xkcd

Mega85

A pharmaceutical company apparently is guilty of having created a sixth pronunciation for the letter "x". "aylexithymea" for "alexithymia" This unusual scientific word is unclear as to pronunciation, but need not be. The first problem is that the A before a single conso...

Mega85

How do you pronounce the pizza place Sbarro? I typically hear either /səbɑɹoʊ/ or /spɑɹoʊ/ or maybe even /zbɑɹoʊ/.

Mega85

"Ghoti" doesn't make sense. "Gh" is never pronounced like "f" at the beginning of a word nor is "ti" ever pronounced "sh" at the end of a word. "Phoche" would make more sense as a spelling for "fish" .

Mega85

How do you pronounce "crappie" the fish? Traditionally it is /krApi/ but a spelling pronunciation /kr{pi/ is now common.

Mega85

How do you pronounce "gonna"? I pronounce it like "gunna".

Mega85

↶ in situations where you don't use "fucking"? I'm sorry I don't understand the question Situations where saying "fucking" would be inappropriate I still don't fucking get it. You still don't fucking/freaking/fricking/frigging/effing/really get it. Yep, any of those words will d...

Mega85

gmalivuk wrote:
Mega85 wrote:↶
in situations where you don't use "fucking"?

I'm sorry I don't understand the question

Situations where saying "fucking" would be inappropriate, such as at a church service, around young children etc.

Mega85

Freaking, fricking, frigging, or effing? Which of these do you use in situations where you don't use "fucking"?

Mega85

Stephen Hawking passed away today. He was 76. Amazing that he lived so long considering the disease he had.

Mega85

The thing about the name "police alarm" is the that it's too generic and might lead to people pulling it during fights or other situations that don't require the school to go into lockdown.

Mega85

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMLdm2rHLIU This video recommends that all schools install police alarms in addition to the fire alarms that they already have. People are responding "well, this will lead to prank lockdowns. You know how kids do fire alarm pranks? They'll be pulling the police p...

Mega85

I don't think any linguists seriously considers them to be allophones. They use them as an example of why phonemes cannot be defined only by complementary distribution.

Mega85

I've seen at said before the the sounds at the beginning and end of "hang" might be allophones. I don't think that is the case. Because people don't really perceive them as being the same sound.

Mega85

Sang sing song sung

Here are four related words. There's no seng however eng and enk are not very common in English.

Mega85

Do nonrhotic speakers typically distinguish "formerly" and "formally"? I think they can be distinguished as "for muh lee" "formerly" vs. "for ml ee" at least for some nonrhotic speakers.

Mega85

How do you pronounce "kindergarten"? I pronounce it to rhyme with "garden", not with "carton".

Mega85

Anyone pronounce "while" like "wall"? When I say "while we're at it" it sounds like "wall we're at it", however in "for a while" I don't have the "wall" pronunciation.

Mega85

A discussion on Reddit brought up how Americans pronounce /ɛɡ/, as in "egg". A number of Americans pronounce this as /eɪɡ/, such that "egg" and "plague" rhyme. I've heard this pronunciations not infrequently, but I can't find anything about it on Wikipedia. Does anyone...

Mega85

Do vegans object to calling their spouse "honey"?

Mega85

How do you pronounce "trypophobia"? As "trip o phobia" or "tripe o phobia"?

How do you pronounce "violence" and "violent"? With two syllables or three syllables?

Mega85

The word "colonel" was spelled "coronel" once, which, while not a exactly a phonetic spelling, was better than the present "colonel". https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/colonel English colonel is pronounced the same as kernel. This seems odd, but there is an exp...

Mega85

Yod-coalescence occurs in "sure" and "sugar". Those words got yod-coalescence early and so all varieties of English have it in those words.

Mega85

Most of the words above don't really vary and always have the /tʃ/ (ch) or /dʒ/ (dj) sound. "Mature" has a lot of variation in its pronunciation, and people who pronounce it without the ʃ also usually use a different vowel. (I never liked that pronunciation though personally, and it's les...

Mega85

I'm American. I also have "ch" in the word "mature", but I've heard some people use a "t" sound there.

Mega85

How do you pronounce "costume"? I pronounce it "cos choom". I've heard "cos toom".

Mega85

If you put together the -erry's and the -ery's pronounced the same, you get a MASS of words with ER as the crucial spelling, but if you try to use -ury rather than -urry, you get a completely different sound. So I think we'll go with -erry. But I appreciate your views. Cheers. Bury? Injury? Luxury?...

Mega85

Here's something I've found that the spelling reformer said: ''THIS is the famous "distinction without a difference", except that there are about 4 times as many -erry's as -urry's. And please note that Dictionary gives woor.ee, foor.ee, and hoor.ee (that's the sound that the U with a 'hat...

Mega85

What about "Pillsbury"? I pronounce that as "pills berry".

Mega85

A spelling reformer proposed that "worry" be respelled "werry". Tuesday, August 2, 2005: "werry" for "worry" A poll of Americans and Japanese about concern that World War III might occur in their lifetime prompted me to address today's word. -ORR- is very ambi...

Mega85

I knew this kid in high school who was from California, however spoke nonrhotically due to a speech impediment. People always asked him where he was from.

Mega85

Why do people claim that people from New Jersey say the state as "New Joisey" when no one from New Jersey talks like that? Just when have they ever heard someone from New Jersey call the state "New Joisey"?

Mega85

Dr. Seuss. His name is typically pronounced as /su:s/ by most people, but he actually pronounced the name as /sɔɪs/. I remember reading about that. Apparently it was the same way during his life, and he eventually accepted the fact that pretty much all Americans were going to pronounce his name tha...

Mega85

Dr. Seuss. His name is typically pronounced as /su:s/ by most people, but he actually pronounced the name as /sɔɪs/.

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...

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