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?
You must log in or register to comment.
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
If your post meets the following criteria, it’s welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
Icon by @Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de
- 0 users online
- 217 users / day
- 934 users / week
- 2.44K users / month
- 5.59K users / 6 months
- 1 subscriber
- 3.07K Posts
- 119K Comments
- Modlog
In this thread, a lot of folks who would use their one wish to make the language better.
But I would change “their” to be spelled “the’re” and pronounced “all’y’all’s”.
I hope I do grow up to be more like the rest of you, and make better choices, in the future.
People like you being in charge is how English got to this position in the first place!
Your rite, and I regret my choices.
twitch
I would expect nothing less, MajorHavoc 🫡
Nesscary
…Neccisary
…Neseccary
Fuck it, it’s now “Nesisary”
“Needed”
Do the needful.
Required
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.
deleted by creator
Can never remember how to spell this absolute fuckery of a word. I concur.
Necessary is literally 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
That’s a bit unesesary
Necessary? I would have never thought of any of those weird spellings. It’s spelled like it’s said lol.
wait was it nesisary or nesusary.
nesesary? nesasary? nesysary?
Nesree
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:
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)!
It’s not all bad. The varied spellings of English help with visual pattern recognition and increased reading speed.
That must have already happened and we got the Geordie accent from it!
Macabre. Why do you need two silent letters?
Just change the entire french language while you’re at it
Blame the French.
Please wait in the queue with four unpronounced letters
I always pronounce this “quayway”
What you spelled there would be pronounced key-way haha
“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)
Ma-carb, much better
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…
Comfterble
Kumfirtubble
But saying “com-fidi-ble” is so much more fun
Might start an argument but:
GIF -> GHIF
It’s actually pronounced “JIF”
It stands for the Jraphics Interchange Format
Giraffics? 🦒
Jolly Image Format
JIF is peanut butter
Jif is a surface cleaner.
Linux is a detergent.
so is Barf
I’d rather use Linux than Barf on my clothes!
“It’s a floor wax.”
“It’s a dessert topping.”
“It’s a floor wax.”
“It’s a dessert topping.”
Vanilla ice cream and peanut butter ❤️
https://youtu.be/Nrk8sqZfsgI?si=20rIrWuZbuPPeJua
Arkinsaw
“Arkansas” and “Kansas” are both from the Osage language, but the former passed through French on its way to English.
i’m from somewhere in europe and always wondered why you guys would pronounce those two so different!
America has a lot of place names that come from Native American / First Nations languages; but they also come via different European languages.
And some of those names are actually words that refer to a different Native group. “Arkansas” and “Kansas” are from the Osage word for the Quapaw people. The name of the Snake River between Oregon and Idaho is a translation of the name that Plains people used to refer to the Shoshone: they were the “snake people” and that wasn’t a compliment.
I’ve heard that, but “Ar Kan Saw” is nothing like how a French person would pronounce “Arkansas”
That is interesting. Do you have a source?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkansas
In Spanish they do rhyme and their endings are pronounced the exact same, as in Kansas. I was greatly puzzled when I discovered that the French managed to mangle the name Arkansas that badly back in the day
I just say Arc-Kansas
It’s the pirate Kansas.
2010 Arkansas Code Title 1 - General Provisions Chapter 4 - State Symbols, Motto, Etc § 1-4-105 - Pronunciation of state name.
Be it therefore resolved by both houses of the General Assembly, that the only true pronunciation of the name of the state, in the opinion of this body, is that received by the French from the native Indians and committed to writing in the French word representing the sound. It should be pronounced in three (3) syllables, with the final “s” silent, the “a” in each syllable with the Italian sound, and the accent on the first and last syllables. The pronunciation with the accent on the second syllable with the sound of “a” in “man” and the sounding of the terminal “s” is an innovation to be discouraged.
Brit here, I only realised a couple of years ago that the Arkansaw I heard mentioned in American TV and movies was actually the Arkansas I could see on maps. I think it was something said on Reddit, probably a thread similar to this, that was the revelation. And when I tell other Brits they’re invariably similarly clueless, and quite gobsmacked. I’m not sure if anyone I’ve mentioned it too has said “oh yeah I knew that”.
Since Queue has already been posted: Quay. Now spelled Kee.
You and I pronounce ‘quay’ very differently.
How do you pronounce it? I had some American tourists ask me for directions to the “kway” before. Only time I’ve ever heard a different pronunciation.
I’ve always heard it pronounced kway… Is that wrong?
I can’t say really. Where I live (Ireland) it’s definitely pronounced “kee” but where you live “kway” might be correct. Fascinating stuff!
That’s wrong, even in the US.
It’s pronounced kway in a Pavement song.
It’s pronounced “kaye” in a Pogues song, but songs aren’t a good indication of pronunciation…poetic license reigns.
Hell, “reigns” is another candidate word.
In my dictionary spelling is [ki:] so like “kee”
Quay is one of those words like bowline or boatswain that’s commonly mispronounced because people see it in writing without hearing it said. Bowline “properly” rhymes with pin, and boatswain sounds like bosun.
A similar thing happened to solder in Britain, where it originally had a silent l as a nod to its Latin etymology, but some people started pronouncing it.
kɛɪ 🤷
relevant username
It’s aluminium you stupid Americans.
Only cuz y’all changed it to that
The global sciences community decided on a name change, only one country decided to be contrary.
only one country decided to stay true to the discoverer’s chosen name
Ftfy
By that logic Uranus would be called “George’s Star”. Then the English nationalists would would get uppity about its name.
The discover generally has input, but when there’s a group of experts responsible for maintaining a list of names of things: they decide what’s right.
Out of all the examples you could’ve chosen you went with Uranus… respect.
Platinium too?
If the entire global science community decided to: yes.
You talk about it like all scientists could ever agree to something and that it would be possible to poll every single one and properly weight their individual scientific relevance.
“pluto isn’t a dwarf planet”.
Yeah, it is.
The scientific community agrees.
Same thing.
“agrees”
Congratulations, you just found the crazy whiney dissident group of astronomers who just can’t admit they’re wrong by general consensus.
Experts arguing amongst themselves is hardly the same.
An entire country being contrary just because of national pride and arrogance is completely different.
Disagreeing with general consensus ≠ wrong
Is it your position that all countries should have the same language regardless of their cultural history?
Also, it isn’t rooted in national pride or arrogance. Aluminum came first and was the name given by the first chemist - a British scientist - to isolate the metal. The variant aluminium came from a reviewer who changed the spelling just because he liked the sound better. Aluminum was recognized by ACS 65 years before IUPAC standardized to aluminum. IUPAC has recognized aluminum as an acceptable spelling since 1993. So yeah, the general concensus is the aluminum is okay even based on your logic because IUPAC says so.
OK.
I concede the point. Because the IUPAC says so.
Simple.
The American spelling matches the American pronunciation, and it was one of the original variations of the word. Americans didn’t pick it out of nowhere.
That’s more akin to saying “it’s spelled aubergine, not eggplant, you stupid Americans”.
I’m aware of the origins of the different spellings of aluminum/aluminium.
I disagree that it’s two entirely different words which is the case for eggplant/aubergine that come from two different languages.
I can’t think of another example that’s better though.
I only know that you say it that way because Jonny Ive talked about the design of a laptop more than a decade ago. Frankly, I think you’re right.
wow the completely unnecessary xenophobia
edit: we really need a feature to be able to block the people who upvote objectively toxic content like this
wow the completely expected nationalism.
That doesn’t even make sense
Americans (generally) can’t take criticism from non-Americans.
Some can. Some respond with “yeah we don’t do that well” or enjoin the argument with interest and integrity.
Others start screeching about xenophobia.
Stupid foreigners.
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.
feenicks
Fenix, like the dude from StarCraft?
Thou shall not wish your girlfriend. Was a freak. Like me.
Oasis, just a band
The Beach Boys? Just a band.
Nirvana?
Ressepee
I like this one because I instantly knew what word it was despite it having a brand new spelling. Almost like letters should have meanings.
I was wondering if Reese pee was liquid peanut butter for a moment.
English isn’t my native language. I thought for years (and I’m talking of 10+) it would be pronounced “ree-sipe”.
Worcestershire
Got any wash yer sister sauce?
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???
Idk about woust-er sauce, pretty sure that’s just dropping a syllable.
But the rest of it is because the syllables are supposed to be worce-ster-shire.
I pronounce it wor-chest-ter-shire with shire being where Frodo lives.
Wustersherr
Here in my country we just call it Lizano
Aisle should become something like ile.
Segue
I always trip over that one and start reading it as French.
Seg-Yoo
That’s how my coworkers were pronouncing it, til I pointed out… Who knew how long that was going for, lol
I just learned last month I’ve been doing the same thing and mispronouncing it for over three decades. But it’s Italian!
In the uncut version of Romeo and Juliet, there was a vague segue to a Montague tongue.
tongue, there’s another fucker, I tells ya
Problem is that when you write it as pronounced, it becomes segway. Which just makes me think of those two-wheeled scooter thingies.