'Read' and its past tense are spelled the same. How should they be spelled?
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What about similar oddities in English?
(This question is inspired by this comic by https://www.exocomics.com/) (I couldn't find the link to the actual comic)
Edit: it's to its in the title. Damn autocorrect.English has so much of this sort of nonsense. Like the fish can be spelled ghoti thing.
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English has many contronyms.
- Clip: to attach (clip X to Y) or detach (clip coupons)
- Dust: to remove dust or to add it (dust the cake with icing sugar)
- Fine: excellent (fine wine) or not great but decent (it's fine)
- Left: remaining (I have 5 left) or gone (I had some but they left)
- Oversight: supervision (he had oversight over the whole process) or lack of supervision (I forgot to do that, it was an oversight)
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The French word for goose is Oie, pronounced "ua"
If you look at an IPA chart, you can see how going from /i/ to /e/ to /a/ is a process of the vowel becoming more and more "open" over time (said with the mouth wider and wider).
In Quebec, the vowel shift that caused "oi" to have a /wa/ sound didn't fully happen. So, the word "moi" is often pronounced more like /mwe/ or /mwɛ/. But "oiseau" (bird) is still pronounced with a /wa/.
The modern French pronunciation of the Loire river /lwaʁ/ influences the English pronunciation /lwɑːr/. But, other languages use a spelling that matches the French but have a different pronunciation. In Italian and Spanish it's Loira. The Latin name was Liger. So, it used to have a /i/ pronunciation before the vowel shift.
tl;dr: modern French pronunciation vs spelling is just about as bad as English.
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Well I say that like it's spelled. I don't make the zh sound at the end of that's what you're referencing. I know some do though.
You pronounce the middle syllable as "me"?
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We should be consistent and say "readed". While we're on the subject, why isn't the past tense of go "goed"?
We should be consistent and say “readed”.
But you should still pronounce it redded.
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And German has a word for it: Blei
Bly in Swedish. But we add some weirdness to the Bly part so a "lead pencil" is blyertspenna ("penna" meaning pencil). I can't think of another word where that specific addiction is used, and I have no idea what it means.
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Reading is a place itself, the football club is the club for that place
Next you're going to tell me there are places in the UK named Manchester and Liverpool and Notts County and St Johnstone and Celtic and Rangers and Port Vale.
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English has so much of this sort of nonsense. Like the fish can be spelled ghoti thing.
Except that "gh" is never pronounced "f" at the start of a word and "ti" is never "sh" at the end. The "o" is perfectly correct, though. Phosh.
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Bly in Swedish. But we add some weirdness to the Bly part so a "lead pencil" is blyertspenna ("penna" meaning pencil). I can't think of another word where that specific addiction is used, and I have no idea what it means.
I've looked it up and "blyerts" means "black lead, graphite" from German "Bleierz" (lead-ore).
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We should be consistent and say “readed”.
But you should still pronounce it redded.
But then it would get confused with "redead" which could be detrimental when dealing with necromancers.
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What about similar oddities in English?
(This question is inspired by this comic by https://www.exocomics.com/) (I couldn't find the link to the actual comic)
Edit: it's to its in the title. Damn autocorrect.what if we just change the past tense to red? simpler?
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If you look at an IPA chart, you can see how going from /i/ to /e/ to /a/ is a process of the vowel becoming more and more "open" over time (said with the mouth wider and wider).
In Quebec, the vowel shift that caused "oi" to have a /wa/ sound didn't fully happen. So, the word "moi" is often pronounced more like /mwe/ or /mwɛ/. But "oiseau" (bird) is still pronounced with a /wa/.
The modern French pronunciation of the Loire river /lwaʁ/ influences the English pronunciation /lwɑːr/. But, other languages use a spelling that matches the French but have a different pronunciation. In Italian and Spanish it's Loira. The Latin name was Liger. So, it used to have a /i/ pronunciation before the vowel shift.
tl;dr: modern French pronunciation vs spelling is just about as bad as English.
Ils sont fous, ces Français.
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it's means "it is". It is really not difficult, just pretend you are Data and swear off contractions.
Ah, thanks for the reminder to look through some TNG again. Data is such a great character and fills the role of the outsider looking in perfectly.
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what if we just change the past tense to red? simpler?
Make it
redd, to easily distinguish from the color. -
Make it
redd, to easily distinguish from the color.wrote last edited by [email protected]The irony with using Connect is that the text for "redd" being done in code format makes it red.
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On a different note there is Reading, a football club in UK, which is pronounced "Redding". This pronunciation is akin to the Reading Railroad from Monopoly (which I mispronounced all my life until today).
Little details, picked up along the way.
It's pronounced "Redding" Railroad?? All those times I sang "Take a look, it's in a book, Reading Railroad!" were a lie!
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what if we just change the past tense to red? simpler?
People already struggle with 'led' being the past tense of "lead". It seems like quite a few people extend the "read/read" rule to "lead".
In other words, I don't know if that would actually solve anything
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Except that "gh" is never pronounced "f" at the start of a word and "ti" is never "sh" at the end. The "o" is perfectly correct, though. Phosh.
Of course. But it does illustrate some of the confusing quirks of the language though.
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What about similar oddities in English?
(This question is inspired by this comic by https://www.exocomics.com/) (I couldn't find the link to the actual comic)
Edit: it's to its in the title. Damn autocorrect.The digraph oo is pronounced at least six different ways:
- boot, proof, boost, scoop, moon
- book, foot, look, cookie, good
- floor, poor, door, moor
- flood, blood
- zoology, cooperative
- brooch (just brooch; there doesn't seem to be any other word in the whole language using this sound for oo).
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What about similar oddities in English?
(This question is inspired by this comic by https://www.exocomics.com/) (I couldn't find the link to the actual comic)
Edit: it's to its in the title. Damn autocorrect.Façade is written using a letter that doesn't appear in English language keyboards (or in any other English word that I'm aware of).
