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What the fuck is with English spelling

Teaching kids English phonics sucks balls, haven't found a truly easy and complete method after two kids both in primary school. My son had zero issues and got it all rapidly, my daughter isn't having a fun time with it and we're having to give her extra attention in that department.

Anyone who thinks the mash up of languages that formed English isn't hard to teach doesn't understand this sentence is completely logical and yet totally fucked up -

Drinking my lite beer and walking light-footedly into the lighthouse I lightheartedly light my lighter to light my way but when my lighter became lighter there was no more light; this made me feel lightheaded and I had wished it had been lightful instead.

How about the fact Australia has 3 letter A's in it and all of them are pronounced differently. Yeah let that one marinate in your kid's grey matter.
 
If the 'GH' in enough is pronounced "F"
And the 'O' in women makes the short "O" sound.
And the 'TI' in nation is pronounced "SH"
Then the word 'GHOTI'
is pronounced just like "FISH"

Welcome to the English language.
 
Fake news. Fox news, coming from you fam

The category 4 Chad vs the beta cuckagory 1

fsi-foreign-service-institute-language-difficulty.png


1315686646001.jpg
 

Kamina

Golden Boy
Part of this is due to the fact that English developed in the past decades.
Others is just pure stupidity of the people speaking.

Stuff that make me cringe the most:
> Pronouncing “Mercedes” as Mercaydes”, its an e, not a fucking a or ay.
> Substituting “would have“, or “would’ve“ with ”would of”.
> Incorrect usage of do / don’t and does / doesn’t, “my moma don‘t like you” 😬
 
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Stuff that make me cringe the most:
> Substituting “would have“, or “would’ve“ with ”would of”.

It is confirmed you are not Australian mate. Here's some for you to chew on -

"Are you going to..."
Pronounced as "Ya gunna..."

"Would have"
Pronounced as "Woulda"

"Yeah Nah" = No

"Nah Yeah" = Yes
 

Kamina

Golden Boy
It is confirmed you are not Australian mate. Here's some for you to chew on -

"Are you going to..."
Pronounced as "Ya gunna..."

"Would have"
Pronounced as "Woulda"

"Yeah Nah" = No

"Nah Yeah" = Yes
Nah I am Austrian

Those examples dont bother me nearly as much as “would of“, because thats not only spelled but also written by some people. 😬
 
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GAMETA

Banned
That's coz you lazy ass Engrish speakers don't want to use extra punctuation.

Portuguese always sound like it's written because we indicate the pronunciation and intonation of the vowels :
A Á Ã Â
E É Ê
I í
O Ó Ô
U Ú
 

MetalAlien

Banned
That's coz you lazy ass Engrish speakers don't want to use extra punctuation.

Portuguese always sound like it's written because we indicate the pronunciation and intonation of the vowels :
A Á Ã Â
E É Ê
I í
O Ó Ô
U Ú
That is my favorite thing specifically about American english. It's soft. Doesn't have you constantly adding dramatic highs and lows or clicks or spits or bangs and whizzes. It'd just nice and boring the way it should be.
 

jts

...hate me...
That's coz you lazy ass Engrish speakers don't want to use extra punctuation.

Portuguese always sound like it's written because we indicate the pronunciation and intonation of the vowels :
A Á Ã Â
E É Ê
I í
O Ó Ô
U Ú
Ha no, there are languages that do this but not Portuguese. Vowels can still make different sounds in different contexts.

In Finnish for example, letters always sound as intended and as they are read from the alphabet, and there is no extra punctuation, technically there are 3 more letters in the alphabet though.
 

GAMETA

Banned
That is my favorite thing specifically about American english. It's soft. Doesn't have you constantly adding dramatic highs and lows or clicks or spits or bangs and whizzes. It'd just nice and boring the way it should be.

Well, when the "u" in "dumb" and "duty" sound so different for no apparent reason, that's when you'd have extra punctuation.

It's really no big deal and both languages share the same vowel sounds. The difference is that our variations of sounds are also represented in written language.
 

jts

...hate me...
Well, when the "u" in "dumb" and "duty" sound so different for no apparent reason, that's when you'd have extra punctuation.

It's really no big deal and both languages share the same vowel sounds. The difference is that our variations of sounds are also represented in written language.
"Eu e ela."

Every single E in this sentence sounds different and they are all punctuated equally. You just think it's easy because you're native, but for language learners, it is not.

If what you said were true it would be written like "Êu i éla".

I mean, a single "E" reads like "I". It doesn't even read like itself. Same for "O". How absurd is that? Yet, it is true in the portuguese language.
 
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GAMETA

Banned
"Eu e ela."

Every single E in this sentence sounds different and they are all punctuated equally. You just think it's easy because you're native, but for language learners, it is not.

If what you said were true it would be written like "Êu i éla".

I mean, a single "E" reads like "I". It doesn't even read like itself. Same for "O". How absurd is that? Yet, it is true in the portuguese language.
And still they are very close. Anyone would understand what you're saying if you pronounced "êu ê êla".

Now vowels like the "i" in English, where it can sound either like "ai" or "ee" (and there's the Y doing the same) or the U, that sounds like "you" or "oo" or "ã".

Take the name Hermione. The right pronunciation in English is "Her My Knee", but if could also be "Her Me Oh Nee".

In portuguese there's only one way to pronounce the name.

My son's name is Sean but said as read in portuguese "Se" like in "sentiment" and "an" like in "under". "Se-un". In English it sounds like Shawn and there's no reason why.

So yeah, portuguese may not be exact, but it's a lot more predictable.
 
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jts

...hate me...
And still they are very close. Anyone would understand what you're saying if you pronounced "êu ê êla".

Now vowels like the "i" in English, where it can sound either like "ai" or "ee" (and there's the Y doing the same) or the U, that sounds like "you" or "oo" or "ã".

Take the name Hermione. The right pronunciation in English is "Her My Knee", but if could also be "Her Me Oh Nee".

In portuguese there's only one way to pronounce the name.

My son's name is Sean but said as read in portuguese "Se" like in "sentiment" and "an" like in "under". "Se-un". In English it sounds like Shawn and there's no reason why.

So yeah, portuguese may not be exact, but it's a lot more predictable.
Point taken that english is even more messed up, but there are other languages that are really nearly exact (there's always some exception of course).
 

highrider

Banned
Well it’s hard to believe when you look at it now, but England along with Europe was actually capable of wielding power for most of recent history.
 

TindalosPup

Member
Educational programming will help if you can get her to watch it

"Between the Lions" helped me with all those weird rules growing up



 

Ar¢tos

Member
"Eu e ela."

Every single E in this sentence sounds different and they are all punctuated equally. You just think it's easy because you're native, but for language learners, it is not.

If what you said were true it would be written like "Êu i éla".

I mean, a single "E" reads like "I". It doesn't even read like itself. Same for "O". How absurd is that? Yet, it is true in the portuguese language.
Punctuation is not the only indicator of letter sounds, letter placement has the same importance. An "E" at the start of a word sounds different than an "E" at the end or by itself, also the letter before or after the "E" can change its sound.


Regarding what Cunth Cunth says in the OP, it is known as the Great Vowel Shift.
Before this shift vowels in English sounded the same as in the other European languages. What causes confusion is that many pre-shift words kept the original sound, so people are forced to memorize the ones that are different. Example: the "a" in "father" (pre-shift sound) vs the "a" in "bat" (post-shift sound).
 

jufonuk

not tag worthy
My kid is learning to read and they teach them to sound out the letters, which works with simple words like b-u-s or m-a-n. But then she starts trying to read other words and im constantly like 'oh that o sounds like a u here' or 'that a sounds like an e here' or 'that letter is silent.' 'Sorry kid, you just have to memorize the pronunciation of this word.' Fuck you william shakespeare.

Same herewith my son. Then you get the same spelling pronounced Different ways. Argh
 

Miles708

Member
Italian language sure has his own weird rules (like every verb is totally different depending both on who and when is doing the action... good luck with that) but at least every letter in the alphabet is always the same 100% of the time.
Also, every word ends with a vowel, which actually quite nice, since it makes the discussion sound much more musical (and shouting vowels it's just satisfying).

As a non-native speaker myself, I totally understand where your kid might be struggling.
As for probably all others bilingual users in this forum, the most effective english learning experience for me was by exposing myself to copious amounts of english videogames (and, later, to english websites and movies). I think no one learns a different language in school, really.
Let them play an RPG with a dictionary by their side.
 
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01011001

Banned
english is a shitty language... that's pretty much it.
nothing makes any sense, neither the spelling nor the pronunciation of 90% of all words.

I still love GradeA's videos about the english language

 

Susurrus

Member
I am seriously going through this right now with my 4 year old son. Reading Hop on Pop was going pretty smooth, if he didnt know a letter he just sound it out, mostly get it down. Then we came upon "like" and I"m like I don't know how to explain this to you. "Night Fight" ya you're on your own.
 

GermanZepp

Member
"Hablo en italiano con los embajadores; en francés, con las mujeres; en alemán con los soldados; en inglés con los caballos y en español con Dios. ..."

Emperador Carlos I.
 
i was playing pubg squads and i had a dude on my team from china.. seemed like a really nice honest guy and the way he spoke in english i found really endearing
 

nemiroff

Gold Member
Off topic perhaps; but for some reason my wife's Ukrainian/Russian family think the Norwegian word for bay leaf laurbærblad [ lawɔbaɹbla∂́ ] is the funniest thing ever. I can't imagine why..

Hit the speaker button to listen to it:


Bonus Danish version





Anyway, sorry for derailing, you can keep going now.
 

Makoto-Yuki

Gold Member
#3 most spoken language in the world.

i would say the issue is with you. it works for hundreds of millions of people.

I take it you already know
of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble, but not you
on hiccough, thorough, slough and through.
 
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