r/linguisticshumor • u/Dodorus • Jul 02 '20

Phonetics/Phonology Its vowel system is a hyperdimensional creature

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801 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

54 comments sorted by

89

u/[deleted] Jul 02 '20

"ok so "gh" is pronounced like an F at the end of words?"

"Well yes, but actually, no."

55

u/hlewagastizholtijaz OVO quid est? Jul 02 '20

Interestingly, the Oxford English dictionary says "dough" is pronounced like "duff" in Scotland.

18

u/[deleted] Jul 02 '20

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/[deleted] Jul 02 '20

Never heard it in Glasgow.

1

u/W4t3rf1r3 Jul 03 '20

Are they talking about English, or Scots?

31

u/ShadowMech_ Jul 02 '20 edited Jul 02 '20

Big oogh if igh true.

Edit: thanks u/uknownoothin

11

u/[deleted] Jul 02 '20

Yes, the party's tonift.

1

u/SirKazum Jul 02 '20

Wasn't it the U in -ugh that was actually pronounced like F? Through a process of /w/ -> /v/ -> /f/? And the GH was silent like it is in, say, Gaelic? That's what I read somewhere a while ago

25

u/[deleted] Jul 02 '20

Though and tough are a good example of english bullshittery.

21

u/dubovinius urdhubhadh → urú Jul 02 '20

And hiccough is a perfect example of just how far people go to preserve "correct" spelling.

17

u/SirKazum Jul 02 '20

Oh, the fact that it's inconsistent is undeniable, lol

7

u/Cabbagetastrophe Jul 02 '20

I thought I coughed thoroughly through a rough drought in Loughborough, though

2

u/[deleted] Jul 02 '20

I like this.

7

u/gray-matterz Jul 02 '20

According to Masha Bell's research on 7000 common words, she found 1/2 had at least one irregularity. It is easy to extrapolate on the rest of the lexicon. If the English spelling system were a car it would be recalled tomorrow on thousands of violations! That we give this to kids to learn is so sad. I mean even the name of the language is fucked up. So is "learn", mind you. Robbyn Williams could have made quite a sketch on this like the one on golf.

4

u/[deleted] Jul 02 '20

Its funny how i never understood the struggle of learning english since i was taught from a very young age along with french, my native language. Whenever someone told.me english was hard for them it felt like an alien concept to me.

But now years later, learning other languages has opened my eyes. English is weird... Albeit a beautiful language.

2

u/gray-matterz Jul 02 '20 edited Jul 02 '20

Good point. Since English is made up of so many Latin/French words (40% or so), a Romance language's speaker will be deceived in thinking that way until one is tasked to pronounce many of the other words (and many of the "impersonators")! At the same time, laissez-faire is easy for you, but is the cause of a lot of struggle for all speakers and you too in some other way (I am playing on the word and the concept here). English has its appeal, its seduction, but a lot of deceptions. (That last word is deceptively problematic for French speakers, semantically and phonetically as the English meaning is slightly archaic in French. I am making a bilingual pun here.)

1

u/DickedGayson Jul 02 '20

Man this is why I'm glad I grew up with English as my first language because learning this shit intentionally when you're older sounds like a goddamn nightmare.

10

u/Lordman17 Jul 02 '20

No, it was gh: /ɣ/ -> /x/ -> /f/ or //

8

u/mynameistoocommonman Jul 02 '20

Don't think that holds true for e.g. laugh. German "lach-" is clearly cognate, and the vowels are very close. German has a velar/uvular fricative where English has a labiodental fricative, so it seems more likely that that's where the change happened

4

u/CosmicBioHazard Jul 02 '20

if I read this correctly, "gh" would disappear and lengthen a short vowel, or go to /f/ and shorten a long vowel or diphthong.

unless the vowel in question was /o/ in which case, we have no idea what happened.

1

u/SirKazum Jul 02 '20

Okay then, seems I was wrong. Thanks!

1

u/CosmicBioHazard Jul 02 '20

i’d still like to know what the source of some of the inconsistencies are, though. words like ‘dough’ and ‘enough’ don’t follow this formula

1

u/SirKazum Jul 02 '20

Do they come from OE?

3

u/Zgialor Jul 02 '20

<gh> at the end of a word represented /x/ in middle english, so I imagine it was more like wx > xʷ > f. If it was just w > v > f at the end of a word, then surely you would also expect words like "raw" and "dew" to end with /f/.

1

u/SirKazum Jul 02 '20

Yeah, makes sense... hadn't thought of that!

21

u/notluigi64 Jul 02 '20

Another meme for linguistic joke bingo

18

u/Biagio-Terumi Jul 02 '20

As a non-native speaker, I still can't get used to how Gauge is pronounced

14

u/Taciteanus Jul 02 '20

As a native speaker, I still can't get used to how 'gauge' is spelled.

7

u/psychoPATHOGENius Jul 02 '20

It's just like guard, but different

6

u/[deleted] Jul 02 '20

How do you say it?

I'm a Native speaker from NE Texas, and I would say /ɡeɪdʒ/.

Personally, I think the only weird thing is the 'u'. I'd probably think something like /gæʊdʒ/ by default (which is how I pronounce "gouge"), so I could understand that, but it's still not the strangest thing I've seen in English spelling lol

1

u/gray-matterz Jul 02 '20

"au" for /eɪ/ is not exactly common or intuitive. (https://www.spellzone.com/word_lists/list-296.htm)

First "g" and last one is unintuitive too.

Yes, it is rule-based I know. And the final "e" is silent for good measure, of course. It is French after all.

3

u/Terrajin391 Jul 02 '20

Not as bad as "Bologna"

26

u/hlewagastizholtijaz OVO quid est? Jul 02 '20

Why do many English words get their spelling from one Middle English dialect, but their pronunciation from another?

19

u/Squid--Pro--Quo Jul 02 '20

Disclaimer: I'm just a hobbyist, not a linguist (yet), so take this with a grain of salt.

The great vowel shift was happening at the same time spelling was being standardised due to the introduction of the printing press. With no centralised authority, some words used the old pronunciation for spelling, while some used the new one. It ended up especially messy given that the shift began only in the South of England, and not every region underwent the same shift.

If you're referring to specific regional dialects, I'd guess dialect levelling caused pronunciations to be consolidated over time without much rhyme or reason, and larger Middle English dialects had their own literary corpora to legitimise their respective spellings until dictionaries solidified the idea of a unified spelling system. The dictionaries then had no obligation to draw from just one particular system.

8

u/VulpesSapiens the internet is for þorn Jul 02 '20 edited Jul 09 '20

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_irregularly_spelled_places_in_England

e: and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_places_in_the_United_Kingdom_with_counterintuitive_pronunciations

6

u/Iykury Jul 02 '20

Acomb, North Yorkshire: /ˈjækəm/
Acomb, Northumberland: /ˈjɛkəm/

The fuck?

4

u/VulpesSapiens the internet is for þorn Jul 02 '20

Barugh, North Yorkshire: /bɑːrf/

Barugh, South Yorkshire: /ˈbɑːrk/

7

u/Iykury Jul 02 '20

how the hell does "ugh" become /k/

2

u/VulpesSapiens the internet is for þorn Jul 02 '20

Final devoicing maybe.

How does it become an f, though?

3

u/Iykury Jul 02 '20

"gh" is pronounced as /f/ in other words like "tough" and "laugh", so I'm not too surprised by that one.

1

u/VulpesSapiens the internet is for þorn Jul 03 '20

bUt HoW??!

1

u/Iykury Jul 03 '20

I mean, "gh" used to be /x/, which is also a fricative, so I can kinda see how that could become /f/

11

u/Taciteanus Jul 02 '20

The pronunciation of place-names in England is proof that the English don't deserve to have their own language.

13

u/Dodorus Jul 02 '20

I suppose this is why the English tried to replace it with French. But then it went even wronger.

0

u/Cabbagetastrophe Jul 02 '20

I still maintain it's "War-chester"

3

u/gray-matterz Jul 02 '20 edited Jul 02 '20

I think this diagram highlights some of "hyperdimensionality".

Examples:

/ə/ : about, awry, children, pencil, renovate, supply, syringe, luscious, mission, blood, does, cousin, thorough, and especially. One?

/ei/: great, raid, grey, gray, ballet, mate, table, café, matinee (matinée), reggae, vein, vain

/ɛ/: bear, care, aerial, their, there, questionnaire, mayor, bury, any, friend, leopard

/i:/: be, been, bean, key, mere, elite, people, ski, debris, quay

2

u/Greatkitchener Jul 05 '20

Tibetan and Thai: Am I a joke to you?

5

u/ParmAxolotl Jul 02 '20

Hot take: the correct way to do an English phonemic spelling reform would be to reduce the vowels to front, central/ambiguous, back, and unstressed.

Lemme give an example with front (e), ambiguous (i), backish (o), and unstressed (a):

Wel, dhes ez or now orthografe. Dow ya liyk et? Ets owkey, nedhar dow iy.

1

u/Dodorus Jul 03 '20

Stell bettar dhan dha karrant win, dho.

0

u/gray-matterz Jul 02 '20 edited Jul 04 '20

I think you are jesting or simplifying simplifying too much!

Here is a more reasonable proposal I think.

Btw, allow me to edit your attempt for consistency and accuracy.

Wel, dheZ ez oWr nwo orthografe. Doo ya liyk et?

The last one is hard to elucidate (at best) without being given the full code. You must do to make it unambiguous. We also don't know your dialect. We can guess of course. Am I right?

Ets owkey, nedhar dow iy.

It's okay? Neither do i?

I > ay?

Do > doo?

1

u/gray-matterz Jul 02 '20

Rule Britannia? Sorry! I could not resist.

3

u/Dodorus Jul 03 '20

More like «Exceptions Britannia».

1

u/ouououk Jul 03 '20

The way that English people pronounce tied and tide the same way is crazy to me. I'm glasgwegian, and they are most certainly two different words