this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2024
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xkcd

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https://xkcd.com/2907

Alt text:

Doug's cousin, the one from London, runs a Bumble love cult.

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago

dammit Randall stick to physics

actually this is pretty fun even if wrong, keep making linguistics things

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Hey Splay.

Shiggity shiggity schwa?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

What's my name? Shmifty five.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Tangentially related to getting stuck in a tunnel obstructed by onions: one time I was stuck in a traffic jam on I-95 in Philadelphia, traffic completely stopped for about three hours. Eventually we got moving again and passed the source of the jam. A semi carrying a load of honeydew melons had caught fire. I would have thought melons contained enough water to prevent them from burning, but that was not the case.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

Maybe those were illegal smoke and honey melons 🤔

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Doesn't the 'nel' in tunnel break this?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Maybe it depends on where you're from but I pronounce "tuh-nuhl"

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Really? I think it's supposed to be silent, not a schwa. Did you mean “tuh-nl”?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Slow down your speech a bit (like listen to it in super slow mo) and you'll realize there's definitely a schwa sound between the N and the L sounds. Just how our mouths work moving through the shapes for them creates a schwa sound.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

By that logic, should not there be a schwa after the L too? That ('tǝnǝlǝ) would be absurd.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Took me a goddamn while. Goddamn English and the lack of phonetic spelling!

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I was a little slow too because some of those words have other possible pronunciations

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

Which is why we shouldn't have phonetic spelling!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago (2 children)

This is like when my friend from CA discovered merry, marry, Mary except it's everything.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

There's a cool, old video about this. I'm not sure if this is what you're referencing:

https://youtu.be/hIvBSMxRG9Q

[–] [email protected] 20 points 6 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 23 points 6 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago (2 children)

I'm even more confused now...

[–] [email protected] 29 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

They're all using only the 'uh' sound for every non-silent vowel in each word.

That 'uh' sound is apparently called the schwa in linguistics.

(edit: clarified after i had already hit the post button)

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago

All the vowels make an 'uh' sound when you read the sentence out loud

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 months ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

Nor mine 😥

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

Nor mine😥

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