xkcd

Mega85

Parents tell their children that Santa Claus isn't real while on camera. Are they some of the cruelest parents? The article says so.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/artic ... tears.html

Mega85

The usage of "ain't" for "did not" as in "I ain't get there on time" meaning "I didn't get there on time" does seem to be mainly an AAVE thing. Maybe some other dialects use "ain't" this way too, but most dialects that have "ain't" don't us...

Mega85

I (US) definitely have /dʒ/; I'm not sure if I've heard it with just /dj/. I might have a bit of a /j/ there after the /dʒ/ (so /ˈskɛdʒjl̩/), but if so it's really subtle and might just be because of the /ʒ/. I normally have two syllables, but /ˈskedʒ.ju.l̩/ doesn't sound wrong to me (I pronounce t...

Mega85

It does sound like they misconstrued the "Black English" assignment as applying to the entire word rather than just to that particular sense. If M-W had indeed assigned it that way, it would clearly have been a huge and uncharacteristic blunder, but it sounds like they didn't. That said, ...

Mega85

The petition Most of us have been taught at a young age not to use “ain’t” because it is not proper English. Merriam-Webster Dictionary, a reference trusted by millions of people, defines “ain’t” as am not, are not, and is not. Sounds simple enough, but investigate further and you will see that its ...

Mega85

Yeah, it seems like there was a misconception among the people doing the petition that it was referring to all the uses of the word "ain't", not just the third sense. Dictionary.com includes "do not, does not, did not" in its entry for "ain't", but it says "in some...

Mega85

There was a petition to remove the reference of "Black English" from Merriam-Webster's definition of "ain't" because it was viewed as offensive and discriminatory. https://www.change.org/p/promoting-education-or-discrimination-vote-today-to-make-a-change?source_location=topic_pag...

Mega85

How many syllables do you have in "schedule"? For me, the word is three syllables [skɛdʒəwl̩] "skej uh wul".

Mega85

Merriam-Webster lists "often" with a "t" sound and puts a "÷" before that pronunciation. That is used in that dictionary for pronunciations that are commonly prescribed against. Oh, I was wondering what that symbol was. From Merriam-websters pronunciation guide \÷\ The...

Mega85

Merriam-Webster lists "often" with a "t" sound and puts a "÷" before that pronunciation. That is used in that dictionary for pronunciations that are commonly prescribed against.

Mega85

The pronunciation Q pon comes from yod-insertion (the opposite of yod-dropping) in the word "coupon".

Mega85

Coo coo.

Mega85

Do you refer to a coupon as a "coo pon" or a "Q pon"?

Mega85

Do you dislike it when people write "yeah" as "yea"? I know someone who always writes "yea" in texts when they mean "yeah". "yea" is a different word with the same meaning, but a different pronunciation.

Mega85

They split like this for me: "tomorrow" "morrow" "sorrow" "borrow" "sorry" And: "foreign" "origin" "majority" "minority" "forest" "horrible" "orange" "warranty" "Fl...

Mega85

"tomorrow" "morrow" "sorrow" "borrow" "sorry" "foreign" "origin" "majority" "minority" "forest" "horrible" "orange" "warranty" "Florida" "horror" How ...

Mega85

Funny that you should mention "solder", because I was think about that recently (need to fix some speaker cables, but I've never soldered before), and consequently thinking about it's pronunciation. I've usually said it /soʊldər/, based I'm sure on the spelling, but the "correct"...

Mega85

In a variety of English with a three way merger of the "father", "cot" and "caught" vowels, "law" would work. The song didn't originate in such a variety of English, if it did, they likely would have used something like "law, a legislative bill".

Mega85

"la, a note to follow so".

Surely better can be done than this. "La, "the" in French" maybe? Also they got the name of one of the notes wrong. It's sol, not so.

Mega85

Do you pronounce "than" the same as "then"? I pronounce "than" like "then" in ordinary speech. When I say "Less Than Jake" it sounds like "Less Then Jake".

Mega85

Pronouncing "orangutan" with an "ng" on the end changes how the "a" sounds from how it would sound if I pronounce it with /n/.

"orangutan" = [əɹeɪŋəteɪŋ] whereas if I pronounced it with /n/ at the end it would be [əɹeɪŋətɛən].

Mega85

I remember back in the day seeing the word written "orangutan" on the board at school by my teacher and I thought surely she spelled that wrong, because that's not how it sounds.

Mega85

How do you pronounce "orangutan"? I pronounce it as though it were spelled "orangutang".

Mega85

The words "soar" and "saw" sound very different in my speech. Sure, but I wasn't talking about your speech. What I am saying is "soar" in my speech is not like "saw" plus an /r/ sound, the way that "late" is like "lay" plus a /t/ sound. Th...

Mega85

gmalivuk wrote:It still results in lots of homophones that aren't homophonous in American English, like "soar"/"saw".

The words "soar" and "saw" sound very different in my speech. "soar" is not "saw" with an /r/ at the end for me. The vowel is different.

Mega85

"disc" vs. "disk". For me, they're different things. On an old fashioned computer, discs and disks go in different parts of the computer. Computers eventually no longer used disks, and plenty of modern computers don't even use discs anymore.

Mega85

Is "nibling" a word? Wiktionary has an entry for such https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/nibling as being a word referring to a niece or nephew. However I've never heard of it until recently. It seems to be rare. If I heard someone use the word "nibling" I'd probably think they were ...

Mega85

I heard someone today talking about "wear and tear" and he kept saying it like /hwɛɚ n tɛɚ/.

Mega85

Are "one" and "uno" synonyms? "meat" and "carne"? Are "nein" and "yes" antonyms? Are "see" and "si" (Spanish for "yes") homonyms?

Mega85

Would you say these mean different things? "I cannot win" and "I can not win"? I'd say they do.

"I cannot win" (it's impossible for me to win)

"I can not win" (it's possible for me not to win)

Mega85

Does anyone pronounce the word "dude" as /djuːd/? I've heard older Southerners pronounce a /j/ in words like "due" and "dune", however the ones I've heard who do such don't use a /j/ in the word "dude".

Mega85

Does the term "soft drink" for a drink like a Coke, a Pepsi, a Sprite or a Mountain Dew sound kind of formal to you? It does to me. In Australia, apparently it is however an ordinary everyday term.

Mega85

The schwa for me is nearly identical phonetically to the STRUT vowel and I don't really perceive a difference between the two sounds. The schwa is an unstressed STRUT vowel to me.

Mega85

How do you pronounce "envelope"? I usually pronounce it /ɪnvəloʊp/, but occasionally will pronounce it /ɑnvəloʊp/.

Mega85

For most kids in school math is their most dreaded subject. Why is this? Is there something about our brains that makes math dreadful?

Mega85

How do say "idea"? I pronounce it with two syllable, with the second syllable sounding like a nonrhotic pronunciation of "dear".

Mega85

"pee can" is a can to pee in.

"puh cahn" is a type of pie.

Mega85

Why is onomatopoeia different in different languages? While English speakers say that ducks go "quack", German speakers say that frogs go "quak". Strange. Why the disagreement of what animals sound like?

Mega85

Why are humans referred to as "human beings"? Dogs aren't called "dog beings", cats aren't called "cat beings", sharks aren't called "shark beings" etc.

Mega85

It seems like more and more public places are getting TVs these days. I have heard of gas stations that have TVs at the gas pumps. TVs are popping up everywhere. Waiting rooms, restaurants, stores, malls, hair salons, gas pumps, elevators, and even public restrooms.

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