5 ms·

English pronunciation is extremely hard. There are virtually no rules, you have to memorize pronunciation of each word individually. It is neither simple nor lo

English pronunciation is extremely hard. There are virtually no rules, you have to memorize pronunciation of each word individually. It is neither simple nor logical.

_emacsomancer_ 8y ago
But you're really talking about orthography.
- Analemma_ 8y ago
  No, English is pretty rough in both orthography and phonology: while it's nowhere near as bad as e.g. Chinese, English has a large number of vowel sounds compared to most languages, and several uncommon consonants that many people struggle with if not exposed from birth.Note how many non-native English speakers, no matter what their first language, struggle with dental fricatives ("th").
  - jcranmer 8y ago
    English is only roughly middling in terms of phonemic inventory (about 40). Romance languages tend to be on the phonemically sparse side of things, but Germanic languages have broader phonemic inventories. And while the thorn/eth are difficult to pronounce, I'll take those over Arabic's pharyngeals, thank you very much.
  - _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
    Dental fricatives are somewhat 'poor' sounds generally - they don't have a lot energy, so they tend to be difficult to recover in noisy environments. And note that even in English dialects these dental fricatives have a tendency to shift to other sounds (e.g. to alveolar stops). While English pronunciation/inventory may be harder than say Spanish or Italian, I think it's pretty middle-of-the-road compared to other languages in terms of size of inventory/difficulty.
jotm 8y ago
That doesn't really matter, you get used to more than a dozen quite different pronunciations within a week for basic talk, within a few months you can understand each other perfectly. EDIT: Visit England you cunts (wrt downvotes).
ythn 8y ago
Every language has tradeoffs. Sure, Spanish might be easier to pronounce since the rules are more rigid, but on the other hand the information density is way lower. It takes 2-3 syllables of Spanish to communicate the same information as 1 syllable of English.
- dorchadas 8y ago
  Yes, but the rate at which languages convey information is roughly the same [1]. So Spanish speakers just speak faster. [1] http://ohll.ish-lyon.cnrs.fr/fulltext/pellegrino/Pellegrino_to%20appear_Language.pdf http://ohll.ish-lyon.cnrs.fr/fulltext/pellegrino/Pellegrino_... The PDF linked is a draft of the paper, freely available; it's been removed from Academia, so here's the JSTOR link of the final release: https://www.jstor.org/stable/23011654 https://www.jstor.org/stable/23011654
  - ythn 8y ago
    For speaking, sure, but if you are writing then Spanish will take longer because you have to physically type out more characters.
    - mbroncano 8y ago
      As a fluent speaker of both languages I couldn’t say. In general Spanish requires less mental effort as you write what you say, whereas in English there’s always that particular randomness that’s otherwise arbitrary between how to write a word and how it sounds.
  - dsego 8y ago
    Hahaha, reminds me of this Itchy Feet comic http://www.itchyfeetcomic.com/2015/09/conspiracion.html#.W1uYYC2B2Aw http://www.itchyfeetcomic.com/2015/09/conspiracion.html#.W1u...
  - ggreer 8y ago
    In the paper you link to, the information rate of English is about 10% higher than Spanish. That may not seem like much, but it's probably enough to matter.

English pronunciation is extremely hard. There are virtually no rules, you have to memorize pronunciation of each word individually. It is neither simple nor logical.

_emacsomancer_ 8y ago

But you're really talking about orthography.

Analemma_ 8y ago
No, English is pretty rough in both orthography and phonology: while it's nowhere near as bad as e.g. Chinese, English has a large number of vowel sounds compared to most languages, and several uncommon consonants that many people struggle with if not exposed from birth.Note how many non-native English speakers, no matter what their first language, struggle with dental fricatives ("th").
- jcranmer 8y ago
  English is only roughly middling in terms of phonemic inventory (about 40). Romance languages tend to be on the phonemically sparse side of things, but Germanic languages have broader phonemic inventories. And while the thorn/eth are difficult to pronounce, I'll take those over Arabic's pharyngeals, thank you very much.
- _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
  Dental fricatives are somewhat 'poor' sounds generally - they don't have a lot energy, so they tend to be difficult to recover in noisy environments. And note that even in English dialects these dental fricatives have a tendency to shift to other sounds (e.g. to alveolar stops). While English pronunciation/inventory may be harder than say Spanish or Italian, I think it's pretty middle-of-the-road compared to other languages in terms of size of inventory/difficulty.

jotm 8y ago

That doesn't really matter, you get used to more than a dozen quite different pronunciations within a week for basic talk, within a few months you can understand each other perfectly. EDIT: Visit England you cunts (wrt downvotes).

ythn 8y ago

Every language has tradeoffs. Sure, Spanish might be easier to pronounce since the rules are more rigid, but on the other hand the information density is way lower. It takes 2-3 syllables of Spanish to communicate the same information as 1 syllable of English.

dorchadas 8y ago
Yes, but the rate at which languages convey information is roughly the same [1]. So Spanish speakers just speak faster. [1] http://ohll.ish-lyon.cnrs.fr/fulltext/pellegrino/Pellegrino_to%20appear_Language.pdf http://ohll.ish-lyon.cnrs.fr/fulltext/pellegrino/Pellegrino_... The PDF linked is a draft of the paper, freely available; it's been removed from Academia, so here's the JSTOR link of the final release: https://www.jstor.org/stable/23011654 https://www.jstor.org/stable/23011654
- ythn 8y ago
  For speaking, sure, but if you are writing then Spanish will take longer because you have to physically type out more characters.
  - mbroncano 8y ago
    As a fluent speaker of both languages I couldn’t say. In general Spanish requires less mental effort as you write what you say, whereas in English there’s always that particular randomness that’s otherwise arbitrary between how to write a word and how it sounds.
- dsego 8y ago
  Hahaha, reminds me of this Itchy Feet comic http://www.itchyfeetcomic.com/2015/09/conspiracion.html#.W1uYYC2B2Aw http://www.itchyfeetcomic.com/2015/09/conspiracion.html#.W1u...
- ggreer 8y ago
  In the paper you link to, the information rate of English is about 10% higher than Spanish. That may not seem like much, but it's probably enough to matter.