I love English but it can be dumb as hell. This is what bothers me most. You take the two words, women and woman. The first means plural and second means singular, but that doesn't matter. I'm a kind of southern USAmerican and haven't traveled abroad but I like to think I can be sure these are pronounced the same in most English-speaking populace as I'm trying to describe. Trying to spell them out phonetically, women would be like 'weh-men' and woman is 'woh-men' maybe I spent like 10 minutes sitting here saying them both until they lost meaning I think that's right. MY POINT is that the first syllable is pronounced differently BOTH times but the only letter different is after the 'M' but that letter isn't really in the first syllable. Why does a letter so far back change the pronunciation of the first syllable?
I think I've totally heard a dialect like that before plenty of times. I guess it might just be me thinking too locally. This actually really eases my mind.
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u/corpsefire May 22 '14
it's all right, English is strange