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Why does the English language sound so much different when it's spoken than when it's written?
Yesterday someone on TV said "pair of shoes" and I first heard it as "parachutes". They look totally different when written but at least to me they sound quite similar. That could cause dangerous misunderstandings. Imagine that one day someone doing a parachute jump may find out that in his backpack was a pair of shoes instead of a parachute.
Yes, English does have quite a large disconnect between the written words and the spoken. Whereas other languages such as Spanish (I believe), words are pretty much spelled as they are spoken.
Languges evolve and the way words are used and pronounced changes over time, but the written language is much more difficult to change, I believe in the likes of Spain they do change spellings of words to make them fit and it's also why Spanish children are much better at spelling! :D
Yes, English does have quite a large disconnect between the written words and the spoken. Whereas other languages such as Spanish (I believe), words are pretty much spelled as they are spoken.
Languges evolve and the way words are used and pronounced changes over time, but the written language is much more difficult to change, I believe in the likes of Spain they do change spellings of words to make them fit and it's also why Spanish children are much better at spelling! :D
I don't know spanish. However I've noticed some strange pronunciation of X, B and V.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mark
And J. For example Jose is pronounced as Hose.Quote:
Originally Posted by gadjo_dilo
Is it not pronounced Ho-say,
One of my favourite Spanishwords is "Güisqui" :pQuote:
Originally Posted by Mark
b and v sound exactly the same so are prone to spelling mistakes...
y and ll sound almost the same so ditto...
c is pronounced as a k if it's before an a, o or u... or as an z or an s depending on where you`re from otherwise...
you have accents...
otherwise Spanish spelling is simple :)
All languages evolves and English as spoken in the United Kingdom is pronounced a variety of ways depending upon where in the country you are.
American English seems to have simplified spelling and pronunciation...
http://wimp.com/haspoint/
does spelling matter...?
http://wimp.com/spellingmatters/
Smtmes if u lve ltrs ot it cn b uderstd. But otherwise spelling is important otherwise how will people know what you're saying?!
forgot the g: like a g before a, o or u but like a j before e or i...Quote:
Originally Posted by donKey jote
jeje (hehe)
its the same if you swap the order of the letters in a word;Quote:
Originally Posted by Mark
http://www.languagehat.com/archives/000840.php
Who remembers the Babelghoti?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghoti
http://babelfish.yahoo.com/
How should I say:Quote:
Originally Posted by donKey jote
For Sevilla: Sevilia or Seviia?
For Pancho Villa: Vilia or Viia?
I tend to use the " li" form.....
José ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by Cooper_S
French can be frustrating. The same word spelled and pronounced identically can have two completely different meanings, e.g.:
La tour : The tower
Le tour : The turn
"C'est notre tour de prendre la tournée de la tour." :s
I vaguely remeber hearing that the english languege has some 2000 special cases where words don't follow normal rules, where as in the finnish language there are about 20.
I would think it makes computer voice control rather more difficult in the english speaking techology world.
English is pretty straight forward to those that grew up learning it as their first language. I have a number of friends and business connections that find the English language rather difficult to learn/pronounce/spell/get used to.
wee shood rait as it saunds.
:s mokin:
I have been told over and over again that English is the most difficult language to learn if you didn't grow up with it. Since I grew up with it, I have no idea. I do know that there is many spellings that don't follow laws. When Spoken, idioms and local terms and accents can make people from Scotland unable to be understood by people in say, Louisana and then it is different again from the people in Newfoundland or Melbourne in Australia. The thing is, English is a language in a supercharged evolution all the time.....
For those of you like Eki, Ghostwalker, Gadjo, Rudy and many others, I salute your ability to converse online in English, it is something I envy in that I can ONLY speak English, and to me, the other languages are just too hard to grasp.
I speak minimal French, can read and understand a little more of THAT, but that is about it for me and language. Spanish when I went to Mexico made me feel like I was an idiot.....and Chinese? Oh lord.....I cant even hear words....just syllables all tied together.
No...I have no grasp for any language but my own..and it frustrates me but I just was never able to grasp anything else....
"li" form is not quite correct, more like "lyi" I think, but to be honest, I use the "yy" form for both: Sebiya and Biya :pQuote:
Originally Posted by gadjo_dilo
And it's not Pancho Villa: it's http://www.glittergirl.co.uk/banana/51.gif DAVID VILLA VILLA VILLA, UNA MARAVILLA http://www.glittergirl.co.uk/banana/51.gif
oops sorry I still haven't got over the 5-0 Barcelona gave Real Moudrid :D
No, that's how it's pronounced with an English accent, as in the joke about the two Spanish firemen: José and Hose-B :pQuote:
Originally Posted by Cooper_S
The o and e in josé are both short vowels: Spanish is so simple it only has 5 vowel sounds, a,e, i, o ,u.
Short and crisp, as in bat, bet , beat (oops that's long :s :p ), bott, boot (oops also too long) :)
Actually English is one of the easiest languages to learn the basics of. As it doesn't have genders or much conguation of verbs etc. However that's just the basics, what is difficult is to learn how to speak English well. Something natives often have trouble with!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mark
On the contrary, Spanish people are in general terrible at spelling, because they have never had to train themselves to pay attention to how a word is spelled. When I'm teaching, sometimes people get very impatient because I make them repeat a new word before I write it on the board. They want to see it written first, and then they pronounce it going by what they see, rather than what they hear.
Two books on the subject:
The Adventure of English - Melvyn Bragg:
This book looks at how the English language, survived invasions of Romans, Franks, Saxons, Jutes etc, and how it was able to absorb and evolve. It's written in a rather easy sort of conversational tone and shouldn't take more than a fortnight to read.
Mother Tongue - Bill Bryson:
Bryson's book is more concerned with how words arrived in English and travelled around the world. It touches on many topics that the other book does, but because it is now one of the "Popular Penguin" series, you can pick one up for less than a fiver.
The most difficult sound in English for people to learn is called the schwa. It's a neutral vowel, and that's why parachutes might sound like pair of shoes.
For native speakers who have no idea what I'm talking about, it's basically the sound of the second O in London.
Then there's Eats, Shoots and Leaves published a few years ago by whatsherface. Although, if I recall it was more about punctuation than the English language.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rollo
Of course you also tend to hear the words you know, especially in your non-native language. There is also a tendency to want to translate back to your first language.Quote:
Originally Posted by Eki
My wife, (whose first language is Spanish), would hear this just as you do. One reason is that in Spanish you don't say "a pair of shoes", you just say "shoes".
Could be. And I also wasn't paying attention to TV, I was reading a book in another room, so I didn't hear the beginning of the sentence.Quote:
Originally Posted by Alexamateo
sure you do: "un par de zapatos" is different to simply saying "zapatos"Quote:
Originally Posted by Alexamateo
just like "un par de coj..." is different to saying "coj...!" :p
one thing you wouldn't normally hear in Spanish (unless you're a cricket), however, is "quién es el que anda aquí ?", you just say "quién anda por aquí ?" :)
Cuando se come aqui?Quote:
Originally Posted by donKey jote
Well Spanish is my second language and I've never heard my wife in 10 years of marriage say "un par de zapatos" :p (and she has a lot of shoes!), but then I can't say we've spent a lot of time talking about linguistics either. :D By the way, did I mention we're expecting again.Quote:
Originally Posted by donKey jote
Shoes as a thing makes sense to have a pair of, but even as a native English speaker I marvel at the utter stupidity of "a pair of pants" or "a pair of scissors". I ask you, how many people are ever likely to buy one pant or one scissor?
You're expecting the Spanish Inquisition?Quote:
Originally Posted by Alexamateo
[youtube]gldlyTjXk9A[/youtube]
Well with the morning sickness and nausea, she would say it feels like torture. :DQuote:
Originally Posted by Eki
I had an associate from Mexico that was was fairly competant in (American) English.
What used to drive him crazy was how many words there were that had more than one meaning.
Here is a short list:
ball
bank
bark
bat
bend
bowl
can
case
check
date
drop
face
fair
fan
file
fly
grave
hide
jam
kind
light
like
line
mean
mine
miss
order
pen
play
point
present
press
rare
ring
roll
rose
run
second
ship
sink
star
stick
story
tire
trip
vault
watch
well
yard :rolleyes: :)
Now I'm really confused. So the V in Sevilla is correctly pronounced B......Quote:
Originally Posted by donKey jote
Yes v and b are pronounced the same, as a /b/
Always or on certain conditions?Quote:
Originally Posted by Donney
Here's an interesting site that has sound sample's of different accents and dialects in Britain:
http://sounds.bl.uk/BrowseCategory.a...s-and-dialects
Accents vary much even in a small area. Here are two samples from Oxfordshire, I understand the second one much more easily than the first one:
http://sounds.bl.uk/View.aspx?item=0...77X-0300V0.xml
http://sounds.bl.uk/View.aspx?item=0...56X-0500V0.xml