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?

  • MajorHavoc@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    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.

  • guyrocket@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    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.

    • merc@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      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”.

      • guyrocket@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        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)!

        • merc@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          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?

          https://www.youtube.com/@DrGeoffLindsey

    • room_raccoon@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      It’s not all bad. The varied spellings of English help with visual pattern recognition and increased reading speed.

    • marmarama@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      British English voices those letters in most accents. I think the two silent letters is just a North American thing.

      Similar to herb.

      • thegiddystitcher@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        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)

        • marmarama@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          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.

          • thegiddystitcher@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            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)

    • Io Sapsai 🌱@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      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…

    • fubo@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      “Arkansas” and “Kansas” are both from the Osage language, but the former passed through French on its way to English.

        • fubo@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          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.

      • merc@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        I’ve heard that, but “Ar Kan Saw” is nothing like how a French person would pronounce “Arkansas”

      • Carlos Solís@communities.azkware.net
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        1 year ago

        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

      • kender242@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        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.

    • charlytune@mander.xyz
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      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”.

  • gasgiant@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    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.

  • XEAL@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Oh boy, a word wouldn’t be enough.

    I would make English as consistent as Spanish is regarding phonetical consistency, or even more.

    Oh, you have never seen this word ever before and you don’t know how to pronounce it? No worries, these universal rules will allow you just get it right, because letters always sound the same!

      • ℕ𝕖𝕞𝕠@midwest.social
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        1 year ago

        I dunno, Oaxaca seems pretty straightforward. oa is pronounced kinda like “ua”, I guess, but midword x is usually a “hh” sound anyway so that’s the only slightly weird thing.

      • Carlos Solís@communities.azkware.net
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        1 year ago

        Fun fact, the Spanish X used to be pronounced like the Greek χ, which is why Meχico, Teχas and Oaχaca are pronounced the way they are now in English (formerly like a “kh” and now like a “ks”)

    • Zippy@lemmy.world
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      The only one they changed is the double l. ll to sounds like a y. But in some circles they consider that a seperate letter to the Spanish alphabet. Overall it is fairly consistent.

      Even better, Spanish words are typically broken into two (or is it to or too) letter syllables.

    • Ataraxia@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      I mean knowing romance languages makes spelling in English easy. Also knowing something about Greek and Latin. Understanding the root of a word etc makes it a lot easier.

      • Right about spelling. For a non-native, it becomes somewhat difficult when it is about the “right” pronunciation of the written language. There’s a lot of French influence for example. Now they have a lot of French words, some feel horribly mispronounced and some aren’t. And then there’s a lot of dialects so that mixing pronunciations can hardly be avoided.

    • ThatWeirdGuy1001@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      English is pretty good (generally) at doing the same thing.

      Y’all are just bringing up words that English stole from other languages.

      You can use phonetics to figure out how to pronounce most words in English.

      • ericbomb@lemmy.worldOP
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        1 year ago

        We just really wish when we stole them we changed the spelling to match the pronunciation if we wanted the pronunciation to stay the same of where we stole it from.

      • Chrissie@discuss.tchncs.de
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        1 year ago

        The amount of words that are not “stolen” from other languages is neglible…

        Cat from German Katze, from Latin catta
        Car(t) from German Karren
        Kitchen grom German Küche
        Bike/Bicycle from French bicycle
        Leaf from German Laub
        Beef, mutton, pigeon from French boeuf, mouton, pigeon
        Cow, sheep, dove from German Kuh, Schaf, Taube
        Computer from Latin computare
        Sun and moon from German Sonne and Mond
        Lunatic from Latina luna
        Death from German Tod
        Snug from Norse snøggr
        Funny from Swedish fånig
        Breeze from Spanish brisa
        Ranch from Spanish rancha
        Brave from Italian bravo
        Arcade from Italian arcata
        Dildo from Italian diletto

  • query@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    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.