I
Ian Jackson
There seem to be quite a few refugees from alt.english.usage andGene E. Bloch said:This post gets my vote for best linguistic lesson ever in
alt.windows7.general !
Including any of mine.
alt.usage.english!
There seem to be quite a few refugees from alt.english.usage andGene E. Bloch said:This post gets my vote for best linguistic lesson ever in
alt.windows7.general !
Including any of mine.
Are you suggesting that we're off-topic here?There seem to be quite a few refugees from alt.english.usage and
alt.usage.english!
True, true. I've read your response and was impressed. OK I give youI taught the history of English, starting with Anglo-Saxon. Trust me, I[...] > Latin alphabet which it then continues to mess up and not
'several
phonetic systems' as you claim.
know whereof I speak. English spelling is pretty consistently phonetic
by origin, with the usual quota of exceptions. If you know something of
the source language, you will have much less trouble spelling than if
you don't. You'll also have much less trouble figuring out what the word
means, but that's another issue.
Maybe I should have said Kit as in Kitty Cat or as in bitty rather thanNot in the Latin I learned, where "vita" is 'veet-a'. "I" is generally
'ee' in languages which are directly of Latin in origin (certainly
Italian and Spanish), and this is one thing that speakers of those
languages seem to find impossible to 'correct' when they are speaking
English (no matter how fluent they may be).
They'd prefer 'something'.Are you suggesting that we're off-topic here?![]()
Perhaps I could go back to one or both of those and start a thread on
Windows 8 or something...
Sir, you've blown my cover!There seem to be quite a few refugees from alt.english.usage and
alt.usage.english!
I'm one of the thoroughly corrupted. For me, the 'long a' is heard twice inGranted, considering how badly spelling is taught in English speaking
schools, it's amazing English speakers spell as well as they do. Eg,
crap about "long a" and "short a", when the two sounds labelled thus are
not long/short versions of each other. The long a is heard in "father",
the short one in "cat". Anyone who thinks otherwise has been thoroughly
corrupted by bad teaching.
The "a" sound in "father" in a broad "a" - at least that's how I wouldChar Jackson said:I'm one of the thoroughly corrupted. For me, the 'long a' is heard twice in
payday, and the 'short a' is heard multiple times in "wham bam thank you
ma'am". The a in father is a whole different animal, neither long nor short.
Church Latin, or public school Latin?I guess most of French, and many English words as well, will have to
change their pronunciations.
Or maybe we could just admit that we are no longer speaking Latin, once
Mass is over.
They get everywhere; fortunately they seem to be the nicer people.Ian Jackson said:There seem to be quite a few refugees from alt.english.usage and
alt.usage.english!
[]some are more phonetic than others. My mother tongue is a language that
is fully 100 % rpt 100 % phonetic which is the reason why I felt like
As others have said, vita is pronounced veeta in Latin (or so weThe 'i' in Vitamin is from the Latin Vita meaning life and in Latin the
letter 'i' is always pronounced as in 'kit' --
choro
*****
(Indeed, that is our normal pron. of that word, though I'm less sure weTim Slattery said:That's how they pronounce it over there. As you've seen in the other
posts, they have good reasons for that.
Actually the first is _slightly_ longer, and there's a _hint_ of a y inBut they don't always. last night I was watching a British show called
"Dalziel and Pasco". They are police officers. But the first name
seems to be pronounced "Dee-Ell", as if you were just pronouncing the
two letters DL. What happened to the other letters?
English is just something that has to be learned, and placenames andThe best known example (this side of the pond, anyway) is
Worcestershire, which is pronounced "Worstershire". Then there's the
surname Cholmondley, which is pronounced "Chumley". Reading Martha
Grime's books, one of the characters has a butler name Ruthven. Only
it's pronounced "Riven". What?
[]some are more phonetic than others. My mother tongue is a language
that is fully 100 % rpt 100 % phonetic which is the reason why I felt
like
Yes, but can't you see that the pronunciation all the i's in these wordsHmm. But shouldn't the t be doubled then? (NB I'm rightpondian too, and
vite-amin sounds wrong to me too.) I also give you siren, filofax, the
drug ritalin (actually I've heard that both ways), vital, ... (-:
The very subtle differences in the pronunciation of the same letter orAs others have said, vita is pronounced veeta in Latin (or so we
believe; their recording industry didn't manage long-lasting records).
But not always the same anyway in Latin: similis would have two kitty
sounds, vita more an ee.
[]choro <[email protected]> said:[]some are more phonetic than others. My mother tongue is a language
that is fully 100 % rpt 100 % phonetic which is the reason why I felt
like
Which is that? I've always thought German is pretty phonetic, apart from
I am a bit of a mixed breed but Turkish was my mother tongue though IAs I said, once you learn the rules. Nearly all are more phonetic than[]In message <[email protected]>, choro <[email protected]>
writes:
[]
some are more phonetic than others. My mother tongue is a language
that is fully 100 % rpt 100 % phonetic which is the reason why I felt
like
[]
Which is that? I've always thought German is pretty phonetic, apart from
You say "once you learn the rules"!!! But as far as I am concerned the
letters of a 100 % phonetic alphabet each have their own sounds that
DO NOT VARY come rain or shine.
Italian comes pretty close but even Italian has got a few rules that
bars it from being considered fully 100 % phonetic.
If it were fully 100 % phonetic the 2 c's in CONCITA would be
pronounced the same but they ain't! But the rules are simple and
straightforward and very easily grasped.
English though! Especially if you accept letter combinations as symbols,
rather than individual letters as symbols; very few languages have a
true one-to-one mapping.
So your mother tongue is ...
Than a word would have to be respelled for every instance where a soundYou say "once you learn the rules"!!! But as far as I am concerned the
letters of a 100 % phonetic alphabet each have their own sounds that DO
NOT VARY come rain or shine.
A word comes to my mind after reading that: presumptuous.Yes, but can't you see that the pronunciation all the i's in these words
are corrupted in the British and American English presumably by people
with inadequate grasp of the language or at least of the etymology of
these words.
Thanks, Tim. Corruption loves company.The "a" sound in "father" in a broad "a" - at least that's how I would
categorize it, and it's very different from a long "a". The "a"s in
"payday", as you say, are long "a"s. I also agree with your definition
of short "a".
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