• Dozzi92@lemmy.world
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      18 days ago

      I don’t speak Spanish, but do Spanish authors pull the same shit English ones do, where they give characters absolutely nonsense names with ambiguous pronunciations? Is it even possible? I will read a name of a character or place and spend the next 20 chapters reading the word twice or three times in different ways.

      • I Cast Fist@programming.dev
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        18 days ago

        My biggest gripe with spanish is J having the “ha” sound. Juan is spelled “Hoo-an”, Jesus is “Heh-zus”, etc. If you can get over that, the rest is mostly phonetically sound, like portuguese

          • Welt@lazysoci.al
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            17 days ago

            It’s striking how different it sounds. I have knowledge of Latin, French and German, and Portuguese sounds way more like a German dialect on casual overhearing than the one it’s derived from or its modern descendant it’s closely related to!

        • Skates@feddit.nl
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          18 days ago

          I think you’ll find even in Spanish Juan is still spelled Juan and Jesus is still spelled Jesus.

  • lustyargonian@lemm.ee
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    18 days ago

    I’m pathetic at both pronunciation and spelling. I just know when I hear it lol.

    Auto complete isn’t helping either with the situation.

    • deo@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      17 days ago

      That’s how i was until i took a French class. Before that, I was trying to fit everything into a single set of rules with a multitude of exceptions. But really there are multiple sets of rules. Learning another set of rules for a language that had such a huge impact on what English is today really helped (although, there are still plenty of exceptions to keep in mind lol)

  • Koordinator O@lemmy.world
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    15 days ago

    My English learning process was me being a eight year old kid who wanted to play diablo. No clue about shit. Barely able to read in the first place and just going from one word which is similar to one in my native language to the next similar one. Like “ok, intelligence looks a lot like intelligenz. Dexterity makes my bow do more damage so it should be something like speed or whatever” so basically trial and error over the years. The pronunciation was accordingly. As an example, strength was “stren g t hö”. Not sure how I’m supposed to write what i said back then xD Still to this day from reading and such and not practicing enough speaking English some are way off.

  • brbposting@sh.itjust.works
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    16 days ago

    Read a quote somewhere a while back, to paraphrase:

    Never make fun of someone for mispronouncing a word; it means that their reading vocabulary has outgrown their spoken vocabulary.

  • norimee@lemmy.world
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    17 days ago

    I feel like this is especially true for English since it seems to me there are no spelling rules that convey pronunciation. You can have 2 words spelled completely the same save from one letter and the pronunciation is nowhere near the same.

    I’m not sure how this is in other languages, but in my native german (which is always said to be difficult to learn) when you understand the spelling rules you can always assume the correct pronunciation of a word. Certain letter combinations always amount to the same way of pronouncing it.

    I guess this is because both languages started out in the germanic language family, but over the course of history english adapted way more from other languages and just made them their own. Including differences in spelling, but maybe not as much pronunciation. Best example is “Bologna”, which is still the italian/latin spelling, but no one near italy would call it “Baloney” .

    I’m always amazed at how native speakers learn to write things like that, since you cant count on what you hear at all.

    • pyre@lemmy.world
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      17 days ago

      You can have 2 words spelled completely the same save from one letter and the pronunciation is nowhere near the same.

      ftfy:

      if you read a lot then you’re well-read

  • Matriks404@lemmy.world
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    17 days ago

    Jokes on you, I pronounce most of words in English wrong, because no one bothered to teach me proper pronunciation at school.

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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    17 days ago

    As someone whose father had a doctorate in English, I grew up reading and being told off every time I mispronounced a word.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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        17 days ago

        I loved my dad, but he was always a professor, so proper English was a priority. Honestly, that particular aspect of my upbringing is not one of the upsetting or traumatic parts.

        Interestingly though, I recently learned that he drilled something that was essentially incorrect into my head. He grew up in the UK and, when he was growing up, it was proper to write “an historic.” Here in the US and now usually in the UK, it is “a historic.” I’ve been using “an historic” for decades.

        If you want to talk about the shitty thing about having an English professor for a father, it’s when you show him a piece of creative writing and he responds by telling you about all the mistakes you’ve made rather than what he thinks of it. Again, I loved the guy, but he was always a professor.

        On the other hand, he ended up becoming a film historian and growing up with a film historian for a father is pretty amazing.

        (Thanks on the health front, we’re working on it.)

  • Trickloss@lemmy.world
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    17 days ago

    Some names would also throw me for a loop. When I first heard how they said “Hermione”, I was quite flabbergasted.

  • Snowclone@lemmy.world
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    17 days ago

    I did this, and grew up in a ESL English only house,I pronounce so many words wrong with a perfect American accent.

    • vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works
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      17 days ago

      Which American accent? We talken west coast standard, East Coast standard, Appalachian, Yooper, Inland Imperial, Bakersfield, Rocky Mountain North or South ya gotta he more specific.

    • 0ops@lemm.ee
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      18 days ago

      Cobbles, or moguls if you work with it. Granted English is my native language so maybe I just don’t know better, but idk, I think it’s kinda fun. I can almost always come up with a way to say something with exactly the connotations that I’m going for. And all the overlapping meanings and pronunciations make fertile ground for puns