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[-] user1234@lemmynsfw.com 10 points 4 months ago

Loved the show Dress to Kill by Eddie Izzard. He thought thru was much better than through coming to the conclusion that through should be pronounced like thruff.

[-] Whelks_chance@lemmy.world 10 points 4 months ago

You say erbs, and we say herbs. Because there's a fucking h in it.

[-] The_Picard_Maneuver@lemmy.world 23 points 4 months ago

I don't think the British need to pick the "who's worse about skipping letters" fight. Lol

[-] SirSnufflelump@lemmy.ca 1 points 4 months ago

The only reason you pronounce the H is because at some point the brits decided dropping the H made you sound low class. So congrats on perpetuating the elitism

[-] revlayle@lemm.ee 3 points 4 months ago

"through" is just cheating at Scrabble

[-] refalo@programming.dev 2 points 4 months ago

do you have a flag?

[-] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world -1 points 4 months ago

My father used to tell me that ghoti was pronounced "fish."

GH as in rough,

O as in women,

TI as in ration.

[-] merc@sh.itjust.works 0 points 4 months ago

That's not how any of that works.

[-] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world -1 points 4 months ago

It is phonetically how it works.

[-] merc@sh.itjust.works 1 points 4 months ago

No it isn't. The letters "gh" doesn't make the "f" sound without the full "ough", you can't just take some of the letters out. Same with the "ti" in "tion". In addition, words trace their pronunciation from their origin. Words ending in "tion" are latin-derived, and shares an origion with "sion" (Mission, passion) and cion (suspicion). The reason that "ough" sometimes has an "f" sound is that originally it had a glottal stop, like the word "loch" in Scottish, but over time that glottal stop slipped and became an "f".

The point is, while certain letter sequences have surprising pronunciations in English, you can't just take those weird pronunciations out of context and create a new word. And you certainly can't say that "ghoti" is pronounced "fish".

this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2024
744 points (98.6% liked)

Funny

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