Microblog Memes

This is 100% my girlfriend, and I take great pleasure in never correcting her, I find it charming.

As someone who has learned the English language primarily by reading thousands of books, I wholeheartedly agree. On the other hand, English pronounciation sucks big time.

I always knew that "misled" in books (pronounced mīzulled) and the spoken "misled" (mis-led) meant the same thing, but it took me until high school to figure out that mīzulled was only in my head.

The one that I mispronounced for awhile was hyperbole. I thought it was pronounced like "hyper bowl."

The english language badly needs an orthography reform

Simple, just read your books in IPA. Tæps ˈtɛmpᵊl

Not me! I only read audiobooks, so I know how to pronounce all those $5 words!

(Just don't know what they mean or how to use them)

I said "miss happen" one time in front of my girlfriend. "What?"

"You know, like badly shaped, deformed."

"Misshapen?! BAH HAH HA HAA!"

I grew up reading Warner Bros comic books my grandma had and thought Yosemite Sam was pronounced "Yosemight". Eventually figured it out. Later my backpacking buddy and I were looking at a map of California when he told me we should check out "Yosemight" if we ever get around to visiting Yosemite

Spanish would never pull this BS on you.

in-ter-MINE-able / in-TERM-in-able

Is one that jumps to mind which I still cock up to this day, I feel a little called out 😂

Reading through Lovecraft's (especially his earlier) work be like, "Hey Google! Define cacodaemoniacal.."

You're gonna need to know what gambrelled roofs and gables are too. Dude loved his gambrells and gables.

Also... fuck the cobbled together mess that is English.

Edit: some of it is regional pronunciations too

Soft "ch" chimera just makes more sense to me.

Trebucket

Truth...hah! I still have words I have to look up on the sly on the internet and click one of those definition services that will pronounce the word for you so I don't sound completely wrong.

My English learning process was me being a eight year old kid who wanted to play diablo. No clue about shit. Barely able to read in the first place and just going from one word which is similar to one in my native language to the next similar one. Like "ok, intelligence looks a lot like intelligenz. Dexterity makes my bow do more damage so it should be something like speed or whatever" so basically trial and error over the years. The pronunciation was accordingly. As an example, strength was "stren g t hö". Not sure how I'm supposed to write what i said back then xD Still to this day from reading and such and not practicing enough speaking English some are way off.

I call this being bookish, pronounced "bockish"

Metrocity

Read a quote somewhere a while back, to paraphrase:

Never make fun of someone for mispronouncing a word; it means that their reading vocabulary has outgrown their spoken vocabulary.

As a French Canadian moving from Quebec to Ontario, that struggle was real.