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”?
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
Or “The Chaos”, Gerard Nolst Trenité, 1922
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
Horse and worse rhyme.
Also so does cord and word.
Did I miss something or were they pronounced differently 123 years ago?
They’re pronounced differently (although there’s a difference between British English and American English but for these that difference is quite consistent and you just omit the
r):horse [hɔːs]/[hɔːrs] - worse [wɜːs]/[wɜːrs]
cord [kɔ:d]/[kɔːrd] - word [wɜːd]/[wɜːrd]
How do horse and worse rhyme?
whore sea
wore sea
seems straight forward sea
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.
With debatable levels of “succeded”.
Indeed, some of his ideas never caught on, like masheen
The irony of writing the post in English, isn’t lost in you, is it?
English mfs copying those words and once again changing their pronunciation <–
Bordeaux
Bor-dewks? NON!
Bor-doh? OUI!
Edinburgh is pronounced how?
Ed in bruh
I live in a city founded by the French and nothing is pronounced the French way. Can’t win.
There’s a Buena in New Jersey. Bew-nuh.
English is no much better… In contrast, Korean and Spanish are quite “what you write is what it sounds”
the same with polish
If you ignore the randomly inserted z’s, that is
And English doeszn’t have ranzdomly inserzted z’s?
Same with portuguese
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).
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
English just saw the French doing this and said: hold my beer
EEE aaaaa uuuuuu.
Qwa?
EEEEE AAAAA UUUUU!
QWAAAA?
GIVE ME THE DAMN WATER
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!
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.
This needs the Mr. Bean meme of the English cheating off the French.
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.
People used to pronounce all the letters and then over time they got lazy and stopped pronouncing everything
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!
that’s just france being extra fancy again
Maybe it’s been around longer than the others? Italian is pretty consistent with pronunciation, but modern Italian is a relatively recent language
tru
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.
homme
Silent h. (Of courses there are some rare, non silent Hs)
Edit : actually the op was talking about the liaison between “
sanssuis” 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)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”
Je suis un omelete du fromaaaaage
doge being pronounced with a silent e is not very american.
I believe it is a conspiracy by HP to make us use more ink.
