latin, you might have more trouble. English spelling reform is difficult to do at this point because there's no one place that can claim to be authoritative; it isn't possible to spell words phonemically in a way that's simultaneously valid for American and British English. All that said, Japanese spelling is infinitely worse than English spelling.
- Mithaldu 11y ago
  You're right, i mixed up spelling and pronounciation.
  - DanBC 11y ago
    You made a good point and I had no problem understanding you. cough (off), through (oo), though (oh), tough (uff), ought (aw), thorough (uh), plough (ow), hiccough (up). moon (oo), room (oo or uh), rhubarb (oo).
- ingas 11y ago
  > All that said, Japanese spelling is infinitely worse than English spelling. I think you're overestimating weirdness of 日本語. For native Russian speaker, Japanese is slightly weirder than English. The only rule: be prepared that every rule could be broken.
  - Grue3 11y ago
    I am also a native Russian speaker (not sure what that has to do with anything though), but English spelling is downright trivial compared to Japanese. I liked the following experiment I read about. A phrase was dictated to native Japanese speakers and they were asked to write it down. They wrote it in like 10 completely different ways, none of which was like the author of the phrase intended it.
wodenokoto 11y ago
Bullshit. If you don't speak Chinese or Cantonese, good luck transcribing them. Even Danish, which is very close to German, you'd have trouble.
acqq 11y ago
"English movies consistently keep me getting subtitles because i can't make out what's being said even at normal volume." For me, it's the recent movies synchronized to German where I need the subtitles, and the old ones (like, 50 years old) being easy to understand. Often it's that in the modern ones the music is playing over the voice, the female voice often attempts to sound "cooler" to the point of the actor doing the sync almost sounding like speaking with the closed mouth and therefore being hard to understand. At the same time, the male voices sound a little clearer to me but also significantly worse than in the old movies. In the old movies, the actors tended to be clear like in the theater.
- Mithaldu 11y ago
  Interesting note. I have to admit that since original language material is now easy to acquite, i have not seen a single german-dubbed movie in years.

m12k 11y ago

Here's a contrived but hilarious example of just how wrong you can get it, if you assume pronunciation and spelling are aligned in English: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghoti https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghoti

switch007 11y ago

As a native English speaker, I struggle with many modern movies. I find the speech very muttered and scripts full of quick, short retorts. English /can/ be perfectly clear. There must be other explanations.

Mithaldu 11y ago
Maybe it's a bit of both? If you're curious, try having a listen to this and transcribe some of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpawK7gm2tM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpawK7gm2tM I'm sure you'd get most of it correct.
nommm-nommm 11y ago
I know quite a few non hard of hearing native English speakers who watch movies with the closed captioning on for that reason as well. Movies are unique in that sense, not sure what it is about them.
- DrScump 11y ago
  Heck, I leave CC on all the time, even as a native speaker. There are enough mumbled lines or poor audio or varying volume (thanks a lot, Comcast) to make it useful. I found "The Following" to be one show I relied on captioning a lot. I bet it would be helpful for children learning to read, too, with the constant matching of text with corresponding dialog or narration. It's a funny metric for engineering sloppiness as well. For example, many programs (especially sports) make poor choices with respect to placement of the CC lines; most major sports networks end up covering the scoreboard insert with CC, for example. One bizarre botch going on now is that our local CBS affiliate (KPIX) is sending captioning from the wrong program in the 10PM hour more often than not -- clearly a news program. Sometimes, it will be back to the correct show upon return from a commercial break, then fail back again later. It's happened the last 2 weeks in a row during Elementary, for sure. Anybody else seen this?
- cooper12 11y ago
  Yeah this perplexes me too because my hearing is otherwise decent but I almost always need subtitles. I've looked into it a bit and some people are surmising that it has to do with poor audio engineering for home release. Films audio is recorded to be played back in a spacious theater with surround sound, good acoustics, and speakers with high range. Then you have people's home audio setups: noisy listening environments with people right next to the audio source, poor acoustics and stereo sound, and poor speakers from laptops, smartphones, or those built in to flatscreen tv's. The sound mixing also relies on these factors as well as the theater experience so explosions are super loud and quiet moments are eerily silent. (Not to mention that dialogue takes a backseat in many modern films) The audio might be poorly remixed, if at all for home release and the poor playback equipment exacerbates the issue. It's similar to developers saying "works on my machine", where in this case the machine is properly calibrated, thousands of dollars, and top-of-the-line.
  - nitrogen 11y ago
    This is what the Dynamic Range Compression setting is for on Dolby Digital decoders. Do the new Blu-Ray formats have a similar option? If you aren't in a quiet home theater with no neighbors to bother, you want DRC on maximum compression.

thaumasiotes 11y ago

English text and English spelling would refer to the same thing any way I can understand them, but it's true that English spelling is more loosely coupled to pronunciation than Italian spelling is. That reflects the fact that English hasn't had a spelling reform in a while; spelling always starts out perfect and fails to drift while the spoken language does drift. If Italian had no written form, and everyone there made all their written communications in classical Latin, you might have more trouble. English spelling reform is difficult to do at this point because there's no one place that can claim to be authoritative; it isn't possible to spell words phonemically in a way that's simultaneously valid for American and British English. All that said, Japanese spelling is infinitely worse than English spelling.

Mithaldu 11y ago
You're right, i mixed up spelling and pronounciation.
- DanBC 11y ago
  You made a good point and I had no problem understanding you. cough (off), through (oo), though (oh), tough (uff), ought (aw), thorough (uh), plough (ow), hiccough (up). moon (oo), room (oo or uh), rhubarb (oo).
ingas 11y ago
> All that said, Japanese spelling is infinitely worse than English spelling. I think you're overestimating weirdness of 日本語. For native Russian speaker, Japanese is slightly weirder than English. The only rule: be prepared that every rule could be broken.
- Grue3 11y ago
  I am also a native Russian speaker (not sure what that has to do with anything though), but English spelling is downright trivial compared to Japanese. I liked the following experiment I read about. A phrase was dictated to native Japanese speakers and they were asked to write it down. They wrote it in like 10 completely different ways, none of which was like the author of the phrase intended it.

wodenokoto 11y ago

Bullshit. If you don't speak Chinese or Cantonese, good luck transcribing them. Even Danish, which is very close to German, you'd have trouble.

acqq 11y ago

"English movies consistently keep me getting subtitles because i can't make out what's being said even at normal volume." For me, it's the recent movies synchronized to German where I need the subtitles, and the old ones (like, 50 years old) being easy to understand. Often it's that in the modern ones the music is playing over the voice, the female voice often attempts to sound "cooler" to the point of the actor doing the sync almost sounding like speaking with the closed mouth and therefore being hard to understand. At the same time, the male voices sound a little clearer to me but also significantly worse than in the old movies. In the old movies, the actors tended to be clear like in the theater.

Mithaldu 11y ago
Interesting note. I have to admit that since original language material is now easy to acquite, i have not seen a single german-dubbed movie in years.