I’m picking “Colonel” needs to be respelled to match how it’s pronounced.
Try to pick a word no one else has picked. What word are you respelling?
Comfterble
Kumfirtubble
But saying “com-fidi-ble” is so much more fun
Nesscary
…Neccisary
…Neseccary
Fuck it, it’s now “Nesisary”
Can never remember how to spell this absolute fuckery of a word. I concur.
That’s so weird. I’m dyslexic and all but this word is very much common sense for me. Maybe because I’m a polyglot and in Italian it’s necessario?
English is my second language, but I’ve always remembered it by “one cardigan, two socks” necessary
English is a second language to me, and at this point it’s probably the only commonly used word I consistently mess up. It usually ends up something like ‘nessecairy’
Totally understandable, one of a handful of English words that I both know are spelled “wrongL and also have to put conscious thought into spelling before I write it.
Ironicly, “conshus” one such candidate for me.
That’s a bit unesesary
Necessary is literally spelt how it’s pronounced though.
spelt how it’s pronounced though
I’m not sure you meant this as a joke but it is funny.
Learning yet another irregular pronunciation because some N-hundred years ago their majesty Shithead von Cunt wanted to sound fancy and everyone just played along is not funny.
cries, not knowing how to properly pronounce most English words
Necessary? I would have never thought of any of those weird spellings. It’s spelled like it’s said lol.
“Needed”
Wednesday to Windsday or Wensday.
Totally not me having problems spelling that word at 29.
What IS that D doing THERE?
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Wait you don’t pronounce the D? You just say wennesday?
Most people that say the d flip the n and d to wendsday
Its best
Or closer to the founding fathers’ intent: Wotan’s Day
Odinsday
Wotan’s Day ain’t nothing to fuck with.
Whensday?
English orthography is awful. Hard “c” AND soft “c”? Are you crazy? How about that “k” that is already the hard c sound? It should be “kat” and “kar”. And it only goes downhill from there (or their?!?).
We should clean it up someday. But we’ll probably end up with LOL-WTF-speak.
Some of the low hanging fruit would just be to pick one pronunciation of “oo” and stick with it:
- book
- blood
- floor
- brooch
- boot
The problem is that English has far more vowel sounds than vowels. And that’s without even having certain sounds that are common in other languages like “ü”.
Linguistics would teach that it is the orthography that is flawed. The English language has many vowel sounds, more than most languages. But as you demonstrate, the orthography “lumps” many of them together. Which, again, is why I think English orthography is awful.
There’s a great article at Wikipedia, scroll down to the “Vowels” section: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_phonology
There’s a link the the article above to this page, which I don’t suggest viewing on your phone. It has a great effort to document vowels across dialects of English, scroll down again to the huge table: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabet_chart_for_English_dialects
Be careful, the linguistics “rabbit hole” is deep (but fascinating)!
Thanks, I really like the IPA and I wish it were something that was taught in high school. It would be great if people were competent at reading it and could maybe use it to explain how something sounds. It’s hard enough that English has such flawed orthography. Then you add the fact that there are dozens of English dialects and it only makes things more complicated.
Do you know about Dr. Geoff Lindsey’s YouTube channel?
I do not know about that channel. I will check it out, thanks!
His topics are really interesting, hope you enjoy them like I did.
It’s not all bad. The varied spellings of English help with visual pattern recognition and increased reading speed.
I think the main issue with this is that pronunciation changes over time, in addition to varying by area. So if we keep changing the spelling, written works will became unreadable faster.
But I would suggest that any band names that use umlauts/foreign letters should be pronounced accordingly.
Yeees I love twenty one pilots personally, but when they started using “ø” I really wanted it to be pronounced as part of the name so they could hear how ridiculous it sounds
Though shall now be spelled: Tho.
to rhyme with Pho?
No, it doesn’t rhyme with “Duh?”
It’s already pronounced that way.
“Pho”, the noodle dish, is pronounced “fuh” like “fussy”
TIL I’ve been mispronounceing Pho.
Y tho?
Idk my bff jill?
I just wish we spelled things in a more German-‘esk’ fashion. They use K more appropriately. Examples such as “panik” and “akkordeon” for accordion. I find their spelling to be more straightforward and sensical.
Worcestershire
I pronounce it wor-chst-sher sauce. As does my friends who aren’t from London but from other parts of the UK
My London boi says Woust-er sauce.
How do you get Wor-chest-er-sher to become Woust-er? How?
I understand Wor-chst-sher you just remove some vowels in the middle.
But Wouster? You just removed the whole fucking word?? Why???
I pronounce it wor-chest-ter-shire with shire being where Frodo lives.
Wustersherr
Got any wash yer sister sauce?
All those words that are pronounce the same but have completely different meanings. Particularly the common words.
To two too
No know
Their there
By buy bye
Then there there ones spelt the same but two different meanings and silent letters to even be better.
Go right, you’re right.
Didn’t know how messed up English spelling/pronunciation is till I started to learn Spanish and nearly every word is pronounced exactly as spelled.
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Not knot naught
Might start an argument but:
GIF -> GHIFGH as in “laugh”? People’d start flame wars over whether “FIF” is the intended pronunciation…
It’s actually pronounced “JIF”
It stands for the Jraphics Interchange Format
Giraffics? 🦒
Thou shalt spell the word “Pheonix” P-H-E-O-N-I-X, not P-H-O-E-N-I-X, regardless of what the Oxford English Dictionary tells you.
Fenix, like the dude from StarCraft?
feenicks
Oasis, just a band
The Beach Boys? Just a band.
Nirvana?
Macabre. Why do you need two silent letters?
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“queue”, 4/5 letters are silent.
British English voices those letters in most accents. I think the two silent letters is just a North American thing.
Similar to herb.
Not saying you’re wrong at all, it’s not exactly a common word to hear said out loud. But I’ve never heard anyone do this and the very idea of it blows my mind.
(NE England, here)
The last syllable is usually pretty subtle, like the br- in bread, but very quietly voiced. I’d say I hear it maybe 75% of the time I hear the word. Currently in Yorkshire, via SW England, London and NW England. The syllable is a lot less subtle in a West Yorks accent!
Did you learn French at GCSE level? Possibly there’s a relationship between that and pronouncing the re like that in French-derived words. Cadre is another example. If it is related to learning French, then it’s probably on the decline as French teaching is on the decline and foreign languages are no longer compulsory at GCSE.
Clearly I need to work this word into more conversations with people and listen closely! That said I only just found out recently that most of the country pronounces the middle weekday as “Wensday” so contrary to stereotypes I think we might be the ones talking properly up here 😉
(schools around me were generally an even split between French and German for GCSE, dunno how that affects your theory, also I had no idea languages were going away from school and this makes me sad to learn)
Why use a French word then?
Wait how is that pronounced? I’ve always read it as Mah-Ca-Burr. It’s one of these words I learned through text exposure rather than English classes…
Gif
The gargantuan giraffe gallops his gigantic body to the gutter.
It is a G. It isn’t that hard.
It isn’t that hard.
A soft-G gif believer! Heretic!
Werk.
Work is not how people pronounce it.
Here it would be “wurk”
Abes oddysey vibes
