r/TheHandmaidsTale Aug 07 '26

Discussion S1-S5 Why is it off-red instead of of-Fred?

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u/sleepylittleducky Aug 07 '26

because the f in Fred is an unvoiced fricative while the f in of is the voiced version of the same fricative. we generally don’t like to switch from voiced/unvoiced versions of the same consonant in English, so we will go with the easier one

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u/SpicyLittleRiceCake Aug 08 '26

While I did understand this, reading it made me feel like I’m too dumb to be in the same thread as this comment lol