• Grizzlyboy@lemm.eeEnglish
    383·
    3 days ago

    The irony of writing the post in English, isn’t lost in you, is it?

  • Owl@mander.xyz
    21·
    3 days ago

    English mfs copying those words and once again changing their pronunciation <–

  • Treczoks@lemmy.world
    59·
    4 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
      691·
      4 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
          18·
          3 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

      • Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works
        29·
        3 days ago

        Horse and worse rhyme.

        Also so does cord and word.

        Did I miss something or were they pronounced differently 123 years ago?

    • KSP Atlas@sopuli.xyz
      3·
      3 days ago

      People have tried reforming English spelling many times to make it make sense, the only time a reform has actually succeeded is Webster’s reform, which is the reason why American English and British English have different spellings.

  • morgunkorn
    453·
    4 days ago

    you can say French on the internet, no need to self censor like your mommy will tell you off

  • double_quack@lemm.eeEnglish
    161·
    3 days ago

    English is no much better… In contrast, Korean and Spanish are quite “what you write is what it sounds”

    • FrChazzz@lemm.eeEnglish
      4·
      3 days ago

      Also in Hawaiian. I was first told “just pronounce all the letters.” This is why you can have words that are all vowels like “Aiea” (basically “a-ee-ay-ya” but kinda fast).

      • baines@lemmy.cafeEnglish
        51·
        3 days ago

        that’s because fucking missionaries came in, created the written language and standardized the spoken language then beat all the children into compliance

        then their children overthrew the island and beat them for speaking at all so it almost died and the revival was focused on survival of the language over nuance

        it used to have much more spoken variation

      • nyctre@lemmy.world
        3·
        3 days ago

        Tell that to Mr Wajszczak. Try and get any non polish person to spell it after only hearing it. Then show the name to them, give them a minute to commit it to memory then get them to spell it again. Tried it on 5 different people so far, it’s hilarious every time.

        • pedka@lemmy.mlEnglish
          11·
          3 days ago

          i tried it with 2 people so far, and both of them got it correctly

  • Blackout@fedia.io
    20·
    4 days ago

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

  • johny@feddit.orgEnglish
    9·
    3 days ago

    A lot of unpronounced letters are actually pronounced conditionally, for example in “Je suis un homme” the last s of suis is pronounced because it is followed by a vowel.

      • Sylvartas@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        3·
        2 days ago

        Silent h. (Of courses there are some rare, non silent Hs)

        Edit : actually the op was talking about the liaison between “sans suis” and “un” here. Though you do also do the same for the N of “un” and the O of “homme” in this sentence according to the same rules (and since that H is silent)

        • Owl@mander.xyz
          1·
          3 days ago

          Yup (btw op said “suis” not “sans” but it still works with it)

          Note that somethimes the silent “h” prevents the liaison. ex: “des haricots”

  • YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.todayEnglish
    73·
    3 days ago

    Let’s not forget they were some of baddest mfers during the second world war

    Edit: some French hating mfers in here‽ The French are some bad ass mfers! Don’t care what the doots say, I respect the French!

    • prettybunnys@sh.itjust.works
      5·
      3 days ago

      This is a weird comment but also confusing about why it’s being downvoted.

      Is it cuz it’s so random or because people are idiots and think you’re wrong?

      The French may have gotten collapsed but they fought tooth and nail the entire war.

      • scutiger@lemmy.world
        21·
        3 days ago

        The story is that Paris was taken in 6 hours, and that’s often used to mock the French for not resisting much. The truth is that Paris wasn’t damaged in the way London or Berlin were in WW2. Seems like a decent tradeoff in the end.

  • bleistift2@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    10·
    4 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
      16·
      4 days ago

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

      • Acamon@lemmy.world
        10·
        4 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!

        • Lemminary@lemmy.world
          5·
          3 days ago

          Me: “I’d like to buy a nif, please.”
          Store clerk: “You sure you don’t want some vowels instead?”

    • SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world
      9·
      3 days ago

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

      Like the Great Vowel Shift in English

      • Drusas@fedia.io
        4·
        3 days ago

        Or the much earlier h to k shift (think shirt --> skirt).

        To be clear, the spelling did change with that one. I just find it interesting.

    • Sp00kyB00k@lemmy.world
      5·
      4 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.

      • azertyfun@sh.itjust.works
        7·
        3 days ago

        The Latin thing is only a partial explanation. Some of it is changes in pronunciation coupled with a very authoritarian attitude to orthography. Few languages out there that changed so little in 400 years.

        So for instance the -ent ending for plural verbs (“ils mangent”) is silent because the “ent” sounds were progressively dropped. Then the written suffix logically started disappearing, and only then did the Académie bring it back because it was more Latin. If it wasn’t for these reactionary fucks that rule would have been reformed centuries ago.

        Unfortunately in the intervening time, knowledge of orthography became a very strong social marker. Because spelling French is so hard, the dictée came to disproportionately affect grades (seriously, old-fashioned schools still do it daily and it’s all graded and very severely), which coupled with the industrial revolution and alphabetization of the lower classes meant that shit spelling = prole = bad. So now orthography is at the center of the traditional value system which has all the conservatives pearl-clutching at the idea that children can’t spell “nénuphar” properly. Children’s purported inability to spell properly is like the number one moral panic that has sprung up every few years for the last century or two, but also orthographic reforms are woke (derogatory). The point of orthography, to conservative types, is for it to be hard so you can show off your perfect spelling to justify your social standing.

    • BestBouclettes@jlai.lu
      1·
      3 days ago

      I read somewhere that French was settled harder on purpose when Richelieu created the Académie Française. It was a way to separate the common people from the elite by keeping, adding or changing words to make them harder to pronounce and write if you didn’t have proper education.
      They’re still a bunch of old elitist conservative dudes with questionable positions on many modern topics.

    • thisisbutaname
      2·
      4 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