I’m picking “Colonel” needs to be respelled to match how it’s pronounced.

Try to pick a word no one else has picked. What word are you respelling?

  • XEAL
    181·
    10 months ago

    Oh boy, a word wouldn’t be enough.

    I would make English as consistent as Spanish is regarding phonetical consistency, or even more.

    Oh, you have never seen this word ever before and you don’t know how to pronounce it? No worries, these universal rules will allow you just get it right, because letters always sound the same!

      • ℕ𝕖𝕞𝕠@midwest.social
        41·
        10 months ago

        I dunno, Oaxaca seems pretty straightforward. oa is pronounced kinda like “ua”, I guess, but midword x is usually a “hh” sound anyway so that’s the only slightly weird thing.

      • Carlos Solís@communities.azkware.netEnglish
        1·
        10 months ago

        Fun fact, the Spanish X used to be pronounced like the Greek χ, which is why Meχico, Teχas and Oaχaca are pronounced the way they are now in English (formerly like a “kh” and now like a “ks”)

    • Zippy@lemmy.world
      1·
      10 months ago

      The only one they changed is the double l. ll to sounds like a y. But in some circles they consider that a seperate letter to the Spanish alphabet. Overall it is fairly consistent.

      Even better, Spanish words are typically broken into two (or is it to or too) letter syllables.

    • Ataraxia@sh.itjust.works
      1·
      10 months ago

      I mean knowing romance languages makes spelling in English easy. Also knowing something about Greek and Latin. Understanding the root of a word etc makes it a lot easier.

      • ᗪIᐯEᖇGEᑎTᕼᗩᖇᗰOᑎIᑕᔕ@sopuli.xyz
        1·
        10 months ago

        Right about spelling. For a non-native, it becomes somewhat difficult when it is about the “right” pronunciation of the written language. There’s a lot of French influence for example. Now they have a lot of French words, some feel horribly mispronounced and some aren’t. And then there’s a lot of dialects so that mixing pronunciations can hardly be avoided.

    • ThatWeirdGuy1001@lemmy.world
      33·
      10 months ago

      English is pretty good (generally) at doing the same thing.

      Y’all are just bringing up words that English stole from other languages.

      You can use phonetics to figure out how to pronounce most words in English.

      • ericbomb@lemmy.worldOP
        4·
        10 months ago

        We just really wish when we stole them we changed the spelling to match the pronunciation if we wanted the pronunciation to stay the same of where we stole it from.

      • Chrissie@discuss.tchncs.de
        1·
        10 months ago

        The amount of words that are not “stolen” from other languages is neglible…

        Cat from German Katze, from Latin catta
        Car(t) from German Karren
        Kitchen grom German Küche
        Bike/Bicycle from French bicycle
        Leaf from German Laub
        Beef, mutton, pigeon from French boeuf, mouton, pigeon
        Cow, sheep, dove from German Kuh, Schaf, Taube
        Computer from Latin computare
        Sun and moon from German Sonne and Mond
        Lunatic from Latina luna
        Death from German Tod
        Snug from Norse snøggr
        Funny from Swedish fånig
        Breeze from Spanish brisa
        Ranch from Spanish rancha
        Brave from Italian bravo
        Arcade from Italian arcata
        Dildo from Italian diletto
        …