#PRONUNCIATION

[foldingfittedsheets]

I, like I suspect many of the tumblr populace, ran into the issue in my youth of reading a lot of words I never heard spoken. My vocabulary has always been above average but my implementation is often flawed.

Like the day I told my dad I was the epitome of something and he laughed in my face. It wasn’t my fault that I didn’t correctly intuit the emphasis. (Mine was Ep-i-TOME vs Ep-i-to-ME).

My dad didn’t apologize for his rudeness but after my initial disgruntlement I just learned to roll with it. I’d get corrected and laugh it off. Some words were more frustrating though because it necessitated having to rework the word in my brain every time I read it. Like a few years ago when I learned I’d had “seneschal” wrong for decades. (I can’t explain why I thought it was sen-shull and not sen-es-shawl)

I learned that I had harbinger wrong during a Transformers movie without needing to embarrass myself. Thanks, Shia Lebouf. (Har-bing-er (wrong) made way more sense than har-binge-er (right) but no one asked me)

At this point in my life though I’ve managed to work out most of the kinks. I don’t often get corrected anymore.

But there’s one other snag that crops up between me and my beloved. I’ll confidently say a word and they’ll go, “That’s not how that’s pronounced.”

“Yes it is,” I’ll say, very firmly. Because in these cases I’ll generally have heard with my ears and repeated a word verbatim. I’ll know I heard it, so it can’t be wrong.

And pretty much every time I’ll be saying the British pronunciation instead of the American one. I’ve consumed enough British media that often it’s the only time I heard certain words said and I never realized American English handles it differently.

In some cases I’ll switch to the accepted American one. But they can pry machismo out of my cold dead hands, the American version is so stupid I can’t even handle it. I now recognize we stole the Spanish word but we made it worse.

[incognitopolls]

We ask your questions so you don’t have to! Submit your questions to have them posted anonymously as polls.

[makewavesandwar]

Reblog to escape containment, just curious here!!

[worrywrite]

Let's settle this.... Once and for all!

Reblog to start a riot.

[gg-ladybug]

Unsolicited Miraculous Ladybug Headcanon: Adrien Agreste doesn’t know how to properly pronounce his own name. Sure, he SETTLES with one, but on a theoretical level, he has no idea with what intention he was named with.

Mind you, it’s not even because of anything nefarious— he just had two very different nationalities for parents. The French and British pronunciations were used interchangeably, because Emilie and Gabriel often argued on a daily basis about how Adrien is ‘supposed’ to be said. (Have you ever seen an Englishman and a Frenchman argue about culture? It’s thermonuclear.)

Ah-dree-uhn vs Ay-dree-uhn is a battle that has been waged within the Agreste household for years

(Based on a very real conversation I had with a English-French person named Adrien on my trip to France)

[culmaer]

*NOTES : I know, the precise realisation of /ʌ/ varies a lot by dialect but don't worry about that. I'm mostly curious about /g/ vs /dʒ/ and /i:/ vs /aɪ/

if you're an non-native speaker, choose how you'd say it in English. or the option closest to your native language. only choose "other" if it's really very different. in which case please leave it in the tags/notes !

[janmisali]

one of the funniest things I see people say about "standard english" btw is californians who are like "yeah basically all american english speakers speak the same way so it makes sense to call that 'standard american english'" because you know they only perceive it that way because californian english has like every single vowel merger simultaneously so they can't tell the difference between other american english varieties. they're fish who don't know they're wet

[mapsontheweb]

Pronunciation of the first syllable of the name of Europe in world languages

by cmzraxsn

hi, enough people liked my last map where I looked at the pronunciation of Bulgaria, so I've made one with the pronunciation of Europe. A lot less consensus this time! As usual, the caveats apply about linguistic maps that depict monolingual regions always being a bit dodgy. And sorry about too many colours. Feel free to add in other languages if you know them or give corrections (politely!).

Names of Europe fall into two main categories: those derived from the Greek Εὐρώπη via the Latin Europa, and those derived from the Chinese 歐洲 - however, the latter is an abbreviation of a loanword from Latin Europa.

Some African and Native American languages use alternate exonyms, however - the most common being the word Ulaya or Bulaya, in Bantu languages, derived from an Arabic word meaning "government" or "authority".

The one exception in the map is Vietnamese, because Châu Âu is derived from 歐洲 but the morpheme order is reversed! And shout out to Sranantongo which uses "Ropa", just getting rid of the first syllable altogether.

Map template is derived from the one used on linguisticmaps.tumblr.com (heavily edited), and the language data mainly comes from wikipedia and wiktionary. Some phonetic transcriptions may not match the colours exactly, I've tried to fit them to the closest where I can. Use your common sense and don't nitpick too closely, please.

[wronghands1]

[incognitopolls]

This isn't asking whether you say it as two syllables or three, or any other details, just whether the middle of the word is a "sh" sound or a "ss" sound.

–

We ask your questions so you don’t have to! Submit your questions to have them posted anonymously as polls.

[first-witch]

I'm just curious, because I have one way to pronounce it, and some other people were disagreeing with me, so what do you all think?

Reblog for higher sample size

[fuckyeahgoodomens]

(bluesky :))

[pollsgalore]

*Imagine you're in conversation with a friend, and you eventually say to them "I have to go to the store." How do you pronounce the "to"?

[todays-xkcd]

I pronounce the 'u' in 'pronunciation' like in 'putting' but the 'ou' in 'pronounce' like in 'wound'.

Pronunciation [Explained]

Transcript Under the Cut

[The word "Tuesday", with each letter labeled by a box with an arrow:]

T: As in buffet

u: As in minute

e: As in record

s: As in use

d: As in moped

a: As in bass

y: As in gyro

[Caption below the panel:] Pet peeve: Ambiguous pronunciation guides