• Krauerking@lemy.lol
    161·
    2 months ago

    Try reading Japanese without kanji and see how rough it get with all the homophones.

    They have 3 alphabets and its called a “writing system” because of it.

  • Rothe@piefed.socialEnglish
    5·
    2 months ago

    Monolingual native English speakers are constantly being surprised about basic universal linguistic concepts, while proceeding to think it is exceptional to the only language they are familiar with.

    • remon@ani.social
      631·
      2 months ago

      They are all seals.

      • navy seal

      • some kind of seal on a pipe

      • wood sealant

      • seal on a letter

      • seal the singer

      • seal (animal)

        • TrackinDaKraken@lemmy.worldEnglish
          13·
          2 months ago

          Same, which lead me to think the second was some sort of solder pot. So, then I thought there was some word close to soldier and solder for the third picture of the paint/stain brush that I didn’t know.

          I got the three ‘seals’ at the bottom, though.

      • waz@feddit.ukEnglish
        9·
        2 months ago

        British English took over for me, It was ‘obviously’;

        Soldier, bushing, varnish.

        Seal, seal, seal.

        Couldn’t work out why the top row was with the bottom row at all.

        (There are no ‘navy seals’ to us, it’s SBS - special boat service, like SAS but bad-asser, and more secret?)

  • cholesterol@lemmy.world
    2·
    2 months ago

    Are homonyms/homophones more common in English? As a non-native speaker, I remember the vowel shift causing more trouble at first. Also, rules for shortening/combining words can be tricky. They’re/their is the obvious example. But then there’s won’t, where the apostrophe doesn’t simply substitute a letter in two words that work independently. And it’s/its is very confusing, as possessive is normally also marked with 's. Is/are is a whole new thing if your native language doesn’t distinguish.

  • davitz@lemmy.caEnglish
    18·
    2 months ago

    I think this might work better with 4 frames since 3 of these images show items that fall under the same definition for seal since their purpose is to prevent something from getting into/out of somewhere.

    • JillyB@beehaw.org
      3·
      2 months ago

      I think the singer doesn’t count either since that’s someone’s name which could be anything in any language. Also the navy seal is named after the animal. It’s 2 frames. “Seal” the animal and “seal” the keep stuff in/out

  • TrackinDaKraken@lemmy.worldEnglish
    852·
    2 months ago

    This fails because the first one reads as “soldier” to most people, I’d say the vast majority of native English speakers would think “soldier”, not that he’s a Navy Seal. Especially because My first thought for a Navy Seal would be coming out of the ocean in a wet suit.