Languages! Are! Weird!

Any word with an s or a c in the middle bothers me - somehow I just keep getting it wrong. I have no clue why; generally I tend to write better English than most native speakers I've met, but this one trap manages to get me time and time again.

Anything but a simple four-letter word.

But seriously, decision, I keep getting wrong and maybe maintenance.

I hear ya!

I don't generally have a problem with spelling. On a computer I have spellcheck, and my handwriting is just squiggles anyway.

"Occasion/occasionally."

I never, ever, ever get that word right the first time.

I want to learn Spanish, but my damn Rosetta Stone program is on the fritz!

Might have to wheedle my sister into giving me lessons...

I'm pretty much that guy that laughs at people who can't roll there R's in both the Spanish way and the German way (which is more like a gargle).

My girlfriend can't roll her R's either and seeing her attempt it is hilarious.

edited 11th Feb '14 4:48:08 PM by terlwyth

I think I am physically incapable of rolling my Rs. It is causing me no end of frustration.

I found this video on Youtube I think at least one person will find it interesting.

The thing doesn't want to coöperate : /

Edit: there we go. The poem starts at 1 minute in.

edited 11th Feb '14 5:18:12 PM by Blackcoldren

Oi, the thread diein?

Silent letters are the bane of my existence.

And the word necessary. I've spelled it wrong so many times now that sometimes autocorrect doesn't even catch it!

edited 20th Feb '14 4:56:36 AM by ObasaReisan

-Sleepy- I Cannot spell squirrel. As a result I'm more likely to be seen/heard saying 'aquern'.

I can't roll my Rs either. Also what's up with the word "anal?"

I'm not at all sure where you want to go with that question.

In regards to the "water" issue, most people pronounce it with a "d" sort of sound, for some reason. Although if we changed the spelling you'd run into the "wader" and "wader" problem like you do with "tear" and "tear". Not the same word, just the glory that is homographs.

English can't be the only language with homographs and the confusing that causes.

Finnish is superior in this sense because in Finnish every letter has exactly one pronunciation, so you simply can't read anything wrong if you know what sound each letter makes.

That said, compound words can be confusing if they could be heard as one long word or two shorter ones - and of course we have words with multiple meanings, as well. It's not as much of a problem as it is with English, though.

As for "anal", I suppose the question is about the meaning the word has in psychology - referring to a personality type that is obsessed with cleanliness and order and rules and so on. This meaning comes from Freud. He hypothesised that a human child goes through various stages in their childhood, and any disturbance to any of these stages would cause a set of symptoms related to the faculties that developed during that stage. According to Freud a disturbance in the anal stage could cause a personality that is too fixated on order and cleanliness, or one whose tendency for order and cleanliness is too weak - so it could go either way.

Of course it's discredited and obsolete by now, but with Freud you have to respect the broad strokes of the ideas he developed and make sure not to believe everything he said. He was still a great man.

I wish English had a similar system.

A couple days back I saw an Englishman give what he thot could be a better spelling system. Was chaotic as all hell. Then again my attempts at spelling phonetically have never looked pretty.

• The Original Sentence: Once upon a time, the beautiful daughter of a great magician wanted more pearls to put among her treasures.

• The Englishman's Spelling: Uans apon a taym, da byutiful doota av a greyt madzhishan uontid moo paalz tu put amang haa trezhaz.

• My Version of Englishman's: Wŭns ŭpan e taim, ðŭ bjutĭfŭl døtŭ ŭv e gret mŭğĭscŭn wantĭd mø pélz tu pút ŭmŭng hé trézcŭz.

• My Own Pronunciation: Wŭns ŭpøn e taim, ðŭ bjutĭfŭl døtér ŭv e gret mŭğĭscĭn wøntĭd mor pérlz tu pút ŭmŭng hér crézcérz.

Note: I used ø's because 'o' was taken and my accent has the caught-cot merger thus all my a's and o's are pronounced somewhere between them. I tried to avoid overuse of it in the non cot-caught merged Englishman's pronunciation.

edited 20th Feb '14 2:16:08 PM by Blackcoldren

I'll try to write that as a Finn would if they were asked to stranscribe it, if they had never heard English spoken before. (I'll do the spaces where they belong, though - I won't try to put them where a non-English-speaking Finn would think they were.) Note that some of the sounds in English (especially vowel sounds, but also W and the j in "joke" and some other consonant sounds) are not used at all in Finnish (except maybe in loan words) so I'll do what I can.

"(W)ans äphon ä thaim, (th)ö bjuuthifal doothö of ä greit mägi(sh)ön wonthed moo phööls thy phut ämong höö t(r)e(sh)öös."

When I indicated a sound that doesn't exist in Finnish, I put it in brackets. If there's a t or p followed by an h, I mean that we would hear it as a h sound after a p or t sound. Sometimes English-speaking people don't even notice that sometimes their ts and ps come with an "aspiration" - a burst of air that sounds like the letter h. Try it. Compare the t sound in "stop" with the t in "tea" - you'll notice that the latter comes with a very small "h" after the "t". You can do the same with the letter k: "ski" or "sky" versus "key" or "kick". P, as well: compare "spike" or "spin" with "pike" or "pin".

One of the traditional tricks with which English-speaking actors convey Eastern European (or German) accents is to leave out the aspiration in their hard consonants. This sort of imitation would be very accurate for Finnish, as well.

You'll note that I felt free to use the letters ä and ö, which exist in Finnish (and are pronounced the same way as they are in German.) When and English source has a Finnish word containing one of these letters it is usually conveyed thus: "Kimi Räikkönen" -> "Kimi Raeikkoenen". The sounds are not exactly the same as the ones the Finn would have heard in the text, but this is the closest you could come with the vowels at our disposal.

The letter r is a trill, while in most varieties of English it's an alveoral approximant; so the r in my transcription of the text sample was also an approximant, though a Finn who had not heard English spoken before probably wouldn't know what to do with that sound at all.

edited 20th Feb '14 2:47:47 PM by BestOf

Mind me askin what the sentence would look like if they knew how to pronounce it? Seeing other other language speakers spell English with their own systems is interesting to me.

There is no caught-cot distinction in many American Accents. With the exception of Southern and New England accents.

edited 20th Feb '14 3:25:49 PM by terlwyth

If they already knew how English was pronounced, but not how it was written, I think it would look much the same - but they'd know that they have to invent letters for the sounds I had in brackets in my previous sample, so they'd probably try to invent a new letter for each sound. And I suppose they'd also come up with letters for the vowel sounds that don't exist in Finnish - in my example I approximated each of them to the nearest vowel sound in Finnish.

The aspirated hard consonants would probably still be spelled with an h after the consonant.

I think the way Finnish people approach English is illustrated rather well in the English spoken by Martti Ahtisaari, our former President and Nobel Peace Prize laureate. Here's an interview of him - listen to the vocal sounds and notice how he mispronounces them. He also omits particles and commits most of the other such mistakes that are frequent in the English spoken by Finns who learn it as a second language.

If he was a young student today, his pronunciation and grammar would earn him rather low grades, and he would be considered by his peers as not very good at English. That is interesting, as he was speaking English when he did the things that earned him his Nobel prize. It's kind of encouraging for someone like me - very enthusiastic about learning English but not confident in our ability to learn it properly and to get things done in English.

edited 20th Feb '14 3:30:19 PM by BestOf

The annoying thing is I'm having a much easier time understanding him than the interviewer. Perhaps mic quality or because his voice is deeper?

- 'Parently flone's a word, and my spellcheck hates it.

edited 20th Feb '14 6:19:41 PM by Blackcoldren

Sorry to double post but I just refound this and I thot y'all might find it interesting. Its Yola a form of English spoken in Ireland before Hiberno English took hold.

While the phrase "completely anal" is a thing we use to describe someone who is extremely uptight, that is not the only thing it refers to and is hardly the first thing I think most people would think of when hearing that word. At least English speaking people.

So I guess the second meaning can be attributed to Freud.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/anal

There's a reason I was wary of addressing that question on this site. It was incredibly vague, given the different things I know that anal means, (particularly regarding sex acts) and I'm not quite sure of the rules of this site regarding certain subjects.

edited 20th Feb '14 8:20:29 PM by AceofSpades

Can someone help me with the word 'hindred' pronounced to rhyme with kindred with the mean of 'that which is hindered'. I caught myself saying it, and have heard/seen others saying it. I'm wondering if this is some dulled pronunciation of 'hindered' or if it actually has a history. My internet searches turn up nothing other than it's sometimes said, which is just making me think it's the dulled pronunciation.

If it is just a different pronunciation I'm wondering how it came about being a noun.

If this is supposed to be an English word you may have just somehow gotten confused. I googled it and got an Urban dictionary definition, which obviously isn't a reliable resource and appears to use it as a different way to pronounce "hundred." Also, it provides a definition from a Star Wars wiki.

So basically you probably made that up yourself on accident or just misspelled the word.

-_- No, no I didn't. It's Shakespearean English "It seemes his sleepes were hindred by thy railing-". It is a different pronunciation of hindered that I and people around here use. It's use as a noun however seems to just be around here.

Edit: Out of curiosity at what cockroach sounded/looked like before being influenced by cock and roach. I came up with 'cacarootch'. Or at least that's what James Smith called them.

edited 20th Feb '14 9:18:56 PM by Blackcoldren