262
There's probably a word I've been pronouncing wrong my whole life that I don't know about
(discuss.tchncs.de)
this post was submitted on 29 Jan 2024
262 points (96.5% liked)
Showerthoughts
35085 readers
721 users here now
A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:
- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
Rules
- All posts must be showerthoughts
- The entire showerthought must be in the title
- No politics
- If your topic is in a grey area, please phrase it to emphasize the fascinating aspects, not the dramatic aspects. You can do this by avoiding overly politicized terms such as "capitalism" and "communism". If you must make comparisons, you can say something is different without saying something is better/worse.
- A good place for politics is c/politicaldiscussion
- Posts must be original/unique
- Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct and the TOS
If you made it this far, showerthoughts is accepting new mods. This community is generally tame so its not a lot of work, but having a few more mods would help reports get addressed a little sooner.
Whats it like to be a mod? Reports just show up as messages in your Lemmy inbox, and if a different mod has already addressed the report, the message goes away and you never worry about it.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I mean, this word does have an English pronunciation that is distinct from the Italian pronunciation, which follows English phonology.
Of course, I just found it interesting there's no equivalent sound
Re-reading I can see you weren’t actually claiming English speakers needed to use the Italian pronunciation. Some people do claim that so I just kind of continued my lifelong argument with those people :)
I agree that basic sounds from one language that don’t exist in another language are interesting.
I understand your point and admit my comment could definitely be interpreted that way.
I could be a dick about it and demand people learn to pronounce it the way us Italians do, but then I'd also have to start pronouncing every English loan word perfectly and with a correct English accent while speaking Italian, and you can do that without sounding like a pretentious asshole, so I won't.
It’s funny that we call these words “loanwords” that we “borrow”. That implies they don’t belong to our language and that we don’t have the right to modify them however we want; it even implies that eventually we’ll return them to their language of origin. It would be much more accurate to say these words have been acquired, incorporated, or assimilated. That’s what languages actually do with words they get from other languages.
Personally, I enjoy the organic nature of the exchange of words between languages. Different languages and cultures treat foreign words differently. Some try to stick as close to the original pronunciation as possible, and some happily alter the word. This can even be handled differently by the same language and culture at a different period of time. For example, in English we have the words “gender” and “genre”, both borrowed from the same French word at different times. The older one is pronounced in an English-sounding way and the newer one is pronounced as close to the French way as possible. I find this kind of stuff very amusing.
But isn't that exactly why it's called loan words? In Swedish we've borrowed words like radio and nylon and we initially pronounced them as in English. But eventually we started to pronounce them as the spelling would dictate in Swedish (the English pronunciations would've been spelled rejdio and najlon). For toilet it's the opposite. We borrowed toilette from French, but eventually altered the spelling to match the pronunciation: toalett.
I'll grant you that once we have adapted and incorporated the words, we are no longer borrowing them. Maybe we should stop calling them loanwords at that point. But while they're still new and don't yet fit in, I would say that borrowing sounds about right.
On another note, I can't understand why a people wouldn't want to make every word work in their language. You completely lose the flow of speech when you have to pronounce something that doesn't fit naturally into it, and you either come off as a pretentious douche or a stupid person.
Well, the definition of “loanword” means it isn’t just being used ad hoc because it is brand new, but rather that it has been incorporated into the language at least to some extent!
If that's the case, I agree that it's a bit strange.