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Thursday, December 19, 2024

Old words in English, spelled weird vs. pronounced

 Willing to be a lot of these are simply old words, spelled out when things were not settled, or pronunciations changed over hundreds of years (or moving to the US). Gonna make a little list and probably check it later. Pronunciation is based on common ways to say things in my region of English speakers. 


WORD - PRONUNCIATION

1. What - pronounced "wut" usually.

2. One - "wun"

3. Two - "too"

4. Women - wimmin

5. Fire - fah_ee_yer    or   fiyer  or  fi-er, but one or two syllables... you know what I mean. 

6. Water - waw-ter  ... how the hell is this pronounced like that based on the spelling? Compare to daughter. 

7. 


Local or USA oddities:

  • bizzare - pronounced "bizzar"... yeah, I think we say the short "i", but m-w says it is a schwa sound like bazaar. 
  • Mary, merry, marry - all said the same way around here. I think the hollywood accent coach on ty said there is one small part of the US where you can hear a difference in one of them. NE i think. 
Funny words that annoy me:
  1. Queue - sounds like "cue" as in "kyoo". Doesn't follow any of the damn rules that any other "QU" word would use. And why the EUE at the end? Bothers me a lot. 
    1. Examples of normal QU words:
      1. quiet - "kwi - it" with the long i sound on first syllable. 
      2. quaint - "kwaint" long A
  2. xxxxxx

These are fun, often mispronounced words: https://www.yourdictionary.com/articles/mispronounced-words
like
  • anemone
    (ah-NEM-oh-nee) not 
    (ah-NEn-oh-nee)
  • açaí
    (ah-sah-EE)
  • antennae

    (an-TEN-ee) - the plural can also be said "antennas"... Let's just say it like it's really converted to English. Latin is dead, let it die a little bit. 

  • Bob wire vs. Barbed wire. It's a fun colloquial way to say it, chill out. 

  • barbiturate
    (bar-BIH-chur-ite) not "bar bih chooy ite" ... WRONG, M-W.com says you can use either one as in: 
    bär-bə-ˈtyu̇r-ət

  • bon appétit
    (bow nap-uh-TEA) not -TEAT ... interesting, that makes sense, but I wonder about locals locals

  • cacophony 

    (cuh-CAW-fone-ee)  WRONG, M-W says it can be ka-ˈkä-fə-nē  -ˈkȯ-,  also  -ˈka-

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