this post was submitted on 15 Jun 2024
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[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago

My English learning process was me being a eight year old kid who wanted to play diablo. No clue about shit. Barely able to read in the first place and just going from one word which is similar to one in my native language to the next similar one. Like "ok, intelligence looks a lot like intelligenz. Dexterity makes my bow do more damage so it should be something like speed or whatever" so basically trial and error over the years. The pronunciation was accordingly. As an example, strength was "stren g t hö". Not sure how I'm supposed to write what i said back then xD Still to this day from reading and such and not practicing enough speaking English some are way off.

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

Read a quote somewhere a while back, to paraphrase:

Never make fun of someone for mispronouncing a word; it means that their reading vocabulary has outgrown their spoken vocabulary.

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

Just wanna share this interesting and relevant thing.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago (2 children)

I feel like this is especially true for English since it seems to me there are no spelling rules that convey pronunciation. You can have 2 words spelled completely the same save from one letter and the pronunciation is nowhere near the same.

I'm not sure how this is in other languages, but in my native german (which is always said to be difficult to learn) when you understand the spelling rules you can always assume the correct pronunciation of a word. Certain letter combinations always amount to the same way of pronouncing it.

I guess this is because both languages started out in the germanic language family, but over the course of history english adapted way more from other languages and just made them their own. Including differences in spelling, but maybe not as much pronunciation. Best example is "Bologna", which is still the italian/latin spelling, but no one near italy would call it "Baloney" .

I'm always amazed at how native speakers learn to write things like that, since you cant count on what you hear at all.

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

You can have 2 words spelled completely the same ~~save from one letter~~ and the pronunciation is nowhere near the same.

ftfy:

if you read a lot then you're well-read

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Anyone else say "ba-LO-na" for something with coarsely ground meat and heavier spice - e.g. "Lebanon Bologna" - and "ba-LO-nee" for the Oscar Mayer stuff?

[–] [email protected] 13 points 6 months ago (1 children)

As someone whose father had a doctorate in English, I grew up reading and being told off every time I mispronounced a word.

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

That's just rude really. Hope you're feeling better these days amigo.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

I loved my dad, but he was always a professor, so proper English was a priority. Honestly, that particular aspect of my upbringing is not one of the upsetting or traumatic parts.

Interestingly though, I recently learned that he drilled something that was essentially incorrect into my head. He grew up in the UK and, when he was growing up, it was proper to write "an historic." Here in the US and now usually in the UK, it is "a historic." I've been using "an historic" for decades.

If you want to talk about the shitty thing about having an English professor for a father, it's when you show him a piece of creative writing and he responds by telling you about all the mistakes you've made rather than what he thinks of it. Again, I loved the guy, but he was always a professor.

On the other hand, he ended up becoming a film historian and growing up with a film historian for a father is pretty amazing.

(Thanks on the health front, we're working on it.)

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago

Jokes on you, I pronounce most of words in English wrong, because no one bothered to teach me proper pronunciation at school.

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

The colour Beige was my downfall 🙈

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