• stebo@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    3 days ago

    English has no say in this. We have to learn every English word twice, once for the pronunciation and once for the spelling.

    • jlow (he/him)@beehaw.org
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      2 days ago

      Yeah, I love how the French got to weird up English as well. Whenever you ask youself “Wth is it written/pronounced this way?” The answer is always “Word adopted from French.” 😸

  • anyhow2503@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    English and French are on opposite ends of the spectrum of how predictable the pronunciation of a word is, based on the spelling. French may have a ton of extra letters, but at least it’s consistent. The english language has so many exceptions to its rules that you effectively need to learn to pronounce almost every single word separately.

    • Elvith Ma'for@feddit.org
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      3 days ago

      Three people in a bar are arguing who speaks the most complicated language.

      The English guy: “Well, we write London, but pronounce it ˈlʌndən”

      The French guy: “We write Bordeaux, but pronounce it bɔʀdo”

      The German guy: “That’s nothing. We write “Wie bitte?” [i beg your pardon] and pronounce it hʌ?”

      • JackGreenEarth@lemm.ee
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        3 days ago

        You chose London from the British one? How about Loughborough? Worcestershire? Every -ough word?

        • Elvith Ma'for@feddit.org
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          3 days ago

          I know, it’s just a way to make the joke more ridiculous with the (obviously nonsense German in the end). Because in the end, swapping “I beg your pardon” to “huh?” should work in basically all languages, I guess.

          I could have started with the French guy using “Paris” and then one of your places for the English guy. I could have kept the French guy on Bordeaux and used a German town like “Duisburg” as a starter - which is one of the cases, where you cannot use the usual rules to guess, how to pronounce the ui. And then do the pun in any other language with a random fourth guy.