English is the LAST language that gets to complain about how you pronounce stuff.
Ever read an english word that you haven’t heard before? You’re pronouncing it wrong.
We have a third grader, and he’s pretty good at reading. Recently he has been arguing with us about the pronunciation of some new words from his homework.
The problem is, his arguments are sound! He’s accurately following the rules he learned for sounding out words.
When this has come up in the past, all I’ve been able to do is acknowledge his argument and explain to him how English has all kinds of weird rules and exceptions, and it’s the kind of thing you remember with experience using the words. Like, there is no new rule to learn, and you don’t have to freak out about remembering all these exceptions. It will just come with time. (Because we all know there’s nothing that kids like more than olds telling them to just wait or give it time, lol)
The US one evolved as well, just preserved rhoticity which is a major feature. There’s no “UK accent” (nor “us accent”) either - West country accents for example are still rhotic
Sure but even that isn’t all encompassing. I’m from SoCal and my accent/dialect has so many archaicisms that I’m probably one of the only people under 50 with the damned thing. What I get for being around old people I guess.
Though I do suppress into something approaching the general accent when talking to others, mostly because for example Mountain Dew gets mangled into münten doo.
But this is someone complaining about an English word and how it is pronounced. Yes, it comes from another language. That is the entire reason English has a lot of examples like this.
But the point is that the person complaining isn’t complaining about the French, but about some imagined English dude who picked the pronunciation of rendezvous for fun
Fair enough. Then it must have been the same dude who decided all the other words with random pronounciations. If you find them, tell them to go fuck themself.
English is the LAST language that gets to complain about how you pronounce stuff. Ever read an english word that you haven’t heard before? You’re pronouncing it wrong.
Seriously!
We have a third grader, and he’s pretty good at reading. Recently he has been arguing with us about the pronunciation of some new words from his homework.
The problem is, his arguments are sound! He’s accurately following the rules he learned for sounding out words.
When this has come up in the past, all I’ve been able to do is acknowledge his argument and explain to him how English has all kinds of weird rules and exceptions, and it’s the kind of thing you remember with experience using the words. Like, there is no new rule to learn, and you don’t have to freak out about remembering all these exceptions. It will just come with time. (Because we all know there’s nothing that kids like more than olds telling them to just wait or give it time, lol)
English is basically three languages stacked on top of each other wearing a trench coat
English is * the last language that should complain; unfortunately, 54% of the US population has a literacy level below that of a 6th-grade student.
edit: typo
You can work it out through tough thorough thought, though.
Even if you have heard an English word before, you’re probably still pronouncing it wrong
The UK should do a major spelling reform and troll the shit out of the U.S and their then “archaic” English.
Ðat wúd bē sō sili, hüever it wúd absolútli rúin ŪK-ŪS komūnikāshon
Sum myt sā ðat’s a gúd þing ðō
That looks unironically great. Relatively easy to read and as far as I could tell, internally consistent. Two things current English spelling lacks.
I’ve worked on it as a personal writing system for probably like a year or so now
Y’v werkt on it az a personal ryting sistem for probabli lyk a jēr or sō nü
One major issue is that it’ll expose all regional differences in pronunciation in the spelling and now we’ll disagree about the spelling instead.
The UK accent is actually more modern than that of the US because the US imported the UK one around the time of colonization.
The US one evolved as well, just preserved rhoticity which is a major feature. There’s no “UK accent” (nor “us accent”) either - West country accents for example are still rhotic
Good thing, too, pirates would sound silly saying, “Ahhhhh, shivah me timbahs!”
There is an accent called General American (GenAm), however.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_American_English?useskin=vector
Sure but even that isn’t all encompassing. I’m from SoCal and my accent/dialect has so many archaicisms that I’m probably one of the only people under 50 with the damned thing. What I get for being around old people I guess.
Though I do suppress into something approaching the general accent when talking to others, mostly because for example Mountain Dew gets mangled into münten doo.
No, that is garbled nonsense based on the misunderstanding of a factoid.
UK is the worst, US makes sense at least to some degree.
Gloucestershire - pronounced glostershire Warwick - pronounced warrick And there like hundreds of these weird ones.
Place names are cheating. Almost all of them come from old/other languages that have very little resemblance to modern english.
But this is someone complaining about an English word and how it is pronounced. Yes, it comes from another language. That is the entire reason English has a lot of examples like this.
“Tough” ought to be written as “tuff”
But tuff is already something else.
that was a fun fact! but I think it’s ok if one word has multiple meanings
Don’t worry, with the current education policies it will be, soon.
No
yes
Of all people, Gallagher made the point in the 80s. I think George Carlin also did a set about English words once.
But the point is that the person complaining isn’t complaining about the French, but about some imagined English dude who picked the pronunciation of rendezvous for fun
Fair enough. Then it must have been the same dude who decided all the other words with random pronounciations. If you find them, tell them to go fuck themself.
I sure will!