3 ms·
agreed. by the same reasoning, affect and effect, compliment and complement also shouldn't be considered. It takes a well trained ear and a good tongue to get
by jhancock 17y ago
agreed. by the same reasoning, affect and effect, compliment and complement also shouldn't be considered. It takes a well trained ear and a good tongue to get it right, but by my well trained ear and tongue they do not qualify.
- mdemare 17y agoTrue, affect is officially pronounced /ə'fɛkt/, versus /ɪˈfɛkt/ for effect. Compliment and complement really are pronounced the same, though. Pronunciation is fairly discrete, either there's a noticable difference, or there's no difference at all.
- req2 17y agoUnfortunately for you, not only are people notoriously (in linguistically savvy circles) bad at properly making and recognizing all of the vowel distinctions, you're also just wrong- affect and effect share a valid schwa initial pronunciation, and compliment and complement share their pronunciation. The phenomenon you have fallen prey to is hyperarticulation, also responsible for the 'off-ten' pronunciation of 'often'. (Compare to soften, for example.) Pronunciation is a bad place on which to perch your well-trained pride.
- jhancock 17y agoI think you misinterpreted my post. I have zero "pride" in place here. I was simply responding to the parent post that some of these may not be homophones (at least according to my definition). For the record, the OP's strong reaction to people getting the words wrong is not something that bugs me. I commonly mistype words like weather/whether and there/their.