4 ms·

Try being a Scottish kid watching TV, hearing the American kids saying "principal" as "princible" or the English ones pronouncing "drawing" as "drawringg" (or "

by smcl 9y ago

Try being a Scottish kid watching TV, hearing the American kids saying "principal" as "princible" or the English ones pronouncing "drawing" as "drawringg" (or "ate" as "ett" or even worse "think" and "fink") and being told that by the world that actually you are the one who speaks weird :-D

bitwize 9y ago
Here's one that drives me nuts (an American listening to American speech): Febyouary. Literally everybody says it and it never made sense to me.
- smcl 9y ago
  That actually happens in the UK too. sometimes its just people using a shortcut, but sometimes it’s very pronounced
- khedoros1 9y ago
  It's just a case where the common pronunciation doesn't precisely match the spelling. How about Wednesday? Wennsday. Receipt? Island? Colonel? Do those bother you too?
  - JadeNB 9y ago
    > It's just a case where the common pronunciation doesn't precisely match the spelling. How about Wednesday? Wennsday. Receipt? Island? Colonel? Do those bother you too? The difference is that I think that most people agree that 'Febyooary' and 'Wennsday' are incorrect pronunciations, whereas 'reseat' and 'i-land' are correct pronunciations. I don't know the stories behind these, but 'colonel' is fascinating: the reason for the pronunciation–spelling mismatch is that English used the Italian spelling (colonelle) and the French pronunciation (coronelle).
    - khedoros1 9y ago
      > The difference is that I think that most people agree that 'Febyooary' and 'Wennsday' are incorrect pronunciations Those are the most common pronunciations I hear, living in California. The U.S. and U.K. recordings on Wiktionary also omit the first "r" in February, and the "d" in Wednesday (although the UK recording seems like it has an elongated sound that implies the missing "d").
      - JadeNB 9y ago
        > Those are the most common pronunciations I hear, living in California. They are also the most common in my experience, but I thought, and thought others thought, that they were nonetheless commonly judged wrong. (It is fair to argue what 'wrong' could possibly mean of pronunciation other than "what most people say", though.)
        khedoros1 9y ago
        If a native speaker makes an utterance that they don't consider to have a mistake, and that other speakers of the dialect would accept as correct, then I think it's hard to say that it's wrong, even if it deviates from another dialect (and even if the dialect it deviates from is the one considered the "standard" form of the language). Even taking it in a more linguistic prescriptivist direction though, those words did often have more than one accepted pronunciation listed in various dictionaries.
    - rovolo 9y ago
      Fun fact: Island was never pronounced with an 's'. The silent letter was inserted to make the word look more like Latin. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island#Etymology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island#Etymology
jerf 9y ago
I've been working with my third grader on spelling, and I swear half of what I've been doing is just saying the word as written, rather than as we actually say it. "Prin-Si-Pal, not Prin-Si-Pel, and yes, the S is a C this time..." The problem is that it hits the schoolkids the worst. The words that go irregular tend to be the ones that are used all the time, which are also the ones they are learning. "Cardiology", now, there's a word that probably only gets slightly changed around the exact pronunciation of the o sounds as you go around the country. But "milk" or "pen" or "crayon"? Good luck, kiddo.
unit91 9y ago
Do you Scottish actually say the "pal" in "principal" as it's written? I.e., "PRINCE-i-pal"?
- smcl 9y ago
  Nah not like “pal” but the “p” is distinctly audible
electricslpnsld 9y ago
My favorite thing in the world is hearing Scots pronounce "squirrel".
stordoff 9y ago
Oddly enough it's those small differences that really stand out to me, even where they might not between British dialects/accents. "Aluminium"/"Aluminum" or "route" as "root"/"rowt" barely even registers, yet the "a" in something like "pasta" going from being a short sound to more like "parhhsta" (more like "par", the golfing term) sticks out like a sore thumb.

by smcl 9y ago

bitwize 9y ago

Here's one that drives me nuts (an American listening to American speech): Febyouary. Literally everybody says it and it never made sense to me.

smcl 9y ago
That actually happens in the UK too. sometimes its just people using a shortcut, but sometimes it’s very pronounced
khedoros1 9y ago
It's just a case where the common pronunciation doesn't precisely match the spelling. How about Wednesday? Wennsday. Receipt? Island? Colonel? Do those bother you too?
- JadeNB 9y ago
  > It's just a case where the common pronunciation doesn't precisely match the spelling. How about Wednesday? Wennsday. Receipt? Island? Colonel? Do those bother you too? The difference is that I think that most people agree that 'Febyooary' and 'Wennsday' are incorrect pronunciations, whereas 'reseat' and 'i-land' are correct pronunciations. I don't know the stories behind these, but 'colonel' is fascinating: the reason for the pronunciation–spelling mismatch is that English used the Italian spelling (colonelle) and the French pronunciation (coronelle).
  - khedoros1 9y ago
    > The difference is that I think that most people agree that 'Febyooary' and 'Wennsday' are incorrect pronunciations Those are the most common pronunciations I hear, living in California. The U.S. and U.K. recordings on Wiktionary also omit the first "r" in February, and the "d" in Wednesday (although the UK recording seems like it has an elongated sound that implies the missing "d").
    - JadeNB 9y ago
      > Those are the most common pronunciations I hear, living in California. They are also the most common in my experience, but I thought, and thought others thought, that they were nonetheless commonly judged wrong. (It is fair to argue what 'wrong' could possibly mean of pronunciation other than "what most people say", though.)
      - khedoros1 9y ago
        If a native speaker makes an utterance that they don't consider to have a mistake, and that other speakers of the dialect would accept as correct, then I think it's hard to say that it's wrong, even if it deviates from another dialect (and even if the dialect it deviates from is the one considered the "standard" form of the language). Even taking it in a more linguistic prescriptivist direction though, those words did often have more than one accepted pronunciation listed in various dictionaries.
  - rovolo 9y ago
    Fun fact: Island was never pronounced with an 's'. The silent letter was inserted to make the word look more like Latin. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island#Etymology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island#Etymology

jerf 9y ago

I've been working with my third grader on spelling, and I swear half of what I've been doing is just saying the word as written, rather than as we actually say it. "Prin-Si-Pal, not Prin-Si-Pel, and yes, the S is a C this time..." The problem is that it hits the schoolkids the worst. The words that go irregular tend to be the ones that are used all the time, which are also the ones they are learning. "Cardiology", now, there's a word that probably only gets slightly changed around the exact pronunciation of the o sounds as you go around the country. But "milk" or "pen" or "crayon"? Good luck, kiddo.

unit91 9y ago

Do you Scottish actually say the "pal" in "principal" as it's written? I.e., "PRINCE-i-pal"?

smcl 9y ago
Nah not like “pal” but the “p” is distinctly audible

electricslpnsld 9y ago

My favorite thing in the world is hearing Scots pronounce "squirrel".

stordoff 9y ago

Oddly enough it's those small differences that really stand out to me, even where they might not between British dialects/accents. "Aluminium"/"Aluminum" or "route" as "root"/"rowt" barely even registers, yet the "a" in something like "pasta" going from being a short sound to more like "parhhsta" (more like "par", the golfing term) sticks out like a sore thumb.