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Portuguese and German are like that. You’ve never seen the word before, but when reading it for the first time, you’ll probably pronounce it correctly. Englis
by diogolsq 1y ago
Portuguese and German are like that.
You’ve never seen the word before, but when reading it for the first time, you’ll probably pronounce it correctly.
English is awful, but French takes the crown on this one—though more because it has the same pronunciation for many different words and written forms.
English, on the other hand, the alphabet doesn’t map well.
Mood and flood both have “oo”, yet each is pronounced differently. You need to know the word beforehand to know exactly how it’s pronounced.
- beAbU 1y agoI've only really been exposed to French in music, where I've sung various French pieces of the years. But from my experience, at least French is consistent? As-written is as-pronounced. Is this not really the case, and therefore is French also guilty of having the same vowels/consonants pronounced differently for completely arb reasons?
- germandiago 1y agoOr live and live, read and read (past participle), or castle (the t is mute) or bear, beard, the ea is different. I do not want to be offensive, there are lots more , but it is an amazing sh*tshow the mapping.
- lelandfe 1y agoIf you think castle is bad, wait till you hear forecastle (“fok-sul”)
- germandiago 1y agoHahaha. I was not aware of that one. Yes, looks like undecipherable.
- stockresearcher 1y agoA lot of nautical terms have unusual pronunciations. English sailors primarily came from coastal regions, and were very happy to have a lingo that was incomprehensible to the landsman. All of this carried over to North America as well.
- throaway955 1y agoits just elision. "four-cassle" vs "fo'k'sul."
- int_19h 1y agoAt least that's often spelled "fo'c'sle" these days, which gives you a good idea of the actual pronunciation. My personal favorite in English is "colonel" being pronounced the same as "kernel". Which is insane even from an etymological perspective because the word is a derivative of "column" (as in, a colonel is someone who commands/leads a column of soldiers).
- lelandfe 1y agoYes, an incredibly rare use of double apostrophes in English! More uncommonly you'll see bo's'n as well, for boatswain.
- School-Cotton 1y agoFrench is a lot less bad than English in this regard. In French you can usually (though not always) predict how a word is pronounced from its spelling, but not vice versa. In English, both directions are impossible.
- johnisgood 1y agoFrench is not a good example. Pronunciation often deviates from spelling in French (e.g. many silent letters and inconsistent mappings). Hungarian, however, is pronounced the way it is written, as its orthographic type is phonemic, whereas French and English are of type deep orthography. Serbian is of the perfectly phonemic type. "Write as you speak, read as it is written" is a common saying.
- coffeeling 1y agoThe silent letters are not the point - that's why the poster you replied to said it doesn't work speech->writing in French. But writing->speech is much, much more consistent than in English, even if the orthography itself is kinda criminal with all the silent letters and whatnot.
- johnisgood 1y agoI am inclined to agree.
- Toorkit 1y agoFritteuse.