"Corpse-man"
That's what Obama said when he meant corpsman. He had never heard the word used before. He thought he was in the right and everyone else was wrong.
I wonder sometimes if things are spelled annoyingly on purpose to create a higher barrier for full literacy and therefore social/political participation
I mean as its said in the article fuckers took french words respelled them to reflect their latin roots but kept pronouncing them the french way, eg colonel. If thats not a fucked up and nerdy as hell way to erect a social barrier I dont know what is
for sure. Its just that english underwent comparatively more dramatic phonetic changes compared to other european languages, or I suppose that its orthography was particularly resistant to change. Probably a mix of both. Also as you alluded regarding phonemes, as a germanic language, english has a particularly rich inventory of vowels that cannot easily be depicted with only five vowel letters (well y too, but thats rly a semivowel)
well many historical factors tbh. The viking invasions for one. Some Norsemen who invaded stayed and of course when an adult learns a language they wont learn it perfectly. They will mispronounce (well at the time it was considered a mispronounciation), they will simplify and that will inevitably influence the course of a language's development. In addition the loss at the battle of hastings which led to the normans ruling england. Here we get the enormous influx of french and latinate words, so much so that many native english words were displaced in favor of loanwords like question, danger and so on. This continued for centuries, and had renewed intensification when france and french culture was aped across europe in the 17th and 18th centuries. Plus english never had a strong purist movement unlike german or icelandic
From a description on the great vowel shift:
Some scholars believe the shift was influenced by the rapid migration of people from northern England to the southeast part of the country to escape the Black Death that killed over 25 million people across Europe. The migration resulted in the mixing of accents, warranting changes in the standard London dialect. Others argue the Great Vowel Shift occurred in response to an increase in the number of French loanwords used in the English language. Additionally, some claim the shift was caused by a hypercorrection in response to the increase in the number of French loanwords, which occurred either intentionally or unintentionally, to make English vowels sound less like French
my personal bugbear is homage. I thought it was pronounced very french-like, like ennui, so I always pronounced it like the french say fromage. But the stress actually falls on the first syllable, and the -mage is pronounced like the one in image. That broke me a little
Pretty sure your original pronunciation is at the very least a recognized alternative
Wait, I definitely say it the "French" way and have heard it said that way many many times...
You're supposed to say 'this scene is a "hommidge" to Casablanca?'
As a Canadian, there are a few french loan words that Americans just butcher. This one is second on my list. Here homage is pronounced like you originally did, like fromage.
The other ones that get me are niche (here it's pronounced like leash, not hitch), and foyer (here it's pronounced to rhyme with boy-hey, not like lawyer)
my mnemonic is lithe rhymes with tithe, and I always know that the i in tithe is pronounced like tight
The 'i' is like in right, and the 'the' like in "breathe" -- very similar to lathe
You know what I hate? Epoch.
In American English epoch is pronounced almost exactly the same as the word epic. eh-puhk
In British English the word is pronounced as "eee pok." Which is correct.
One of the only things Brits are correct about. That and the spelling of the word 'grey.'
I'm sorry but for the purposes of this bit I'm actually racist against Greeks and as such I reject anything they say or think. Please pretend that I've said something mildly offensive about modern Greek culture, politics, or economy as I'm currently too tired to think of anything funny. Thank you and have a pleasant day.
you will never make me feel bad about supposedly 'mispronouncing' words that I've picked up from books. If English is so great then there should be no way to conceivably do so
Im sry was that supposed to be a challenge? Cuz that shit's easy
it was to highlight how easy Spanish pronunciation (technically Nahuatl since those are loanwords) is and how dumb English is
I say we say fuck every written langauge and just teach everyone the International Phonetic Alphabet.
