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You have it backwards. Pronunciation in English does not follow many strict conventions -- and when it does it doesn't do so consistently -- and it's precisely
by SamBam 5y ago
You have it backwards. Pronunciation in English does not follow many strict conventions -- and when it does it doesn't do so consistently -- and it's precisely because it's taken on so many loan-words and kept something close to the original pronounciation.
You suggest "ch" should be pronounced as in "cheese" in English. Well, what about chemistry, christian, school, alchemy, anarchy, anchor, chaos, archeology, echo, and literally hundreds of other words in English with a hard "ch"?
Yes, unless a child is told that pronouncing them with a soft "ch" is "incorrect" they will pronounce all those words incorrectly if they come across them written down. Such is the burden of the English language, the language with the least consistent spelling-to-pronunciation rules on Earth.
Yes, English spelling is not regular. It's mostly from all those loanwords. It's unfortunate, and is the cause of such weirdly quirky Anglophone things such as "spelling tests" in schools, and "spelling bees" where one can win a modicum of fame and money -- they don't have this in other alphabetic
languages. But's it's the way it is and refusing to pronounce words correctly isn't taking some kind of principled stand.
(Or should we say, for all those, "If it's really important to schoolteachers that English speakers pronounce it the way Italians do, they should consider spelling it using English conventions, eg skool"?)
- rendall 5y ago> refusing to pronounce words correctly That's skewing the argument. The discussion is "should English speakers be expected to pronounce foreign words as they are pronounced in the original language"? Not "pronouncing words as foreigners do is the correct pronunciation when speaking English" Despite the stereotype, it's not Americans running around telling foreigners how to pronounce English words in their native tongue. No American tells Poles how to pronounce New York nor Yoruba how to pronounce jazz nor Italians how to pronounce pepperoni.
- SamBam 5y ago> Despite the stereotype, it's not Americans running around telling foreigners how to pronounce English words in their native tongue. This seems to be the root of your annoyance, but it's also false. If an Italian said "President Bee-den" there would be plenty of Americans falling over themselves to let them know that it's pronounced "Bye-den." I've been there. I've experienced it.
- rendall 5y agoWere they speaking Italian at the time, or English?
- SamBam 5y agoIt doesn't matter, they'd try to pronounce it correctly. This whole thing is a strange strawman regarding your belief that other cultures pronounce things however that spelling would be pronounced in their country, but there's simply no citation for that. You brought up the pronunciation of "gnocchi." I have heard French people pronounce it while speaking French (I have travelled in France a lot). They pronounce it as the Italians do, while speaking French. How did they learn that? If a French kid saw the word spelled out the first time, and hadn't been taught Italian, they'd have no idea what to do with that "ch." (The "gn" would have been less confusing.) Yet they did pronounce it correctly, because, like most words, the word would generally have been learned orally. And if some French school kid started saying "gno-shi," his peers would have corrected them.
- rendall 5y ago> It doesn't matter That is exactly the entire point. I dispute the idea that "correctly" means what you say it means. If Italians collectively decided that "be DEN" was the correct Italian pronunciation of the American name Biden, it's arrogant to tell them "No, when speaking Italian, you must say BYE den" If you can agree with that even a little bit, then you agree a little bit with my larger point.