What about similar oddities in English?
(This question is inspired by this comic by https://www.exocomics.com/193/ (link found by BunScientist@lemmy.zip))
Edit: it’s to its in the title. Damn autocorrect.
They should be spelled the way they currently are.
Present: read
Past: red (in the fediverse), redd (on the old site)
Obvious.
“It has been red”.
So was the text red or has the text been read?
Both. How do you know it was red when you have not red it? Someone must have red it to state it’s red.
I can’t reed
Rob Words youtube channel is basically wtf english. And he has tons of content, and it keeps comming.
How about we go with reed and red… see, you already know how to pronounce them!
its, not it’s.
On a different note there is Reading, a football club in UK, which is pronounced “Redding”. This pronunciation is akin to the Reading Railroad from Monopoly (which I mispronounced all my life until today).
Little details, picked up along the way.
Reading is a place itself, the football club is the club for that place
Next you’re going to tell me there are places in the UK named Manchester and Liverpool and Notts County and St Johnstone and Celtic and Rangers and Port Vale.
It’s pronounced “Redding” Railroad?? All those times I sang “Take a look, it’s in a book, Reading Railroad!” were a lie!
Read and Reddit
Put: “hold my beer”
Lead and lead as well. I got a lead on those lead undergarments you wanted. I’ll lead you there later.
Actually I don’t think this one is true. Past tense of “to lead” is led. But also lead can be pronounced like led when referring to the metal or the element.
How did I get to the lead merchant? I was led here. But in the price negotiation, I took the lead.
That works for your way of saying it but there is nothing wrong with the way I said it. You don’t say I’ll led you there later. My state men wasn’t past tense at all.
Reed and Red
Where, were, we’re. Even native speakers have problems with this. I don’t know how many times I had to correct such cases, especially with American authors.
I pronounce these all differently though? [wɛɹ], [wəɹ] and [wiɹ]
Pretty much only native speakers have problems with this, I see this type of mistake far less frequently with those who learned English as an additional language.
Pretty much only native speakers have problems with this
That makes no sense since they would use it more, however native speakers from the US do have problems with it, and other words (they’re/their).
Rarely encounter it with others.
Their spelling is embarrassing, same as their very limited vocabulary. IDK what they do in schools.It’s true that I see it more rarely with the British. I suppose they read more or something.
Possibly, education is my main guess
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Modern people are the written word as more valid than spoken
Now there’s a sentence I can’t make sense of.
There is no influence of history in when kids learn to write their language or if they used it orally, they learn to write it then how it’s supposed to be written.
If your reasons were valid every Anglo would have problems, they don’t.
Since it’s noticably the US specifically I can only assume it’s sub standard education.
As confirmed by their poor vocabulary compared to other Anglo’s
Pretty much only native speakers have problems with this
99% agree with this. This is a native speaker issue, except where someone took up bad habits from the natives…
Exactly. People with English as a second language go from meaning to writing. Native speakers go from sound to writing.
There, their, they’re is something native speakers confuse as well. I have only ever observed native speaker write should of instead of should‘ve or should have.
Where, were, we’re.
I never had a problem with those, until I started with stuff like Reddit.
Now, I find myself making the mistake and catching it in proofreading.
Guess my brain is starting to age too.This one has also bothered me because I pronounce all three of these differently.
It’s because the people who set the rules for the English language, could barely speak it.
The first guy to popularize the printing press was Dutch, so the guy who bought England’s first one didn’t know how it worked and neither did any English speaker
So he hired a bunch of Dutch who knew how to operate it.
And they got a bunch of handwritten books and were told to mass reproduce them.
Sometimes it was a mistake in the original, sometimes the typesetter made a mistake. Sometimes the writer just disagreed with how it should be written, and sometimes even the typesetters who couldn’t speak English made choices to change it
No one gave a fuck about accuracy, it was about pumping out as many books as possible. Because just owning a book was a huge status symbol still from when they were handwritten and crazy expensive.
But all those books eventually got read, and the people who learned to read them were very proud that they could read. So they insisted that all the random bullshit was intentional and had to be followed to a T by everyone forever.
Most other languages had a noble class who kept it sensical, but for a long ass time only peasants spoke English, the wealthy in England all spoke French, cuz they were French.
Anyways, that’s why English doesn’t make any sense. There was also a natural thing happening where vowel pronunciation was changing. So when the typecasters solidified everything, it was already in a state of flux. That’s why pronunciation doesn’t line up with spelling.
It certainly doesn’t help that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.
What I get from this is that if those English idiots had stuck to French, we wouldn’t have this mess.
Oh god, we’d be stuck with all those silent letters
More like if the French royalty hadn’t conquered England…
England hasn’t been ruled by the English for centuries bro
Yup. Blame the Normans.
This also occurred in the middle of the Great Vowel Shift, a period when spoken English pronunciation was changing significantly.
Yep…
There was also a natural thing happening where vowel pronunciation was changing. So when the typecasters solidified everything, it was already in a state of flux. That’s why pronunciation doesn’t line up with spelling.
A French. The language where you have 5 wovels, use 3 for the word goose and the other 2 to pronounce it.
What? The e is just silent.
The French word for goose is Oie, pronounced “ua”
If you look at an IPA chart, you can see how going from /i/ to /e/ to /a/ is a process of the vowel becoming more and more “open” over time (said with the mouth wider and wider).
In Quebec, the vowel shift that caused “oi” to have a /wa/ sound didn’t fully happen. So, the word “moi” is often pronounced more like /mwe/ or /mwɛ/. But “oiseau” (bird) is still pronounced with a /wa/.
The modern French pronunciation of the Loire river /lwaʁ/ influences the English pronunciation /lwɑːr/. But, other languages use a spelling that matches the French but have a different pronunciation. In Italian and Spanish it’s Loira. The Latin name was Liger. So, it used to have a /i/ pronunciation before the vowel shift.
tl;dr: modern French pronunciation vs spelling is just about as bad as English.
Ils sont fous, ces Français.
It’s really not. Maybe if you pronounce an English ‘u’, but not a French one. Source: I’m French Canadian.
“Read” is spelled s-a-m-e? English is a weird language.
Wait until you hear about how we pronounce colonel!
What about parmesan?
Well I say that like it’s spelled. I don’t make the zh sound at the end of that’s what you’re referencing. I know some do though.
You pronounce the middle syllable as “me”?
Par-meh-sawn
We pronounce it the same as the linux colonel.
Good old Colonel Angus!
My wife and I had a good snicker one time when I brought home edamame peas in the shell.
They were shelled, but she wanted them shelled.
Flammable/imflammable is another one that comes to mind.
English has many contronyms.
- Clip: to attach (clip X to Y) or detach (clip coupons)
- Dust: to remove dust or to add it (dust the cake with icing sugar)
- Fine: excellent (fine wine) or not great but decent (it’s fine)
- Left: remaining (I have 5 left) or gone (I had some but they left)
- Oversight: supervision (he had oversight over the whole process) or lack of supervision (I forgot to do that, it was an oversight)
Also sanction and sanction, same word but completely opposite meanings.
As carved into history by Dr. Nick:
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And the alarm goes off means it actually starts ringing. Weird language indeed!
And this might just be a UK thing but if a person goes off it means they get really angry. And it can mean to leave for somewhere.
So a firework goes off which makes the fire alarm go off which makes the safety officer go off. Then he goes off to get a fireman. But he leaves the milk out, so it goes off.
English pronunciation is weird. It can be mastered through tough thorough thought though.
