It really is illogical lol :3 I tried teaching my parents before and trying to explain why all 3 Es in mercedes or all 3 Cs in pacific ocean make different sounds like “they just do”
Though my native language is quite hard for non-native speakers as well
In English’s defence, it’s not an English word. It’s a German company named after a Spanish name. And at least to my ear, the Spanish and German pronunciations also have 3 different Es. One helpful Redditor also provided an IPA guide to the German pronunciation, agreeing with my ears:
mɛrˈtseːdɛs
The “e” in the middle is long and stressed.
Edit: I would also say, that most of the times it is even pronounced like this:
məˈtseːdɛs
But I can’t even begin to justify the letter c sounding like /s/, /k/, and /ʃ/.
Well the c being s and k thing comes from latin I think :3 like v and u being the same letter… and I believe i also had a second sound? Plus there’s vowel shifts that happened after the writing was standardized and all that, and characters that no longer exist like Þ and ð
Either way it can be confusing when coming from a language with a fairly regular pronunciation ^^ (though of course we also have some quirks lol)
Why? There’s plenty of strange things in English, inconsistent grammar rules, weird pronunciations, and pointless words for simple ideas.
Like there’s umpteen words to describe different kinds of meat, pork, beef, veal, mutton. In Chinese you can get away with saying just the animal + meat, 猪肉, 牛肉, 小牛肉, 羊肉 (pig meat, cow meat, young cow meat, goat meat).
English has stupid rules around pluralisation. There’s been arguments that the origin of the word should dictate how it’s pluralised, and other arguments that a “true English” pluralisation rule should apply, but then incorrect usage slips into common vernacular and suddenly it’s perfectly okay to pluralise a Greek word with a Latin plural suffix. Then you end up with the plural of octopus being octopodes, octopuses, and octopi!
The long and the short of it is that all languages have weird-ass quirks in them that don’t necessarily make any sense but feel natural to their native speakers. It’s a prime example of how intuitiveness isn’t actually real a thing.
I took english in school, and I speak it all the time :3
Good job. English is a very hard language that barely uses logic.
It really is illogical lol :3 I tried teaching my parents before and trying to explain why all 3 Es in mercedes or all 3 Cs in pacific ocean make different sounds like “they just do”
Though my native language is quite hard for non-native speakers as well
In English’s defence, it’s not an English word. It’s a German company named after a Spanish name. And at least to my ear, the Spanish and German pronunciations also have 3 different Es. One helpful Redditor also provided an IPA guide to the German pronunciation, agreeing with my ears:
But I can’t even begin to justify the letter c sounding like /s/, /k/, and /ʃ/.
Well the c being s and k thing comes from latin I think :3 like v and u being the same letter… and I believe i also had a second sound? Plus there’s vowel shifts that happened after the writing was standardized and all that, and characters that no longer exist like Þ and ð
Either way it can be confusing when coming from a language with a fairly regular pronunciation ^^ (though of course we also have some quirks lol)
Me, an English teacher: nods somberly
English is one of the easiest languages in the world to learn.
Chinese, Arabic, and Russian speakers laugh at me when I say this.
Why? There’s plenty of strange things in English, inconsistent grammar rules, weird pronunciations, and pointless words for simple ideas.
Like there’s umpteen words to describe different kinds of meat, pork, beef, veal, mutton. In Chinese you can get away with saying just the animal + meat, 猪肉, 牛肉, 小牛肉, 羊肉 (pig meat, cow meat, young cow meat, goat meat).
English has stupid rules around pluralisation. There’s been arguments that the origin of the word should dictate how it’s pluralised, and other arguments that a “true English” pluralisation rule should apply, but then incorrect usage slips into common vernacular and suddenly it’s perfectly okay to pluralise a Greek word with a Latin plural suffix. Then you end up with the plural of octopus being octopodes, octopuses, and octopi!
The long and the short of it is that all languages have weird-ass quirks in them that don’t necessarily make any sense but feel natural to their native speakers. It’s a prime example of how intuitiveness isn’t actually real a thing.
Would you believe if I told you that there’s someone who speaks 20+ languages
doesn’t count