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Oh man, even if English is a pretty simple language having to learn the pronunciation of every word is tough… I remember when I was mispronouncing recipe and n

Oh man, even if English is a pretty simple language having to learn the pronunciation of every word is tough… I remember when I was mispronouncing recipe and no one had a clue what I meant (it wasn’t even in a cooking context). I was dumfounded when I found out how words like tomb or womb are pronounced. Or how about colonel? Or how nation is pronounced differently as a whole word vs when it’s part of national. In contrast Spanish must be a bitch to learn as an adult due to all the verb tenses, but once you know the pronunciation rules you can read anything correctly even if you have no clue what you’re saying.

13of40 4y ago
My wife has been in the US for about 25 years at this point, and we just had our talk about how to pronounce February, Wednesday, and turmeric yesterday.
- wincy 4y ago
  I don’t like the correct people when they say Wed-ness-day though. I wish I lived in a world where the pronunciation made sense like that.
  - memling 4y ago
    Think "weddinsday," and it might make more sense. I hear that mostly from British-English speakers though.
    - dmichulke 4y ago
      Even more so because Wodan / Woden and Odin are different names for the same god who is also the namesake for that day.. Weddin just lies on the spectrum between Wodan and Odin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wednesday https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wednesday
- BrotherBisquick 4y ago
  I'm a native English speaker in the US and I've been spelling turmeric incorrectly for decades. When I noticed that first 'r' I questioned everything I thought I knew about the universe...
  - tragomaskhalos 4y ago
    I spent the first 50+ years of life under the misapprehension that there is a singer/actress called Barbara StreisLand
- NoZebra120vClip 4y ago
  Heisenberg's Law of English: you can pronounce words like this correctly or you can spell them correctly, but not both from the same person.
jgtrosh 4y ago
> In contrast Spanish […] you can read anything correctly even if you have no clue what you’re saying. Except for the letter X which has 3 pronunciations, and some other weird stuff. Admittedly, nothing as bad as French or English.
- MrJohz 4y ago
  The trick with French is not to think about it in terms of individual letters, but rather letter clusters, and then it becomes fairly regular. The individual letters can do wild things, but a given combination of letters generally has fairly clear rules about how it should be spoken. This is very different to English where, for example, "ough" can be pronounced in several different ways just by putting different letters in front of it. (oo, uff, ow, uh, oh, etc).
  - Sai_ 4y ago
    I wish I’d met you while trying to, and not really succeeding at, learning French 101 at the local alliance francaise. Your comment actually articulates something I’ve always sensed but never explicitly acknowledged.
mmmmmbop 4y ago
Or Kansas (can-zuhs) vs. Arkansas (ar-kin-saw).
- michaelcampbell 4y ago
  I worked with a guy from Arkansas that just asserted the people from Kansas mis-pronounce their state of "Kensaw".
yosito 4y ago
> Spanish must be a bitch to learn as an adult due to all the verb tenses *adult Hungarian learner laughs* You can memorize the Spanish verb tenses in a weekend. They're very regular and you essentially just have to memorize first, second and third person singular and plural for -er, -ar and -ir verbs. 3x2x3=18 endings. Using the regular form for irregular verbs is mostly understandable and even a common mistake for native speaking children. Also, in addition to being a phonetically spelled language, it's also aspirated, which means that the sounds are pronounced very sharply and clearly and easy for ears to pick up. It's entirely possible for an adult Spanish learner to become conversational in a couple of months. Good luck learning all of the possible forms of Hungarian words. And though it's phonetically spelled, it's not aspirated, so the pronunciation sounds muted and mumbly, and it's hard to distinguish between sounds like D and N or P and B. Statistically speaking it takes 4-5 years of immersion for an English speaking adult to become conversational in Hungarian.
- esperent 4y ago
  > And though it's phonetically spelled I've never tried to learn Hungarian but as a casual traveller there I deeply appreciated the phonetic spelling. The Hungarian alphabet can be memorized in an hour or two and then you can immediately pronounce any written Hungarian word and be understood (terrible accent I'm sure but the locals will get it). By comparison, I've lived in Vietnam for several years now. The grammar is very simple. Every word is one syllable. A lot of common words are made from compounds of basic words (long horn animal = rhino type thing) so you can make educated guesses once you've learned a few words. The problem? Nobody, including even my close friends, partner, and coworkers, can understand anything that I say in Vietnamese. Anything more complicated than "thank you", "hello", and a handful of numbers. And I cannot understand them either. If I pronounce a word as written but get the tone very very slightly wrong, it seems 100% impossible for Vietnamese people to infer the word I meant to say. It's incredibly frustrating and I've started and given up learning Vietnamese many times. I've learned some basic grammar, I've learned enough words to string a few sentences together. But what use is that when I go into a market and order something basic like "ice" ("nuoc da" , or just "da") and nobody has a clue what I'm saying? Every conversation where I try to learn a new word in Vietnamese turns into ten minutes of "no, you're still not saying it right, the tone rises and falls at the end", "no, too much rise, say it like this" over and over until I give up. And that's not even mentioning the accents, differences in tone, and entirely different words used for basic things between the north and south of the country. Or the fact that locals are not in any way interested in trying to help a foreigner speak their language. Learning Vietnamese is the most frustrating thing I've ever attempted in my life. I'm good at learning things. I'm sure I could sit down for a few days and memorize a hundred irregular verb conjugations. But I can't overcome this problem. How can you learn a language that you can't pronounce or hear?

13of40 4y ago

My wife has been in the US for about 25 years at this point, and we just had our talk about how to pronounce February, Wednesday, and turmeric yesterday.

wincy 4y ago
I don’t like the correct people when they say Wed-ness-day though. I wish I lived in a world where the pronunciation made sense like that.
- memling 4y ago
  Think "weddinsday," and it might make more sense. I hear that mostly from British-English speakers though.
  - dmichulke 4y ago
    Even more so because Wodan / Woden and Odin are different names for the same god who is also the namesake for that day.. Weddin just lies on the spectrum between Wodan and Odin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wednesday https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wednesday
BrotherBisquick 4y ago
I'm a native English speaker in the US and I've been spelling turmeric incorrectly for decades. When I noticed that first 'r' I questioned everything I thought I knew about the universe...
- tragomaskhalos 4y ago
  I spent the first 50+ years of life under the misapprehension that there is a singer/actress called Barbara StreisLand
NoZebra120vClip 4y ago
Heisenberg's Law of English: you can pronounce words like this correctly or you can spell them correctly, but not both from the same person.

jgtrosh 4y ago

> In contrast Spanish […] you can read anything correctly even if you have no clue what you’re saying. Except for the letter X which has 3 pronunciations, and some other weird stuff. Admittedly, nothing as bad as French or English.

MrJohz 4y ago
The trick with French is not to think about it in terms of individual letters, but rather letter clusters, and then it becomes fairly regular. The individual letters can do wild things, but a given combination of letters generally has fairly clear rules about how it should be spoken. This is very different to English where, for example, "ough" can be pronounced in several different ways just by putting different letters in front of it. (oo, uff, ow, uh, oh, etc).
- Sai_ 4y ago
  I wish I’d met you while trying to, and not really succeeding at, learning French 101 at the local alliance francaise. Your comment actually articulates something I’ve always sensed but never explicitly acknowledged.

mmmmmbop 4y ago

Or Kansas (can-zuhs) vs. Arkansas (ar-kin-saw).

michaelcampbell 4y ago
I worked with a guy from Arkansas that just asserted the people from Kansas mis-pronounce their state of "Kensaw".

yosito 4y ago

> Spanish must be a bitch to learn as an adult due to all the verb tenses *adult Hungarian learner laughs* You can memorize the Spanish verb tenses in a weekend. They're very regular and you essentially just have to memorize first, second and third person singular and plural for -er, -ar and -ir verbs. 3x2x3=18 endings. Using the regular form for irregular verbs is mostly understandable and even a common mistake for native speaking children. Also, in addition to being a phonetically spelled language, it's also aspirated, which means that the sounds are pronounced very sharply and clearly and easy for ears to pick up. It's entirely possible for an adult Spanish learner to become conversational in a couple of months. Good luck learning all of the possible forms of Hungarian words. And though it's phonetically spelled, it's not aspirated, so the pronunciation sounds muted and mumbly, and it's hard to distinguish between sounds like D and N or P and B. Statistically speaking it takes 4-5 years of immersion for an English speaking adult to become conversational in Hungarian.

esperent 4y ago
> And though it's phonetically spelled I've never tried to learn Hungarian but as a casual traveller there I deeply appreciated the phonetic spelling. The Hungarian alphabet can be memorized in an hour or two and then you can immediately pronounce any written Hungarian word and be understood (terrible accent I'm sure but the locals will get it). By comparison, I've lived in Vietnam for several years now. The grammar is very simple. Every word is one syllable. A lot of common words are made from compounds of basic words (long horn animal = rhino type thing) so you can make educated guesses once you've learned a few words. The problem? Nobody, including even my close friends, partner, and coworkers, can understand anything that I say in Vietnamese. Anything more complicated than "thank you", "hello", and a handful of numbers. And I cannot understand them either. If I pronounce a word as written but get the tone very very slightly wrong, it seems 100% impossible for Vietnamese people to infer the word I meant to say. It's incredibly frustrating and I've started and given up learning Vietnamese many times. I've learned some basic grammar, I've learned enough words to string a few sentences together. But what use is that when I go into a market and order something basic like "ice" ("nuoc da" , or just "da") and nobody has a clue what I'm saying? Every conversation where I try to learn a new word in Vietnamese turns into ten minutes of "no, you're still not saying it right, the tone rises and falls at the end", "no, too much rise, say it like this" over and over until I give up. And that's not even mentioning the accents, differences in tone, and entirely different words used for basic things between the north and south of the country. Or the fact that locals are not in any way interested in trying to help a foreigner speak their language. Learning Vietnamese is the most frustrating thing I've ever attempted in my life. I'm good at learning things. I'm sure I could sit down for a few days and memorize a hundred irregular verb conjugations. But I can't overcome this problem. How can you learn a language that you can't pronounce or hear?