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Asklemmy @lemmy.ml ericbomb @lemmy.world 1y ago

You can change the spelling of one word in the English language to match how they are pronounced. What word do you pick?

I'm picking "Colonel" needs to be respelled to match how it's pronounced.

Try to pick a word no one else has picked. What word are you respelling?

395 comments

In this thread, a lot of folks who would use their one wish to make the language better.

But I would change "their" to be spelled "the're" and pronounced "all'y'all's".

I hope I do grow up to be more like the rest of you, and make better choices, in the future.
- People like you being in charge is how English got to this position in the first place!
  
  Your rite, and I regret my choices.
Nesscary

...Neccisary

.......Neseccary

Fuck it, it's now "Nesisary"
- "Needed"
  
  Do the needful.
  
  Required
- English is a second language to me, and at this point it's probably the only commonly used word I consistently mess up. It usually ends up something like 'nessecairy'
  
  Totally understandable, one of a handful of English words that I both know are spelled “wrongL and also have to put conscious thought into spelling before I write it.
- Can never remember how to spell this absolute fuckery of a word. I concur.
  
  English is my second language, but I've always remembered it by "one cardigan, two socks" necessary
  
  That's so weird. I'm dyslexic and all but this word is very much common sense for me. Maybe because I'm a polyglot and in Italian it's necessario?
- Necessary is literally spelt how it's pronounced though.
  
  spelt how it’s pronounced though
  
  I'm not sure you meant this as a joke but it is funny.
  
  Learning yet another irregular pronunciation because some N-hundred years ago their majesty Shithead von Cunt wanted to sound fancy and everyone just played along is not funny.
  
  cries, not knowing how to properly pronounce most English words
- That’s a bit unesesary
- Necessary? I would have never thought of any of those weird spellings. It's spelled like it's said lol.
- wait was it nesisary or nesusary.
  
  nesesary? nesasary? nesysary?
- Nesree
English orthography is awful. Hard "c" AND soft "c"? Are you crazy? How about that "k" that is already the hard c sound? It should be "kat" and "kar". And it only goes downhill from there (or their?!?).

We should clean it up someday. But we'll probably end up with LOL-WTF-speak.
- Some of the low hanging fruit would just be to pick one pronunciation of "oo" and stick with it:
  
  book
  
  blood
  
  floor
  
  brooch
  
  boot
  
  The problem is that English has far more vowel sounds than vowels. And that's without even having certain sounds that are common in other languages like "ü".
  
  Linguistics would teach that it is the orthography that is flawed. The English language has many vowel sounds, more than most languages. But as you demonstrate, the orthography "lumps" many of them together. Which, again, is why I think English orthography is awful.
  
  There's a great article at Wikipedia, scroll down to the "Vowels" section: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_phonology
  
  There's a link the the article above to this page, which I don't suggest viewing on your phone. It has a great effort to document vowels across dialects of English, scroll down again to the huge table: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabet_chart_for_English_dialects
  
  Be careful, the linguistics "rabbit hole" is deep (but fascinating)!
- It's not all bad. The varied spellings of English help with visual pattern recognition and increased reading speed.
- That must have already happened and we got the Geordie accent from it!
Comfterble
- Kumfirtubble
- But saying "com-fidi-ble" is so much more fun
Macabre. Why do you need two silent letters?
- Permanently Deleted
- Blame the French.
- Please wait in the queue with four unpronounced letters
  
  I always pronounce this "quayway"
- British English voices those letters in most accents. I think the two silent letters is just a North American thing.
  
  Similar to herb.
  
  Not saying you're wrong at all, it's not exactly a common word to hear said out loud. But I've never heard anyone do this and the very idea of it blows my mind.
  
  (NE England, here)
  
  Why use a French word then?
- Ma-carb, much better
- "queue", 4/5 letters are silent.
- Wait how is that pronounced? I've always read it as Mah-Ca-Burr. It's one of these words I learned through text exposure rather than English classes...
Might start an argument but:
GIF -> GHIF
- It’s actually pronounced “JIF”
  
  It stands for the Jraphics Interchange Format
  
  Giraffics? 🦒
  
  JIF is peanut butter
  
  Jolly Image Format
  
  https://youtu.be/Nrk8sqZfsgI?si=20rIrWuZbuPPeJua
- GH as in "laugh"? People'd start flame wars over whether "FIF" is the intended pronunciation...
Arkinsaw
- "Arkansas" and "Kansas" are both from the Osage language, but the former passed through French on its way to English.
  
  i'm from somewhere in europe and always wondered why you guys would pronounce those two so different!
  
  I've heard that, but "Ar Kan Saw" is nothing like how a French person would pronounce "Arkansas"
  
  That is interesting. Do you have a source?
  
  In Spanish they do rhyme and their endings are pronounced the exact same, as in Kansas. I was greatly puzzled when I discovered that the French managed to mangle the name Arkansas that badly back in the day
- Permanently Deleted
  
  It's the pirate Kansas.
  
  2010 Arkansas Code Title 1 - General Provisions Chapter 4 - State Symbols, Motto, Etc § 1-4-105 - Pronunciation of state name.
  
  Be it therefore resolved by both houses of the General Assembly, that the only true pronunciation of the name of the state, in the opinion of this body, is that received by the French from the native Indians and committed to writing in the French word representing the sound. It should be pronounced in three (3) syllables, with the final "s" silent, the "a" in each syllable with the Italian sound, and the accent on the first and last syllables. The pronunciation with the accent on the second syllable with the sound of "a" in "man" and the sounding of the terminal "s" is an innovation to be discouraged.
- Brit here, I only realised a couple of years ago that the Arkansaw I heard mentioned in American TV and movies was actually the Arkansas I could see on maps. I think it was something said on Reddit, probably a thread similar to this, that was the revelation. And when I tell other Brits they're invariably similarly clueless, and quite gobsmacked. I'm not sure if anyone I've mentioned it too has said "oh yeah I knew that".
Since Queue has already been posted: Quay. Now spelled Kee.
- You and I pronounce 'quay' very differently.
  
  How do you pronounce it? I had some American tourists ask me for directions to the "kway" before. Only time I've ever heard a different pronunciation.
- kɛɪ 🤷
  
  relevant username
It's aluminium you stupid Americans.
I just wish we spelled things in a more German-'esk' fashion. They use K more appropriately. Examples such as "panik" and "akkordeon" for accordion. I find their spelling to be more straightforward and sensical.
Thou shalt spell the word "Pheonix" P-H-E-O-N-I-X, not P-H-O-E-N-I-X, regardless of what the Oxford English Dictionary tells you.
- feenicks
- Fenix, like the dude from StarCraft?
- Thou shall not wish your girlfriend. Was a freak. Like me.
- Oasis, just a band
  
  The Beach Boys? Just a band.
- Dan Le Sac - sweet reference.
Worcestershire
Wednesday to Windsday or Wensday.
- Totally not me having problems spelling that word at 29.
  
  What IS that D doing THERE?
  
  Permanently Deleted
  
  Wait you don't pronounce the D? You just say wennesday?
  
  Its best
- Whensday?
- Or closer to the founding fathers' intent: Wotan's Day
  
  Odinsday
  
  Wotan’s Day ain’t nothing to fuck with.
Ressepee
- I like this one because I instantly knew what word it was despite it having a brand new spelling. Almost like letters should have meanings.
  
  I was wondering if Reese pee was liquid peanut butter for a moment.
  
  English isn't my native language. I thought for years (and I'm talking of 10+) it would be pronounced "ree-sipe".
- Re-ci-pe... yeah that's just how yoy read it.
Though shall now be spelled: Tho.
- to rhyme with Pho?
  
  No, it doesn't rhyme with "Duh?"
  
  It's already pronounced that way.
- Y tho?
  
  Idk my bff jill?
Aisle should become something like ile.
All those words that are pronounce the same but have completely different meanings. Particularly the common words.

To two too

No know

Their there

By buy bye

Then there there ones spelt the same but two different meanings and silent letters to even be better.

Go right, you're right.

Didn't know how messed up English spelling/pronunciation is till I started to learn Spanish and nearly every word is pronounced exactly as spelled.
- By buy bye
  
  N'SYNC intensifies
- Not knot naught
I think the main issue with this is that pronunciation changes over time, in addition to varying by area. So if we keep changing the spelling, written works will became unreadable faster.

But I would suggest that any band names that use umlauts/foreign letters should be pronounced accordingly.
- But I would suggest that any band names that use umlauts/foreign letters should be pronounced accordingly.
  
  Motörhead still kind of works.
- Yeees I love twenty one pilots personally, but when they started using "ø" I really wanted it to be pronounced as part of the name so they could hear how ridiculous it sounds
Oh boy, a word wouldn't be enough.

I would make English as consistent as Spanish is regarding phonetical consistency, or even more.

Oh, you have never seen this word ever before and you don't know how to pronounce it? No worries, these universal rules will allow you just get it right, because letters always sound the same!
- “Spanish regarding phonetical consistency”
  
  Checking in from Oaxaca
  
  I dunno, Oaxaca seems pretty straightforward. oa is pronounced kinda like "ua", I guess, but midword x is usually a "hh" sound anyway so that's the only slightly weird thing.
  
  Fun fact, the Spanish X used to be pronounced like the Greek χ, which is why Meχico, Teχas and Oaχaca are pronounced the way they are now in English (formerly like a "kh" and now like a "ks")
- The only one they changed is the double l. ll to sounds like a y. But in some circles they consider that a seperate letter to the Spanish alphabet. Overall it is fairly consistent.
  
  Even better, Spanish words are typically broken into two (or is it to or too) letter syllables.
- I mean knowing romance languages makes spelling in English easy. Also knowing something about Greek and Latin. Understanding the root of a word etc makes it a lot easier.
  
  Right about spelling. For a non-native, it becomes somewhat difficult when it is about the "right" pronunciation of the written language. There's a lot of French influence for example. Now they have a lot of French words, some feel horribly mispronounced and some aren't. And then there's a lot of dialects so that mixing pronunciations can hardly be avoided.
- English is pretty good (generally) at doing the same thing.
  
  Y'all are just bringing up words that English stole from other languages.
  
  You can use phonetics to figure out how to pronounce most words in English.
  
  We just really wish when we stole them we changed the spelling to match the pronunciation if we wanted the pronunciation to stay the same of where we stole it from.
  
  The amount of words that are not "stolen" from other languages is neglible..
  
  Cat from German Katze, from Latin catta
  Car(t) from German Karren
  Kitchen grom German Küche
  Bike/Bicycle from French bicycle
  Leaf from German Laub
  Beef, mutton, pigeon from French boeuf, mouton, pigeon
  Cow, sheep, dove from German Kuh, Schaf, Taube
  Computer from Latin computare
  Sun and moon from German Sonne and Mond
  Lunatic from Latina luna
  Death from German Tod
  Snug from Norse snøggr
  Funny from Swedish fånig
  Breeze from Spanish brisa
  Ranch from Spanish rancha
  Brave from Italian bravo
  Arcade from Italian arcata
  Dildo from Italian diletto
  ....
Highpurrbolley.

I pronounced it hyper-bowl in my head for a loooong time until I had to say it out loud one time and got laughed at.
- As someone who read a lot as a child I still find myself saying hyperbowl. I'd certainly heard the correct pronunciation but it wasn't until very late that I made the connection to the word I'd learned by reading.
  
  I was it my 30s before I found how to say it properly. It really doesn’t help that hyperbolic is spoken properly. Hy-per-bol-ic. Damn you written words.
  
  Same!
- Aphrodite, Hyperbole.. Greek Eta sounds like ee.
- The fact that hyperbolic is pronounced like that makes it so much fucking worse
Jraphics
- I can't help but pronounce this like Jurassic
Segue
I always trip over that one and start reading it as French.
- I just learned last month I've been doing the same thing and mispronouncing it for over three decades. But it's Italian!
  
  In the uncut version of Romeo and Juliet, there was a vague segue to a Montague tongue.
  
  Problem is that when you write it as pronounced, it becomes segway. Which just makes me think of those two-wheeled scooter thingies.
- Seg-Yoo
  
  That's how my coworkers were pronouncing it, til I pointed out... Who knew how long that was going for, lol
- The now-defunct electric scooter company spelled it as it should be, Segway.
Gif
- The gargantuan giraffe gallops his gigantic body to the gutter.
  
  It is a G. It isn't that hard.
  
  It isn't that hard.
  
  A soft-G gif believer! Heretic!
wierd.
Diarrhea.
- The pronunciation already matches the spelling!
  
  Starts like "diary" the journal, ends like "rhea" the bird.
  
  Then consider the British-English version of the word, diarrhoea :)
  Why the extra o?
- Cha cha cha
  
  Oooohhhh that took me back
- Diary uh
Arkansaw.

IF KANSAS IS PRONOUNCED "KANSAS"
THEN WHY ISN'T ARKANSAS PRONOUNCED "ARKANSAS"
Ghoti
February. (US pronunciation)
the article 'the' - ðə
- Bah, I always forget eth is different in IPA than how it was used in Old English.
  
  Ah okay.
  
  Þ ?
Yacht. Yot.
- English really lacks some throat-fricative analogue to the Greek chi (χʼ). Shoud be yaχt in the graχt. imo.
queue
- It only gets spelled correctly when it's a pseudo queue (>!sudoku!<).
- But that's already pronounced how it's spelled...
  
  Ah yes good old queweyouwe
  
  No, it would just be 'q'. Right now, I would pronounce it kay-way maybe.
- Qway-Way
Fish as Ghoti
- What's the o from
  
  women
Oh man the various English' pronunciashuns ...
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SfhKldRKmo8
- I failed to read the the poem properly.
  
  This language is just... ugh.
- Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=N5NQa10XMn0
  
  Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
  
  I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
  
  Good Bod! Now see what thou doeth.
There were so many that bothered me but now, when called out, I can only think of a few...

Lingerie

Miscellaneous

Subpoena
- Lawngeray definitely makes it less appealing.
Werk.

Work is not how people pronounce it.
- Abes oddysey vibes
- Here it would be "wurk"
Easy: Bologna
- What do you mean? It's already written the closest to pronunciation, there's no ń sound in English really, perhaps knee is the only example
  
  I'm guessing they think it's pronounced balony
  
  Belownya
Skwirl because now one knows how to spell squirrel.thank you auto-correct.
- If you ever have an opportunity, try to get German people to say Squirrel. It's why it was used as a shibboleth in WWII.
Worcestershire sauce
- That is already spelled how it's pronounced
  
  Worce, ster, shire
  
  Then just speed up the way you say it
  
  No in the U.K. it ain’t.
  
  Whoo-ster-sher.
  
  Woosta MA would beg to differ.
Keesh
Queue.
- So, Q?
  
  Careful, Picard.
  
  Queueueue
- Queue
  
  The Que from toque or croque and the ue from venue, due, or Tuesday.
  
  This isn't hard.
  
  You pronounce queue as "coo?"
Lieutenant (leftenant)
- Permanently Deleted
  
  Not in British English, no.
- Add colonel to that. Like wtf, where are you getting the extra letters from?
- Fun fact: Lieutenant literally means "placeholder."
  
  https://www.history.navy.mil/research/library/online-reading-room/title-list-alphabetically/w/naval-traditions-names-of-rank/officer/lieutenant.html
I’m honestly amazed “alot” hasn’t been made an acceptable spelling of “a lot” by now.
- Permanently Deleted
  
  But "a napron" became "an apron", etc.
  
  But the meaning usually isn’t “a single apportionment” — it’s frequently used to mean “many”.
- There's another word that British people would like to add aswell.
- Mandatory Hyperbole And Half
  
  Is there a similar comic for lose/loose? Because that’s the one that annoys me.
Psoriasis. Eczema. Emphysema.
- You doing okay buddy?
  
  Permanently Deleted
- You don't like Greek words that are spelled the way they're pronounced?
I feel like I would much prefer the ability to change the way a word is pronounced to match the way it is written.
- Well which word would you pick for that?
- Do I have an alphabet for you! Ever heard of the IPA No, it's not just a beer!
I'd spell cache as cache so Australians know it's pronounced like "cash" not like "kaysch".
- I think autocorrect butchered that one, cousin.
  
  Nope, cache should be spelled cache so people know it's pronounced as cache.
- I refuse to pronounce it that way. But at least "kaysch" sounds better than "cash-ay"
  
  I'm not sure it sounds any better than cayshe, but cash-ay is very wrong. There is also a French word "cachet" which gives us the English word "cachet" which is pronounced "cash-ay" similar to how the French word "cache" gives us the English word "cache", but there's no reason to pronounce cache as cachet.
- I'll accept that, only as long as Americans learn that route is pronounced "root", not "rout".
  
  ... I pronounce route as root. But I pronounce rerouted like rout. Huh.
Epitome

Scythe

Jewelry

Iron

Cologne

Receipt

CHARCUTERIE, what a fucking stupid word

Realtor. My wife still says "Real-uh-ter"

Zealot (think "Zellers 🍁") I'm tired of people pronouncing my username as "Zee-Lot"

-I know there's more that piss me off, I'll be back
- Charcuterie is French for charcuterie.
  
  What's the French word for "entrepreneur" then smarty pants.
Caulk.
- You sick bastard I work at lowes
"Sure". For crying out loud. Who came up with this.
- Sean would like a word..
  
  Whenever I say Sean Bean I pronounce "Sean" like you would pronounce "Bean" and "Bean" like "Sean"
  
  So I call him Seen Bawn and it's 100% grammatically correct
  
  Have you seen Shawn?
  
  and that word is SIN!
  
  Geoff is angrily waiting to speak
  
  Sean is borrowed from Irish where that is the normal vowel pronunciation, if you correctly include the accent: Seán
- The same ones who did sugar.
Lincoln

Pneumonia
- OOF Pneumonia.
  
  Like, what a cursed word. How would you even spell that? Nuhmownyuh?
  
  Newmoanyuh
  
  Lincoln is a proper noun, but pneumonia is already pronounced like it's spelled.
- Lincoln is a proper noun, but pneumonia is already pronounced how it's spelled.
  
  You pronounce the p?
Fucking HORS D'OEUVRES, man. Such a stupidly French word. Honestly any French word used commonly in English. So many useless fucking vowels.
Quinoa
- This one has the correct pronunciation in Spanish, because quinoa is from South America. Despite having pronounced this incorrectly when I first heard about it, I'd like to keep this spelling, because Spanish spelling is so much more consistent than English.
- keen wa
apparently » apparantly

and all other "parent" words, like transparent and so on
- We should just omit those schwa letters like Apar'ntly.
Rendezvous. Get the fuck outta here, you look like rendezzvuss.
I also think Colonel needs to be changed
- Ka-no. Why waste so many letters. :)
Subtle
Tough though thought....and knife know etc
I am deffinetly picking this one.
Choir .. how would you spell it? Quier?
Salmon as Samon
- My poor GF knows English as a second language and was very embarrassed when I pointed out the L was silent, because she had been saying it that way her entire life.
  
  But mostly to her parents who also speak Spanish, so mostly she was embarrassed that I had to tell her XD In Spanish you pronounce the L, so she didn't even consider that the L was silent in English (Because why would it be).
  
  The L shouldn’t even be there in the first place. Why is it there just talking up unnecessary space?
  
  I pronounced sword as svord up until 11, from self-learning D&D from an early age.
"next, what your gonna do is...."

NOW.
It’s two, but I’m just gonna swap ‘sweat’ and ‘sweet’ spellings.
- Found Rodrick Heffley
I'd change "I" to "pxmipexokal" just to screw over everyone's typing speed.
- We’d just abbreviate it like pxmilexokal
Blood. Looks like wood but you would be wrong.
- It's like how laughter and slaughter don't rhyme.
- Might as well do food while you're at it.
  
  In some of the accents around here, blood, wood and food do rhyme, more or less.
- And, in the other direction : lose.
"separate" to "seperate"
garunteed
Cough
Restaurant.

Can't spell it without spell check
- It should be restrant
  
  Permanently Deleted
- Restront
Lasagna, now pronounced how it looks!
- It already is. gn makes a "nnya" or "nnya" sound, as seen in other words like sfolgnino or gnocchi.
  
  Oh, TIL!
- Confused here. Lasagna looks like several horizontal lines with some filling in between and cheese on top. Like none of the letters that i know. Then again, it's italian, so what to do ... espanicise it?
  lasaña -- there you go, that will take care of the cheese, at least.
Fone
Seems like that absolute lot here are just American Vs British pronunciation, and for me, who learned the British version make 0 sense.
Too shall now be spelled to
Wouldn't fuck with it. The road to hell is paved with good intentions
Manure

ma-newer
Yosemite to Yos-e-mite.
Laff
Lieutenant → Lefttennet
First of all, you want to replace the way "coronel" is pronounced to match the spelling, not the other way around.

Second, I'd do "bass" and kill two birds right there and then.
- The fish can keep the spelling, but the low pitched sound needs to change.
  
  Drop the bayz!
Knight just got the lulz
Vehicle
- Vihikl?
  
  Viakl
Lieutenant should be changed to Leftenant while we’re at it.
- Lewtenant if you’re American.
Salmon
Draught. Seems we've already respelt it as "draft".
Quay pronounced key

Phone at anything with a ph sound for that matter.
Exercise as Exersize
Accessoires

That may actually be the Dutch or maybe Swedish spelling. They're all so close but slightly different that I hope auto-correct deals with it.
- I don't really understand the problem. You want us to go back to the Latin accessorius?
The - > Thu
Etobicoke. Can that count?
- Not an English word so you need the ref. The place where alders grow.
- Etobicoke
  
  Upon googling it I found it's pronounced like this: Uh tow buh kow
  
  So yes.
Conner (sauce: ostreliens)
Permanently Deleted
Indict, because it doesn't rhyme with verdict.

I'm actually changing the pronunciation, not the spelling. I like saying "in dictation" without the "-ation" part.
Comfortable
ask aks ax
excellent
- XLent
Recognise. There is a G in it but everyone pronounces it Reckonise. They are actually 2 totally different words so this isn't really what you meant but I hate that people don't prounce the letter G.
Facade -> visade

395 comments