English pronunciation

chillidoggy · August 2020

“Insane” when applied to YouTube vids.

Philly_Q · August 2020

zedhex said:

I have always loved this example of how illogical the English language is: https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghoti#:~:text=Ghoti%20is%20an%20artificial%20word,in%20women%20%2F%CB%88w%C9%AAm%C9%AAn%2F%3B%20and

That highlights something which never fails to irritate me - Wikipedia tells me how to pronounce words by using funny little symbols I don't understand.

tony99 · August 2020

Philly_Q said:

zedhex said:

I have always loved this example of how illogical the English language is: https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghoti#:~:text=Ghoti%20is%20an%20artificial%20word,in%20women%20%2F%CB%88w%C9%AAm%C9%AAn%2F%3B%20and

That highlights something which never fails to irritate me - Wikipedia tells me how to pronounce words by using funny little symbols I don't understand.

phonetics innit? fascinating when you start looking into it

strtdv · August 2020

The "aitch Vs haitch" is generally perceived to fall down sectarian lines over here and is used as a shibboleth, so generally considered impolite to ask.

I believe that strictly speaking h should be treated as a vowel at the beginning of a word, so "an historic occasion" is the correct usage.

You think English is a melting pot, we've got bits of Irish, Scots Gaelic, and even dialect words from French over here as a result of getting invaded even more than you lot!

(Ireland's history also means there are some quite interesting genetic diseases which are quite common over here but rare elsewhere in the world)

Philly_Q · August 2020

tony99 said:

Philly_Q said:

zedhex said:

I have always loved this example of how illogical the English language is: https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghoti#:~:text=Ghoti%20is%20an%20artificial%20word,in%20women%20%2F%CB%88w%C9%AAm%C9%AAn%2F%3B%20and

That highlights something which never fails to irritate me - Wikipedia tells me how to pronounce words by using funny little symbols I don't understand.

phonetics innit? fascinating when you start looking into it

But I don't want to have to look into it! If I have to study phonetics to understand their pronunciation guides I'd rather they didn't bother.

tony99 · August 2020

Philly_Q said:

tony99 said:

Philly_Q said:

zedhex said:

I have always loved this example of how illogical the English language is: https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghoti#:~:text=Ghoti%20is%20an%20artificial%20word,in%20women%20%2F%CB%88w%C9%AAm%C9%AAn%2F%3B%20and

That highlights something which never fails to irritate me - Wikipedia tells me how to pronounce words by using funny little symbols I don't understand.

phonetics innit? fascinating when you start looking into it

But I don't want to have to look into it! If I have to study phonetics to understand their pronunciation guides I'd rather they didn't bother.

that's fair does matey, another way of looking at it though, whatever way you pronounce it is correct, you're just another variety of english

Nitefly · August 2020

tony99 said:

how do you say bath?

do you say it "bath" like the vowel in "rat", or "bath" like the vowel in "car"?

and which is correct?

I say it like the "a" in "rat", but then I'm a northerner.

Fotched up reet, I were.

the_jaffa · August 2020

The yourselves/ourselves/myself etc thing really gets on my tits. It used to just be the odd person trying to sound posh but it’s getting more and more common (pun intended).

Then there’s the increasing misuse of words like infamous and epicentre. People seem to have decided that infamous means extra famous and epicentre is used for when people just mean centre. (Epi as in epidermis and meaning surface - hence the epicentre being the position on the surface above where the earthquake took place below the surface).

Then there’s things being “very unique” when unique is binary and a thing is either unique or not. There is no scale of uniqueness.

There’s loads of these and I could go on and get very boring rather quickly.

(It’s almost guaranteed that I will have misspelt something in that lot; it’s always the way)

the_jaffa · August 2020

Oh, and the mispronunciation of kilometre is a frustration. It’s not a measure of “kils”, it’s a kilo metre.

Cranky · August 2020

richardhomer said:

I seem to be the only person left who pronounces ‘H’ as ‘aitch’.

It’s appalling how far standards have fallen....

Changing, not falling. It's called The Empire Writes Back. You can't colonize that much of the globe and expect it to leave you unchanged.

scrumhalf · August 2020

the_jaffa said:

Then there’s things being “very unique” when unique is binary and a thing is either unique or not. There is no scale of uniqueness.

A definition of unique requires a binary state, I agree. But things differ from each other in various degrees.

Take the number sequence: 2 3 2 2 4 4, which represents the highest chart positions of the albums by The Bottoms. The number 3 is unique, but not so very different from the others, all albums achieved very similar placings.

Now the albums of The Fronts: 100 100 100 3 100 100.. Again, the number 3 is unique but it is so different from the other numbers that it stands out. Linguistically, but may not statistically, that uniqeuness can be remarked upon so as to add meaning to the reader.

skullfunkerry · August 2020

For help with pronunciation, YouTube is useful. For instance:

HAL9000 · August 2020

People who pronounce schedule as skedule. It’s the sonic equivalent of fingernails being scraped down the blackboard - ugh!

Jonathangus · August 2020

People who pronounce it 'Antartic'. Just stop it.

Matt_McG · August 2020

skullfunkerry said:

There are a few phrases & words that grill my goat, but on the whole I try not to let that stuff worry me too much: the whole English language is a melting pot of other languages & dialects, and the only constant in life is change. I'm 100% certain that most (if not all) of us are using words daily now that no-one had even heard when we were kids.

This is exactly right.

I'd also bet that most people who get up on their high horse about other people using language incorrectly make "mistakes" that other prescriptivists would sneer down at from their own saddles.

N.B. I _do_ understand those funny little IPA symbols. I studied English philology, English grammar, phonetics and phonology for 4 years at University. At one time I could read most dialects of Middle English, and could have a pretty decent stab at Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse. Once you get a little bit of perspective on the history of English, it's pretty hard to get annoyed about change.

Like most people, there _are_ things that annoy me,. But I try to be phlegmatic about it.

the_jaffa · August 2020

Matt_McG said:.

Like most people, there _are_ things that annoy me,. But I try to be phlegmatic about it.

Very good.

Matt_McG · August 2020

Also, if you speak a dialect, and have to get used to code-switching quite a lot of the time, you also become quite aware of language difference, rather than just assuming that whatever version of "standard English" you happen to speak is the correct one.

tony99 · August 2020

Matt_McG said:

Also, if you speak a dialect, and have to get used to code-switching quite a lot of the time, you also become quite aware of language difference, rather than just assuming that whatever version of "standard English" you happen to speak is the correct one.

A common misconception there Matt but I'm going to let you off with it. Liverpool English or "scouse" is the correct one. Ta.

TheOtherDennis · August 2020

HAL9000 said:

People who pronounce schedule as skedule. It’s the sonic equivalent of fingernails being scraped down the blackboard - ugh!

There are two shools of thought about that one.

TheOtherDennis · August 2020

gordiji said:

richardhomer said:

I seem to be the only person left who pronounces ‘H’ as ‘aitch’.

It’s appalling how far standards have fallen....

Your not alone. I still like whither, thither & whence

What annoys me about whence is people using it incorrectly. "Whence he came from..." The 'from' is redundant - whence means where from, not just where, thus "Whence he came..."

And 'til instead of the correct till. There is until and there is till. They mean the same thing, though they are spelled differently. Till is NOT a shortened version of until that requires an apostrophe. It's a word of its own which, according to my copy of the Shorter OED, has been around several hundred years longer than until, which was formed by adding the Old Norse 'und' to till.

Never understood why, to be honest (as, according to the same entry, till actually comes from the Old norse til, which existed before either of the ones above, but in modern English is spelled till, and never had an apostrophe), but that really grinds my gears, that one.

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English pronunciation

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