Can’t you just type a word into merriam webster and get an audio pronouciation?
Typing requires thumbs; something only primates have.
…another thing that (some) primates have is an island where rich people go to molest children.
Some of these primates are greedy and/or terrible primates, and they don’t want you to look up any connection between a primate named Trump and a primate named Epstein (spoiler alert, those primates rape underaged primates and brag about it to each other).
Mate… This post is about a funny meme about word pronunciation. There is no need to bring us politics here (or any other nation politics for that matter). There are other places you can go to to talk about it.
Folks like you are gonna tell me that I’m doing too much, meanwhile others say we aren’t doing enough.
My secret is; I know what to do and when.
Edit: checks notes, amemds notes: microblogs on Lemmy are probably apologetic fascists, or I am very drunk.
Double edit: Lady butterfly!? We were just talking about pulling hair together! I feel betrayed in a small box.
I’m just doing my part. Sorry luv.
Or…
The New York Public Library has Dial 917-ASK-NYPL (917-275-6975) to connect with librarians via phone Monday through Saturday from 10 AM to 6 PM. Available in English and español.
In fact I would wager almost any library would work for this. Librarians are by and large the most helpful and I judgmental people I have ever met. Every single interaction I’ve ever had with them has been positive.
I speak spanish and one of the first cultural shocks I had was when I as a kid saw an episode of some sitcom (can’t remember) and there where talks of a “spelling bee” a contest to see who could spell correctly, that was so alien to at the time because in spanish there are just a few words that are tricky, because they have some silent H or a P at the beginning but then I started to learn english and it all made sense.
“English: if you can spell our words we’ll literally give you a fucking trophy and a scholarship”
We have bees, and we also have really long, ancient words that no one uses or remembers like pulchritudinous, which means physical beauty or Myrmecophilous which is fond of ants.
In finnish it’s the same and I’ve even had the same experience! We write almost completely phonetically so something like “spelling bee” is an insane thought. English writing system is basically abstract at this point and you just need to learn to pronounce each individual word lmao
Just the fact that we can have a whole contest around the idea, and that there’s still room for words contestants haven’t seen before, illustrates just how insane English is.
English isn’t really a language. It’s at least three languages in a trench coat.
it’s wild to think that we embed miniature copies of Greek and Latin into English, for doing science and medicine. not just words, I mean a functional grammar fully stocked with roots and morphemes. we just make words like “holographic,” “isotope” and “synesthesia” (Greek), “accelerometer”, “prefabricated” and “refrigerator” (Latin), or hybrids (“television”, “microscope.”)
English is such a wonderful mutt of a language.
Fuck hybrids that mix greek and latin…
The worst offender: Decathlon, Greek sports in a Greek event (Olympics) and they use DECA! /s
Greetings from a Norwegian. (Some words of Norse origin, mostly those of pre Norman origin)
That’s what happens when you mash several languages together. A lot of English terms have a Latin-derived and Germanic-derived word meaning the same thing.
French spelling is a total shitshow too. what’s their excuse? Spanish and Italian turned out normal.
My buddy says “chasm” with a soft ch. We’ve tried to correct him. He doesn’t hear us. He also pronounces “tome” like “tomb”.
We play DnD together if anyone was wondering why these words would come up with any regularity.
I total believe you’re not in a weird magic cult winks
PTSD flashback to my ESL little self always mispronouncing choir after they told me to join to practice my English.
Another funny story! An ex of mine was an exchange student in Germany (from Canada) when she was a high schooler, and she attended a children’s choir concert where they sang “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off”, and in the line “you say tomato, I say tomato”, they pronounced “tomato” the same way each time.
I’ve heard “chasm” pronounced as both “chaz-um” and “kaz-um”
The correct one is “kaz-um,” just like “chaos” isn’t “chay-oss.”
Does he say “chaos” with a soft “ch” as well?
He also pronounces “tome” like “tomb”
My roommate in college did that. Drove me nuts, but the worst was that he rhymed “epitome” with “tome.”
Social studies teacher in high school dinged me 5 points for pronouncing epitome as epi-tome. Ended up with 95/100 but it’s the principle of the matter.
I don’t agree with that decision. Unless you had been specifically taught the proper pronunciation previously and still mispronounced it, the teacher should have just corrected you and moved on.
No, his chaos is thankfully chaos. It would be kind of fitting if it weren’t, though.
“kazum” is acceptable in my book. “Toom” is strange for a book though.
I had the misfortune of pronouncing rapping as raping in front of the class when I was 13
Like the post I saw once where a woman wrote she raped her little sister to help her sleep (with a picture of a baby wrapped in a blanket).
But isn’t the whole point of that to avoid the “oh sweetie…”?
More to avoid the “oh sweetie” from people you know and care about.
Though I wonder how much you could trust the pronunciation if they outsourced the call center to an English-speaking third-world country like Alabama.
Just use the Free Dictionary
Press the little buttons on top:
Ahh, simplified and correct.
Chitin.
Ichor.
Ick urr
KY-tin
Benefit of living in Australia is that every word is pronounced wrong so it doesn’t matter how you say it.
Can’t even pronounce our second largest city right lol. Melbourne became Melbin
Does that mean the game on PS4 is Bloodbin in Australia?
No because that would be logically consistent
Then can we force SciFi audiobook narrators to use it?
Ray Porter, I love you to fucking death, but you kill me sometimes…
I loved The Expanse, and Jefferson Mays is amazing
But “jimbals” drove me crazy
For Ray Porter, his inability to pronounce “Archimedes” was bad enough they made him go back and re-record a book.
Oh god yes the jimbles on Mays, I had forgotten about that, every time he would say that my brain would go “the what?” It would suck me right out of immersion every damn time.
Having not read this (yet! It’s planned) what is the word and how is supposed to be pronounced?
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/gimbal
There’s audio for us and UK here.
Hard-g; “gimbals” see “gimbal lock”
Is this one of those gif - jiff type situations?
I don’t know what the etymology of “gimbal” is…
Looks like the precursor words all use soft-g, and wiktionary even says soft-g is an allowed pronunciation.
So, yes, I think.
Conversely, just fucking go for it. Who even cares? Have a laugh about it!
I think mispronouncing weird words you’ve worked into your vocab is a nice middle ground between sounding insufferable and approachable. Yes I used ameliorate but I also mangled the hell out of it, so how smart could I really be?
how did you say it? Amelly-or-ate?
A-mealio-rate
Heh, ameliorate was a better example word. The real one that always comes to mind for me is debacle. I always read it as de-buckle (like unbuckling a belt) in my head until I heard someone on the news say it once. “Lol, that anchor pronounced debacle wrong … wait …”
Damn now debacle is a word I’m sure I’ve only ever read and never heard. Is it not “de-buckle”?
I feel like this is “awry” for me all over again
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/pronunciation/english/debacle
More like de-BAH-cle. Like a chicken, bawk bawk.
thanks, chicken man!
I’ve looked it up a bunch of times and I still don’t know if potable is “POTE-ah-bull” or “POT-ah-bull”
The first one, as it comes from the Latin “potare,” “to drink.” Sure, we could use “drinkable” instead, but too many people would understand how to say it and what it meant.
what about pote-ah-bull
That is what I was going for with my first option, I am just bad at phonics
Potent Potables – from (SNL’s) Celebrity Jeopardy.
I say it the first way. I’ll fight anyone who says otherwise.
it’s /ˈpoːdəbl/ in American English anyway.
Let me drop this on fleek resource: www.forvo.com The Pronunciation Dictionary. Longtime user. Ya just search the word, and get results from people all over the world saying it in their native tongue with country specified. It’s great. Hearing Americans say Gouda (a Dutch town famous for the cheese) is like taking a cheese grater to my balls. No, it is not “Goo-dah” of you. Repent!
When I check the dictionary, it says in the US it’s pronounced goo-dah.
It is, because we butchered it. Like how Lohss On-heh-lace is pronounced “Loss An-juh-less.”
Looks like we pronounce it like the Swede’s do, and German is halfway to English pronunciation. I would probably blame the Germanic parts of English along with significant Swedish settlement in US cheese producing regions.
Yep, same thing
Well … what is it then? If you don’t tell me I’m gonna keep pronouncing it with my Minnesotan accent!
According to the website (and Wikipedia) it’s supposed to sound more like “How-da” with the “how” sounding like you’re gearing up to spit on someone. And then other-non English speaking countries do pronounce the g very distinctly, but they still relatively follow the vowel pronunciation and sound like “Go-dah” as in “Go dad” (but if dad changed to dah)
Basically Americans are the only ones who say Gouda like “Goo-dah”
In the interest of not being bullied by my friends, I’m gonna continue to say it the American way because I don’t wanna be bullied. My Filipino friends still make fun of how I said “Pancit” incorrectly ONE TIME.
They say it that way because in the US that’s how it’s pronounced. The argument that it’s pronounced differently in other countries, so the US way is wrong, is stupid. Even within a language/country, there are regional dialects.
I grew up in the US, but my dad was from England. There were lots of times I said a word the way I had always heard my dad say it, only to have people correct my mispronunciation. The one that pops into my head was capillaries (the little blood vessels). My dad always said ca-PILL-ah-rees, not CA-puh-lar-rees. Neither is wrong, it’s just pronounced differently here and there.
Like the episode of Family Guy when Ian McKellen says “con-TRAH-versy” and Stewie says, “Oh, a CON-tra-versy!” in his fake British accent, to which he replies, “Apologies. Those of us with British accents pronounce it ‘con-TRAH-versy.’ But how would you know that?”
I am American and I said “Gowda”.
That right?
SAY IT RIGHT DUTCHIE“Gow-deh! Gow-deh!”
Guess he is a clumsy Clouseau-esque waiter!
When we were teenagers, my sister had obviously read the phrase “faux pas” and used it (correctly) in a sentence but pronouncing it “fox pass”.
It was perfect. Like a Mike Myers “what the french call… I don’t know what”.
Chitin.
(kai-tin)