My English learning process was me being a eight year old kid who wanted to play diablo. No clue about shit. Barely able to read in the first place and just going from one word which is similar to one in my native language to the next similar one. Like “ok, intelligence looks a lot like intelligenz. Dexterity makes my bow do more damage so it should be something like speed or whatever” so basically trial and error over the years. The pronunciation was accordingly. As an example, strength was “stren g t hö”. Not sure how I’m supposed to write what i said back then xD Still to this day from reading and such and not practicing enough speaking English some are way off.
As someone who has learned the English language primarily by reading thousands of books, I wholeheartedly agree. On the other hand, English pronounciation sucks big time.
Like, how THE FSCK would I know that a geoduck is pronounced gooey-duck? Also geo-duck sounds like a Pokémon, so that’s gotta be right.
geoduck
Hey, at least it is a nice, short word. In German, it is an “Elephantenrüsselmuschel” (elephant trunk clam). At least there is absolutely no question how it is pronounced, so that’s that.
German pronunciation rules are awesome. If only you could get rid of some of your consonants, I’d be able to pronounce any German word.
If only you could get rid of some of your consonants, I’d be able to pronounce any German word.
You probably dislike the German variants of “ch” as much as the Germans loathe the English “th” ;-)
Out of Rohrbacherstrasse, I could pronounce Ro, ba, and strasse. German has like 5 different R sounds and I can pronounce 2 of them. And yet most of you can’t pronounce the vibrating R in my name.
And I hate English’s TH as well, both sounds of it, and especially the insistence in using it next to S. How am I supposed to pronounce “clothes” with any grace or dignity left?
No, my mother tongue isn’t Germanic, but Celtic-Latin with a lot of Banto and Tupi thrown in for mellowing.
And yet most of you can’t pronounce the vibrating R in my name.
Spanish name, by chance?
Close, but no cigar
Also… fuck the cobbled together mess that is English.
Edit: some of it is regional pronunciations too
Read a quote somewhere a while back, to paraphrase:
Never make fun of someone for mispronouncing a word; it means that their reading vocabulary has outgrown their spoken vocabulary.
Metrocity
The english language badly needs an orthography reform
Using an alphabet designed for Latin has had some dire consequences.
Well, German has almost as many vowels as English and we’re doing just fine I think. On the other hand, French orthography is similarly fucked up although it’s a direct descendent of Latin and they don’t even have any weird sounds they can’t write concisely. So I think its just a matter of trying.
I feel like this is especially true for English since it seems to me there are no spelling rules that convey pronunciation. You can have 2 words spelled completely the same save from one letter and the pronunciation is nowhere near the same.
I’m not sure how this is in other languages, but in my native german (which is always said to be difficult to learn) when you understand the spelling rules you can always assume the correct pronunciation of a word. Certain letter combinations always amount to the same way of pronouncing it.
I guess this is because both languages started out in the germanic language family, but over the course of history english adapted way more from other languages and just made them their own. Including differences in spelling, but maybe not as much pronunciation. Best example is “Bologna”, which is still the italian/latin spelling, but no one near italy would call it “Baloney” .
I’m always amazed at how native speakers learn to write things like that, since you cant count on what you hear at all.
Soft “ch” chimera just makes more sense to me.
you mean the original Greek pronounciation, instead of the mess, that is “kai-mera”?
Spanish would never pull this BS on you.
I don’t speak Spanish, but do Spanish authors pull the same shit English ones do, where they give characters absolutely nonsense names with ambiguous pronunciations? Is it even possible? I will read a name of a character or place and spend the next 20 chapters reading the word twice or three times in different ways.
My biggest gripe with spanish is J having the “ha” sound. Juan is spelled “Hoo-an”, Jesus is “Heh-zus”, etc. If you can get over that, the rest is mostly phonetically sound, like portuguese
I think you’ll find even in Spanish Juan is still spelled Juan and Jesus is still spelled Jesus.
laughs in a language that makes sense phonetically
Laughing phonetically
Laffs.
Langwij.
Maeks
Senz.
Fonetikly.
Ai jenyuinely wish inglish woz laik thiz
