Mine was queue. I assumed it was pronounced like kway. I thought queue as in a line, was cue, like the stick.
That’s how I thought “quay” was pronounced. Stupid me!
“quay” is pronounced like “key” afaik
Yep, but I read it years before I heard it in context. And it took me an embarrassing amount of time to get it right. I still fuck it up occasionally. The same with genre.
Audiobooks do the reverse.
“Wait, that’s how you spell that??”
I guess it’s usually with names, though.
*pronounce rather than spell, but yeah.
Particularly, many stresses turned out to be not where I imagined them.
No, I think they had it the way they meant to.
They hear the name while listening to audiobooks and then see the name written later.
A1 is coming for our jobs. It’s an evil cable of people.
My left eye twitches when niche rhymes with itch.
Why would you pronounce it “eesh”?
Because of the French.
every language pronunciation problem is because of the french
English is nothing if not a bastard child of way too many different languages and has inherited and then changed their pronunciation rules. English pronunciation will never make sense.
English is the C++ of spoken languages.
Or read it in a shitpost somewhere
I’m not sure. This seems to imply there aren’t even memes in the 33rd century. Back to paper books I guess.
I often start talking about a book I’m reading only to realise I have zero idea how to pronouce the names of half of the characters.
My sister recently blew my mind when she straight up pronounced “the Teixcalaanli Empire”, presumably correctly and without any hesitation. I haven’t heard it out loud before then. Hell, I didn’t even know it was possible to pronounce it in the first place.
I listen to a lot of audiobooks, so consequently I can tell you all about my favorite characters and alien races but fucked if I know how the author chose to spell it.
That usually works, but not always. The Wheel of Time audiobooks have two narrators. Michael Kramer reads when the POV is from a male character and Kate Reading reads female POVs. They apparently don’t to each other, because they pronounce many names differently. For instance, is the character Moghedien pronounced MOH-gah-deen or moh-GED-ee-in?
The problem with audiobooks is you can miss a key word or phrase when something is introduced and then go through the whole book wrong.
This is true. I dont try to consume “dense” material via audiobook. Usually LitRpg stuff or more pulpy scifi. I straight up dont have the time to read, but my job involves a lot of driving.
The thing that bugs me about people who hate on audiobooks (Not saying you were) is that yeah, someones reading it to me but I’m still supporting authors. Sadly books are a declining market.
I just call it the Tex Mex empire
How can you read like that?! I have to make up a pronunciation in my head or I can’t go on.
I sort of do. It’s half mangled version of the name, half an abstract identifier of the character, and there’s a bit of “shape” of the name as a whole too, I suppose. But when I want to say the name aloud, I realise it’s pretty far from what the actual name sounds like.
None of the Dune audio works can agree on how “Tleilaxu” is pronounced. I’ve heard everything from “telly-axe-uh” to “t’lay-lax-you”
We were actually talking about A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine. Can’t recommend it enough. It’s narrowly my favourite lesbian science fiction debut novel-turned-series about a galactic empire of 2019.
~Halfway through atm and enjoying it, reminds me a bit of Ancillary Justice. Didn’t know it was a series. What’s your runner up?
Gideon the Ninth. Very different, very fun.
I didn’t like Ancillary Justice that much. I loved some of the themes and how the world works, but narratively it felt like it was always pushing too hard to be dramatic. I think I’ll finish the rest of the series at some point, but it’s not quite for me.
Ah, fair enough. Though I’d probably swap Gideon and Ancillary.
Ancilliary is not 2019 though, and I don’t know if it’s lesbian enough. The rest of it fits though, I have to admit.
I LOVED Ancillary Justice, but all the set up just falls kinda flat in the next books. Or at least, the rest is just… Not really in the same vibe? It’s hard to explain…
I still really liked the follow up two, but definitely a different vibe
I read the trilogy recently and agree. She very much embraced the “shared universe, but different stories” author arc, instead of falling into the tropey “everything in this universe revolves around these 6 charectors you love forever” style that is way more common.
And now I was like - What? Isn’t it supposed to be Tleilax? But yeah, Teixcalaanli Empire, I miss the Memory Called Empire world, I need a third book now!
Um, not always.
(Points toward Trump trying to say anonymous.)
Acetaminophen was hilarious
Or it was the name of a character in a JRPG you played as a child.
JRPGs are like 50% book so I say we still count it.
True, though I don’t hold with the theory that reading automatically makes you smarter — Dan Brown exists.
To some degree you’re right, reading doesn’t make you intelligent in and of itself, but I do think constantly reading like that does make you to some degree smarter. Like even if you’re reading slop, you’re probably smarter than if you had been reading nothing.
It has also been proven that reading makes you more empathetic, because you are actively putting yourself in the character’s headspace.
I don’t think that it’s been proven that reading makes you more empathetic, I think that there has been a correlation established between those who exhibit empathy and enjoying fiction (or at least narratives where you adopt another perspective).
I think it would be almost impossible to prove that reading improves empathy, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the part of your brain responsible for empathy gets a workout when reading fiction.
English is just mispronounced French
Interesting history provided by Rob Words - https://youtu.be/TUL29y0vJ8Q
Poppycock. It’s mispronounced German and Latin and Greek and French and… well… English, all with a delightful seasoning of mispronounced Dutch and Spanish.
Poppycock.
From the Germanic “Puppenschafft” /s
“The History of English Podcast” is really fun and gets into the weeds of why English is such a mess.
Not be be confused with “The History of England Podcast”, which is also really good.
I love that podcast, and particularly when I’m driving, because while Kevin tends to repeat himself and speak slowly, it’s generally pedagogically sound, somehow in the service of his point and ensuring I don’t miss much if I get distracted. He’s also an attorney (probate, IIRC), so when he occasionally drifts into legal stuff, it’s doubly insightful.
Or indeed “The History of English Podcasts” which tragically doesn’t seem to exist.
Homage took me a while
I still don’t know the actual pronunciation of macabre.
Macaw-bruh
Macabre moment
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There are three accepted ways of saying it:
Ma-cah-bruh
Ma-cahb
Ma-cahb-err
Well if you can read IPA, it’s something like /məˈkɑːbrə/
Although I’d argue the ə can be silent.
M’cabr 🤠
An oldy but a goody
It’s a word like “cuisine” that doesn’t just come from French, it’s literally a French word and properly still pronounced the French way, so silent “r” and silent “e” on the end.
Yeah I’d agree with that, but unfortunately most people aren’t linguistic purists, so absolute prescription doesn’t really work.
It does if we refuse to give up.
You can try, but even if you have a majority of people using the correct version, still the other one can proliferate.
Kinda how people still say “could of” instead of “could have” even when there’s always someone noting the mistake.
Unfortunately languages go where they want. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
That’s when we deploy vicious mockery and downvotes. Languages may try to go where they want, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t yank on the steering wheel.
K-Pop!
puh·ta·see·uhm sow·duh. Nailed it!
adaguy!
this is dumb af every time i see it
there is zero guarantee its because you learned the word by reading. and i would argue most of the time it is not bc you learned it by reading. theres a lot of dumb ppl in the world saying shit wrong bc they heard another dumb shit say it that way
Sure, but I think I’d rather assume the best out of folks first then let them prove me wrong vs walk around with even more negativity as my default. 🤷♂️
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and why would them pronouncing a word wrong bc they read it vs heard it be “the best from folks”? how is hearing a word for the first time and it being mispronounced worse than reading it and mispronouncing the word?
its just dumb all around, and what youre saying is elitist given that there are illiterate people in this world. which is extra negativity you must be walking around with hating on the illiterate like that
Lost a spelling bee in 5th grade to abhor
I put an e on the end. The word took out the whole class, except the Korean kid. He was my best friend and wicked smart.
Won a spelling bee in 5th grade with the word camouflage.
No one got the u in the middle. The word took out the whole class, except me. I had been playing Metal Gear Solid 3 a lot and had few friends.
This reads like I’m meming on you but true story
