Rhythm: for pity's sake, who decided on one wrong vowel and one missing vowel? Misogynist: took me forever to memorize where the i or y vowels belonged, they all seem interchangeable.
God, I only remember that one by pronouncing it "ruh-hythm" in my head, so I spell it right, but still get to feel like an idiot. Win-win
Massaker the nme, leftenant! My roomie is one of those slope-brows who pronounce "across" as "acrost." I want to kick him in the larynx every time I hear him do that.
Also, scion. Nobody knows how to pronounce scion. I had a biology teacher once who pronounced it "skeen." Also, "syzygy" just has to be a joke. Turns out it's a word that means stuff, but no one can say it because no one has ever bothered trying. Harvard University has a department (Elizabeth Ann von Fleisch) researching its meaning. No conclusive results yet.
There seems to be some sort of soft American Revolution going on here...we ended up with the French squiggles too! Although I do prefer curriculum vitae to resume. Ah, yes, but we had to boot out the Romans, whereas the last time the French landed an invasion force they got rounded up by a bunch of Welsh housewives!
'Often'. Properly pronounced, the 't' is silent, so, 'offen'. Come to think of it, let's remove all silent letters from words which have them.
Okay...read this without the pauses. Yeah, I just read: Caught in a fraught and distraught naughty haughty daughter slaughter. I'm just gonna' back away now, very slowly. Don't know wtf that means, but I think Wreybies is starting his full moon werewolf change. I've always thought every word in English was a bit weird. Especially the word weird... it's just really weird. However, if these were changed, it would be hard to decide what they would be changed to, because everybody misspells differently, there's some that are commonly misspelled as "X", but that's not always the case. Deciding what changes into what would be the true roadblock here if it was ever decided to change the language. And by the way, language is just a strange word, don't try and deny it...
First, I coppied that list of -augh words directly from a google search. I didn't even realize that they do form a syntax in that order. Also I agree that spelling reform would be difficult in a language that a) already opted for etymology trumping phonetics, and b) a language that is spoken over such a broad area that the pronunciations can be very different from one region to another. (Like, how Brits find an F in lieutenant is beyond me.) So, tho I am a strong proponent for spelling reform, I think it's easiest and most productive to focus just on the ones that are wildly idiosyncratic and deal with them as they age into that category.
This is one of those statements that make it obvious that the word "idiosyncratic" is just the word "idiotic" dressed up in a tuxedo.
Parshal, porshon, pikshur, lam, nife, nock... I mean: partial, portion, picture, lamb, knife, knock. I don't have trouble spelling these words, but the way some of those consonants behave makes me uneasy.
And therein lies the rub. In some version of English, the "t" is pronounced, in others it isn't. (I see by your use of quote punctuation that you're probably of the British variety.) Even among American dialects, there are differences; I've heard "wheel" and "when" and "which" pronounced with the "h" aspirated or non-aspirated. So deciding on a single "proper" pronunciation of a word is well-nigh impossible, unless all lexicographers everywhere in the English-speaking world decree that we will forever expunge all variants but one. And that ain't gonna happen.
I was just messing around with ya' anyway. XD Precisely. We will never get to change English because, like most languages I assume, it has so many differences between regions and dialects. Southern accents are the worst too. Holy mother of everything glorious, I do not understand how a simple light (or lite for that matter), suddenly becomes "lyiet". [To be honest, I'm not really sure how to spell phonetically the way that they talk out here, it's really, really bizarre] For anyone asking, no, Southern people are not hospitable either, that's a facade: DO NOT TRUST THEM. Eef day tolk liek diss, it probly meens sumpin' rong. Geet ta heel aout.
[Takes a slight bow] I suppose I've spent enough time around it now to spell how they talk. Further South you go, it gets worse. Here in KY it's not truly "South", more of its own blend of Southern and Appalachian. Depends where you are too. There's a particular someone at my local Kroger that has such an extreme accent that it's grating across the ears. I'd rather listen to an Elvis song. "A hunka' hunka' burnin' dung...I meant love, but dung smells bad too..." (no offense to any Elvis fans.)
Scion wouldn't confuse people if the US and UK could agree on whether it should be 'sc' or 'sk' in words pronounced with a hard 'c'. Sci-on: sci as in science. I've never heard it pronounced with a hard 'c' but I might never have heard it with a soft 'c' were I in the UK. I can deal with the extra 'u' in words like colour and the extra 'a' in paediatric. But seeing sceptic instead of skeptic just doesn't look right.
No, American, (Amurrican in some dialects) but I do use single quotes in forum posts. I'm something of a SPAG stickler, but I'm not above (or below) borrowing from the Brits when it suits me. The 'wh-' words are a good thought, but I'll suggest that aspirated pronunciation is 'proper'. There's a radio talk show host who pronounces 'humble' with a silent 'h'. Drives me nuts. Speaking of aspiration, 'a historical story' or 'an historical story'? The latter for me.
I'll never not pronounce "Keynesian" with the stress on the second syllable, and a soft "s". Imagine "amnesia" with an n at the end, that's how I instinctively pronounce it despite having known better for years. Anyway I don't suppose we can spell it differently, I mean we can't change the guy's name. But somebody should do something, is my point.
Wait, are you agreeing with me? 'Cause... if I took the "L" out of Cylon, I'd get SKY-on... Now you're making me wonder if I'm mispronouncing Cylon... but, no, I've seen that on TV!
