#also it amuses me as a pacific northwesterner to see people encounter smth like 'rainier' for the first time and be like 'oh no. pvp time'

[anghraine]

So, English is my native language and I'm not fluent in any other language and all of my degrees are in English in some capacity. I'm fond of it, unsurprisingly; I actually think it's pretty and figuring out pronunciation is a fun puzzle for me much of the time.

There are other little puzzles kind of built into it that I do not like at all. But I do enjoy encountering unfamiliar words or names (in the sense that I haven't heard them before or don't remember hearing them, though I may know them very well in written form and have even heard them and forgotten the correct pronunciation). And it's fun to try and figure out which wildly inconsistent rule set should apply this time.

I especially enjoy this with words/names that were obviously derived from French at some point (extremely common in modern English, of course) and which might, as English words, be pronounced according to basic English norms, but also might not. Like, if a glaringly French-origin word ends with -et, should that English word rhyme with "let" or "day", two words that sound absolutely nothing alike? It's always an adventure to find out!

And by "find out" I mean "look it up multiple times" or "memorize every single exception you encounter, there will be many" or "I guess we're going with vibes."

I'm actually not at all a proponent of "English is THE WORST, it's PURE CHAOS!!!!" (this reads to me as "still the most special, but in an ironic way") in general. But it's at least fairer with pronunciation in terms of orthography, and I personally find it fun and interesting to trip into the pronunciation-of-my-own-native-language equivalent of throwing a dart at a board and seeing if today's vibes favor a silent T or whatever it is.