4 ms·
Also, English has the 5 vowels of the Latin script representing some 25 vowels sounds, to the point that consonants can turn into vowels with no rhyme or reason
by sph 1y ago
Also, English has the 5 vowels of the Latin script representing some 25 vowels sounds, to the point that consonants can turn into vowels with no rhyme or reason. The best way to learn that English is nonsense is to live in Britain and learn local city and village names. They all have made up pronunciation rules, evolved over the centuries, sure, but they forgot to update the bloody name on the map to match the sounds.
As a descendant of the Romans, I can only shake my head at such barbarism.
- miroljub 1y agoSo true. I always wondered why is Leicester pronounced as "lester" and not as "laichester".
- darkwater 1y agoGrenich anyone?
- sph 1y agoSoderk (Southwark), Marlibon (Marylebone), Reding (Reading), Bister (Bicester), Sozbery (Salisbury), Frum (Frome), Worick (Warwick), Noridge (Norwich), Darby (Derby), and the various Gloster, Lester, Wooster
- darkwater 1y agoYeah but Greenwich is a place known world-wide, and I guess a high percentage of people mispronounce it (I was one of them).
- miroljub 1y agoIt's known worldwide, but many people never heard an actual Britt pronouncing it. In my country, it was always pronounced as green-each. Only in this thread I realised it's written Green-wich and pronounced gren-each. And I'm pretty sure I'll forget it quickly and just keep calling it green-each.
- whiteandnerdy 1y agoIt's more like gren-itch than gren-each (native UK speaker).
- amiga386 1y ago... Hoyk (Hawick), Kircoodbree (Kirkcudbright), Mullguy (Milngavie), Cooriss (Culross), Geeree (Garioch), Eyela (Islay) However, some Americans even have trouble with Glasgow (Glaz-go, not Glass-gow) and Edinburgh (Ed-in-burra, not Edin-bro)
- 18172828286177 1y agoEdinburgh is morr commonly pronounced “edinbruh”.
- amiga386 1y agoGlasgow and Edinburgh are pronounced "Glesca" and "Embra" by their natives but I wouldn't recommend it to others. I've heard some Americans pronounce it "Edin-bo-ro" which is entirely off.
- 18172828286177 1y agoSouthwark is “suh-thuk”. Salisbury “sorlsbry”. Norwich “norrich”.
- sph 1y agoYeah trying to map English sounds to Latin letters is the exact problem. It's a very lossy transformation.
- vikingerik 1y agoBecause the components are Leice-ster, not Lei-cester. Same for Glouce-ster, Worce-ster etc. A very refined pronunciation might emit both "s" sounds, but colloquially they get smooshed together into one.
- Ekaros 1y agoThe perks of coming late. Finnish did job properly with only one or two warts...
- inkyoto 1y agoThat depends on how one defines «properly». Finnish, with its nearly 20 noun cases and vowel harmony, has made a spellchecker a computationally unsolvable problem.
- 9dev 1y agoHa! And don’t even get me started with the Scots and their whiskey. Bruichladdich, Pittyvaich, and Tè Bheag? Bunnahabhain Stiuireadair? Auchroisk?? I swear they only do this to mess with people.
- tsm 1y agoIn these cases it's all Scottish Gaelic, which has a complex but very consistent phonics system. Complaining about it would be like complaining that Russian vodka brands are hard to pronounce because you can't read Cyrillic
- amiga386 1y ago"Scots and their whiskey" >:-( Nobody in Scotland makes whiskey
- shmeeed 1y agoWhat a delight, I haven't seen that smiley in a while! When and why did we all collectively decide not to use those any more? (I know why, but still.)
- int_19h 1y agoIf you're counting sounds (i.e. phones), then most languages with those same 5 vowel letters have quite a lot because of numerous allophones. English is criminal in that it has many vowel phonemes - British more so than American - and then on top of that its mapping of them to vowel letters is completely out of whack with both traditional Latin values of them, and how they're used in most other languages out there. I mean, cmon, <ea> for /i:/? Still, with a sensible orthography, General American would only need something like 9-10 distinct vowel characters (for monophthongs; but diphthongs are best spelled as the obvious corresponding vowel-vowel or vowel-semivowel sequences anyway).