3 ms·
That poem is amazing. It really brings to light how inconsistent English pronunciation truly is. Also I bet most native English speakers wouldn't be able to pr
by wenc 6y ago
That poem is amazing. It really brings to light how inconsistent English pronunciation truly is.
Also I bet most native English speakers wouldn't be able to pronounce most of those words correctly. Many are obscure words that rarely come up in conversation (I only know them because I watched a lot of British TV as a kid). And for the longest time I thought awry was pronounced “Aw ry” until I heard someone say it as “a wry”. The word “hagiography” has two hard g’s instead of just one. And recently I learned that the word “mercantile” in Chicago Mercantile Exchange is pronounced mercanteel rather than mercan-tile (like floor tile).
English is full of shibboleths.
- pja 6y agoI’ve always pronounced it "-tile", not "-teel" & both Wiktionary (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/mercantile https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/mercantile ) & the OED ( https://www.lexico.com/definition/mercantile https://www.lexico.com/definition/mercantile ) agree that it’s pronounced "-tile" rather than "-teel", so I think your initial belief was the correct one! Wiktionary suggests that -teel is an alternate pronunciation in the US, but that -tile is the preferred one even there.