It’s called a dictionary, and they’ve been doing it for literally years at this point.
You can live your life to the fullest even if you don’t know phonetic alphabet
Can you, though? Can you really?
A is for Alpha
B is for Balthazor
C is for Cappa
D is for Daphne
E is for Ether
F is for Alfalfa
You don’t need to. The Free Dictionary has buttons on every word that speak the word in either US or UK English
Cool, my book doesn’t have that though!
Better call the hotline then!
The pronunciation guide of a dictionary is pretty fuckin esoteric at this point.
I was educated in the 80s and they still didn’t teach us how to pronounce words using the dictionary.
Still won’t help if your locality uses a different pronunciation.
*literally hundreds of years
The American Phonetic Dic-tionary of the English Language, edited by Dan S. Smalley, Cincinnati, 1855, has a unique interest. The oldest English dictionary to be printed in a “phonetic” alphabet
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/epdf/10.1080/00335634209380758?needAccess=true
oh man, asking a kid in this era to look something up in the dictionary is quite the challenge.
In this book? why? why not just look it up online?
BECAUSE GODDAMNIT REASONS AND SHIT
The dictionary is now online and often includes an audio recording of the word or phrase of interest. Online is not always better than physical, but this is one of the cases where it is likely better. If you’re suggesting a less convenient method of doing something, it makes sense to request a reason. In this case I have to agree with the kids.
If you’re suggesting a less convenient method of doing something, it makes sense to request a reason. In this case I have to agree with the kids.
reasons and shit: Today’s generation - fortunately in many ways - hasn’t developed the skills needed to look something up. While you can mirror wikipedia and we generally always have access mostly - it’s still a valuable skill. ESPECIALLY now that AI is crufting up search results rapidly.
Now, if you’re visiting a dedicated dictionary site, well then you just have to deal with ads and cruft. None of that in Websters dead tree edition.
Do these always justify a trip to the bookshelf? Nah. But it is a useful thing to do a few times a month so they have experience seeking sources of information that aren’t digital.
Knowing the international phonetic alphabet is still sometimes useful, when you have a word without an audio pronunciation or trying to transcribe a particular pronunciation
My buddy says “chasm” with a soft ch. We’ve tried to correct him. He doesn’t hear us. He also pronounces “tome” like “tomb”.
We play DnD together if anyone was wondering why these words would come up with any regularity.
I total believe you’re not in a weird magic cult winks
I’ve heard “chasm” pronounced as both “chaz-um” and “kaz-um”
The correct one is “kaz-um,” just like “chaos” isn’t “chay-oss.”
PTSD flashback to my ESL little self always mispronouncing choir after they told me to join to practice my English.
Another funny story! An ex of mine was an exchange student in Germany (from Canada) when she was a high schooler, and she attended a children’s choir concert where they sang “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off”, and in the line “you say tomato, I say tomato”, they pronounced “tomato” the same way each time.
Does he say “chaos” with a soft “ch” as well?
He also pronounces “tome” like “tomb”
My roommate in college did that. Drove me nuts, but the worst was that he rhymed “epitome” with “tome.”
Social studies teacher in high school dinged me 5 points for pronouncing epitome as epi-tome. Ended up with 95/100 but it’s the principle of the matter.
I don’t agree with that decision. Unless you had been specifically taught the proper pronunciation previously and still mispronounced it, the teacher should have just corrected you and moved on.
No, his chaos is thankfully chaos. It would be kind of fitting if it weren’t, though.
I had the misfortune of pronouncing rapping as raping in front of the class when I was 13
“My favorite rapper is Puff Daddy”
Like the post I saw once where a woman wrote she raped her little sister to help her sleep (with a picture of a baby wrapped in a blanket).
Just use the Free Dictionary
Press the little buttons on top:
Can’t you just type a word into merriam webster and get an audio pronouciation?
Typing requires thumbs; something only primates have.
…another thing that (some) primates have is an island where rich people go to molest children.
Some of these primates are greedy and/or terrible primates, and they don’t want you to look up any connection between a primate named Trump and a primate named Epstein (spoiler alert, those primates rape underaged primates and brag about it to each other).
Mate… This post is about a funny meme about word pronunciation. There is no need to bring us politics here (or any other nation politics for that matter). There are other places you can go to to talk about it.
I’m just doing my part. Sorry luv.
Folks like you are gonna tell me that I’m doing too much, meanwhile others say we aren’t doing enough.
My secret is; I know what to do and when.
Edit: checks notes, amemds notes: microblogs on Lemmy are probably apologetic fascists, or I am very drunk.
Double edit: Lady butterfly!? We were just talking about pulling hair together! I feel betrayed in a small box.
Or…
Conversely, just fucking go for it. Who even cares? Have a laugh about it!
I think mispronouncing weird words you’ve worked into your vocab is a nice middle ground between sounding insufferable and approachable. Yes I used ameliorate but I also mangled the hell out of it, so how smart could I really be?
how did you say it? Amelly-or-ate?
Heh, ameliorate was a better example word. The real one that always comes to mind for me is debacle. I always read it as de-buckle (like unbuckling a belt) in my head until I heard someone on the news say it once. “Lol, that anchor pronounced debacle wrong … wait …”
Damn now debacle is a word I’m sure I’ve only ever read and never heard. Is it not “de-buckle”?
I feel like this is “awry” for me all over again
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/pronunciation/english/debacle
More like de-BAH-cle. Like a chicken, bawk bawk.
thanks, chicken man!
When we were teenagers, my sister had obviously read the phrase “faux pas” and used it (correctly) in a sentence but pronouncing it “fox pass”.
It was perfect. Like a Mike Myers “what the french call… I don’t know what”.
I speak spanish and one of the first cultural shocks I had was when I as a kid saw an episode of some sitcom (can’t remember) and there where talks of a “spelling bee” a contest to see who could spell correctly, that was so alien to at the time because in spanish there are just a few words that are tricky, because they have some silent H or a P at the beginning but then I started to learn english and it all made sense.
“English: if you can spell our words we’ll literally give you a fucking trophy and a scholarship”
In finnish it’s the same and I’ve even had the same experience! We write almost completely phonetically so something like “spelling bee” is an insane thought. English writing system is basically abstract at this point and you just need to learn to pronounce each individual word lmao
The “c” in Pacific Ocean is pronounced 3 different ways.
Pasifis Osun
Pakifik Okun
Pashifish Oshun
Great - now I have another fun fact to annoy my colleagues with.
Just the fact that we can have a whole contest around the idea, and that there’s still room for words contestants haven’t seen before, illustrates just how insane English is.
English isn’t really a language. It’s at least three languages in a trench coat.
it’s wild to think that we embed miniature copies of Greek and Latin into English, for doing science and medicine. not just words, I mean a functional grammar fully stocked with roots and morphemes. we just make words like “holographic,” “isotope” and “synesthesia” (Greek), “accelerometer”, “prefabricated” and “refrigerator” (Latin), or hybrids (“television”, “microscope.”)
English is such a wonderful mutt of a language.
Fuck hybrids that mix greek and latin…
The worst offender: Decathlon, Greek sports in a Greek event (Olympics) and they use DECA! /s
Greetings from a Norwegian. (Some words of Norse origin, mostly those of pre Norman origin)
We have bees, and we also have really long, ancient words that no one uses or remembers like pulchritudinous, which means physical beauty or Myrmecophilous which is fond of ants.
That’s what happens when you mash several languages together. A lot of English terms have a Latin-derived and Germanic-derived word meaning the same thing.
French spelling is a total shitshow too. what’s their excuse? Spanish and Italian turned out normal.
Or you can look up how to pronounce it. The IPA and often audio pronunciations aren’t that hard to find, unless you speak a more obscure language
So many of the audio pronunciations are computer generated, I used to like IPA but then I stopped drinking so it doesn’t really help any more.
International phonetic alphabet :3… though trying to pronounce some of the sounds in it does make you want the other kind of IPA lol
I just wouldn’t think to look up a word I assumed I was pronouncing correctly. I’m pretty good at this reading thing, and so I apply the standards, but words like epitome and ethereal are just here to fuck with us.
Tbf a call line wouldn’t help you in that case either, which is the premise of this. You wouldn’t call about words you assume you know
English needs a spelling reform badly. Like the whole point of writing is to put speech in writing. It makes no sense to have spelling be this detached from pronunciation.
busy should be bizy for example
English has the problem of taking words literally from other languages including the pronunciation.
Kindergarden - > German. The I gets pronounced differently.
Tibia - > Latin. Fuck who knows how it is pronounced, just do what you want.
Bureaucracy - > French. Yeah well the French hate people who want to learn their language, I guess. Nothing is written like it is pronounced
You call French inconsistent, I call you ignorant of its rules. They are many, they are complex, they don’t make sense (but, surprisingly, languages don’t ever make sense, they just are), but are for the most part consistent. Especially compared to English.
In French, “eau” is pronounced like “o”. It’s dumb. But it’s always true. Meanwhile, the “i” in “alive” and “live” are pronounced differently for no good reason.
The I in alive and live are pronounced the same, but the I in alive and live are different. English is fascinating, but I do not envy those learning it as a second language.
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Most French comment ever made that doesn’t include cheese and wine, in that it admits it’s basically the exact same as English but must pretend it is superior nonetheless.
Kindergarden
Validating your point: https://grammarhow.com/kindergarten-or-kindergarden/
Kindergarden - > German. The I gets pronounced differently.
Tinder.
Nah, we just need to go back to the old pronunciation.*
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oFX1nbD3dV0
“Knight” used to be pronounced as it’s spelt. “Outside” used to said like oot-si-deh.
*I am actually just kidding about that first part, but I do find it fascinating how much the spoken word has moved away from the originally phonetic spelling.
Over time, that is what normally happens to language (even French, yeah looking at you Gauls).
But, English and especially North American English is so predominate in the world, that may stop its otherwise natural development.
/not a linguist just friends with some.
English just needs a new orthography. Languages change in many ways, and phonetic drift is natural, it’s just that there hasn’t been a spelling reform to accommodate them, and at this point it’s gotten out of hand.
Even French? a lot of the horribly spelled words in English are their fault!
This is a non-trivial task, and not simply because people will refuse to change their habits as they always do.
You say that “busy” should be “bizy”, but are you sure about that? If we decide that Y should always have an “ee” sound, what do you do with words that start with Y? Or are we going to make it the rule that it always has a Y sound at the beginning of a word and an ee sound at the end? What about a word like “ripe”? That’s a different-sounding I than the one you have in “bizy”, so would that be “ryp”? In that case, you have to have 3 pronunciations for Y: one each for when it occurs at the beginning, ending, and inside a word.
Perfect is the enemy of good and all that
In Germany the spelling reform was adapted pretty broadly, there are few people who stick with the old spelling and that is of course their right
But isn’t the whole point of that to avoid the “oh sweetie…”?
More to avoid the “oh sweetie” from people you know and care about.
Though I wonder how much you could trust the pronunciation if they outsourced the call center to an English-speaking third-world country like Alabama.
Well…im my country there actually is :D You can call them, they are very nice and for bonus points you can also ask them about any questions you have regarding grammar rules and how you would correctly use them in you specific context
The New York Public Library has Dial 917-ASK-NYPL (917-275-6975) to connect with librarians via phone Monday through Saturday from 10 AM to 6 PM. Available in English and español.
In fact I would wager almost any library would work for this. Librarians are by and large the most helpful and I judgmental people I have ever met. Every single interaction I’ve ever had with them has been positive.
Insert me saying C-hash to a programmer friend and promptly being roasted for the rest of the evening.
Sharp is a pretty dumb name for that symbol imo
Yes, it’s obviously C-octothorp.
You’re not wrong, though I was a musician before a developer, so it always kind of made sense to me.
oh, yeah it’s from music - I should have clocked that
Me listening to audiobooks, “he winded his way up the path”. I always say winded like winding a spool of thread, but hear it told like deprived of air from the narrators…
surely it should be “wound” anyway?
