• Treczoks@lemmy.world
    21·
    24 days ago

    At least you can learn which letters to ignore when pronouncing a word. But English pronunciation is completely f-ed up. How do you pronounce “read” or “lead”?

    • Elvith Ma'for@feddit.org
      20·
      24 days ago

      When the English tongue we speak.
      Why is break not rhymed with freak?
      Will you tell me why it’s true
      We say sew but likewise few?
      And the maker of the verse,
      Cannot rhyme his horse with worse?
      Beard is not the same as heard
      Cord is different from word.
      Cow is cow but low is low
      Shoe is never rhymed with foe.
      Think of hose, dose,and lose
      And think of goose and yet with choose
      Think of comb, tomb and bomb,
      Doll and roll or home and some.
      Since pay is rhymed with say
      Why not paid with said I pray?
      Think of blood, food and good.
      Mould is not pronounced like could.
      Wherefore done, but gone and lone -
      Is there any reason known?
      To sum up all, it seems to me
      Sound and letters don’t agree.

      - Lord Cromer, 1902

        • Elvith Ma'for@feddit.org
          6·
          24 days ago

          There are a few of them. There’s also

          Phoney Phonetics.

          One reason why I cannot spell,
          Although I learned the rules quite well
          Is that some words like coup and through
          Sound just like threw and flue and Who;
          When oo is never spelled the same,
          The duice becomes a guessing game;
          And then I ponder over though,
          Is it spelled so, or throw, or beau,
          And bough is never bow, it’s bow,
          I mean the bow that sounds like plow,
          And not the bow that sounds like row -
          The row that is pronounced like roe.
          I wonder, too, why rough and tough,
          That sound the same as gruff and muff,
          Are spelled like bough and though, for they
          Are both pronounced a different way.
          And why can’t I spell trough and cough
          The same as I do scoff and golf?
          Why isn’t drought spelled just like route,
          or doubt or pout or sauerkraut?
          When words all sound so much the same
          To change the spelling seems a shame.
          There is no sense - see sound like cents -
          in making such a difference
          Between the sight and sound of words;
          Each spelling rule that undergirds
          The way a word should look will fail
          And often prove to no avail
          Because exceptions will negate
          The truth of what the rule may state;
          So though I try, I still despair
          And moan and mutter “It’s not fair
          That I’m held up to ridicule
          And made to look like such a fool
          When it’s the spelling that’s at fault.
          Let’s call this nonsense to a halt.”

          - Attributed to Vivian Buchan, 1966

  • Blackout@fedia.io
    9·
    24 days ago

    I live in a city founded by the French and nothing is pronounced the French way. Can’t win.

  • bleistift2@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    3·
    24 days ago

    Is there a high-level explanation of how that clusterfuck happened? I mean, all the roman languages around France are fairly reasonable in their spelling.

    • hmonkey@lemy.lolEnglish
      11·
      24 days ago

      People used to pronounce all the letters and then over time they got lazy and stopped pronouncing everything

      • Acamon@lemmy.world
        4·
        24 days ago

        And they have actually removed some of them. The ê in forêt indicates it used to be spelled forest but that was so long ago that they’re willing to admit it’s not necessary. Unlike the k in knife, what would we do without that!

    • Sp00kyB00k@lemmy.world
      3·
      24 days ago

      There is an old explanation for this. I asked my French teacher a while ago.

      The old French language was written like you pronounce it. During the renaissance, they got into classicism and made the language resemble Latin. Hence tan became temps from the Latin tempus.

    • thisisbutaname@discuss.tchncs.de
      1·
      24 days ago

      Maybe it’s been around longer than the others? Italian is pretty consistent with pronunciation, but modern Italian is a relatively recent language

    • SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world
      1·
      24 days ago

      The pronunciation of words evolved but the spelling of most words didn’t.

      Like the Great Vowel Shift in English