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With most languages the spelling gives you enough information to figure out how to pronounce a word you've never heard before. Not with english. My last wrong g
by paozac 5y ago
With most languages the spelling gives you enough information to figure out how to pronounce a word you've never heard before. Not with english. My last wrong guess: the writer Malcolm Lowry (/lauri/ instead of /louri/).
Danish, same problem.
- JadeNB 5y ago> With most languages the spelling gives you enough information to figure out how to pronounce a word you've never heard before. Not with english. My last wrong guess: the writer Malcolm Lowry (/lauri/ instead of /louri/). Danish, same problem. I think names are always going to be a source of orthographic irregularity. Even if English were an orthographically perfect language—which of course it isn't—it would still have to be able to deal with people whose names derive from any other language.
- goodells 5y agoI don't know if it's necessarily the English language to blame here, but this reminds me of an experience I had while talking with one of the Chinese international students in college. He pronounced the first few syllables of the word "amazing" and "Amazon" the same as there aren't really any obvious pronunciation hints. It took a few minutes to sort out what he was actually trying to say and figure out where the confusion came from, even with the -ing suffix.
- lionsdan 5y agoI've known multiple people with the last name spelled Koch. One pronounced it "Coke", one "Cook", one "Cock", and one "Cahch".
- stevekemp 5y agoDialects and accents really make this kind of difference very pronounced. In Edinburgh, Scotland, there is "Cockburn Street". Which is pronounced co-burn. Other good examples trip up tourists, such as Buccleuch Street which is pronounced "Buck-Loo".
- parenthesis 5y agoMy favourite street name in Edinburgh is "Horse Wynd", unfortunately not pronounced the comical way.
- Jap2-0 5y agoI also knew a Kock who pronounced it "Cuck", just to add to the list of pronunciations.
- zabzonk 5y agoThe BBC used to (maybe still does) have a Pronunciation Unit which dictated how proper names must be spoken on TV and radio. They were always getting things wrong. My family's bete noir was the pronunciation of "Sowerby Bridge", the small town in West Yorkshire where my dad's parents lived. Everyone for about 50 miles around: "Sorbey Bridge" BBC: "Sourby Bridge" My dad used to get quite irate about this.
- scubbo 5y agoAs someone who is clearly interested in words, I hope you will take this comment in the "let's share some interesting knowledge!" sense in which it is intended, rather than a nit-picky correction... It's actually "bête noir" - which is interesting because, commonly, ê signifies a replacement/contraction of the "es" sound. So the original phrase would have been "beste noir", which makes it easier to see the English meaning of "black beast" - an evocative phrase!
- zabzonk 5y agoI know - I can actually speak a bit of French, but I could not work out how to type the e-circumflex. Perhaps you can inform me?
- Stratoscope 5y agoOn Windows, you can open Character Map, find the character you want, click, copy, and paste. For characters you enter frequently, if your keyboard has a numeric pad, then you can use the Alt key and a numeric code as described here: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/insert-ascii-or-unicode-latin-based-symbols-and-characters-d13f58d3-7bcb-44a7-a4d5-972ee12e50e0 https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/insert-ascii-or-un... Unfortunately that doesn't work with the number row, only the numeric keypad. On any OS, you can find several similar character tables online: https://www.google.com/search?q=unicode+character+map https://www.google.com/search?q=unicode+character+map
- spockz 5y agoOn macOS you can either hold the e or option I + e. Iirc