Pronunciation is dialectical.
Your friend is deluded.

With regards to the vitamin and related debates it's sort of pointless to claim how something 'should' be pronounced because there are so many exceptions to the 'rules' of English. Seriously, it must be a bitch to learn. There are so many words that should be pronounced a certain way but aren't and the only answer anyone can come up with as to why is usualy "well...uhhh, just because...OK...."

Great, a thread for grammar-nazis to brown-nose eachother.

In my native language there's almost always only one way to pronounce the words so I guess that's why people usually write them down correctly. Some people have problems with compound nouns though.

I wish English had compound nouns. I love that stuff!

Grammar nazi threads are a nice break from music nerd threads.

What's to love?

sanakirja ("dictionary"): sana, "word", + kirja, "book"
tietokone ("computer"): tieto, "knowledge, data", + kone, "machine"
keskiviikko ("Wednesday"): keski, "middle", + viikko, "week"
maailma ("world"): maa, "land", + ilma, "air"

I think it's cool. The Germans have some awesome compound nouns.
Finnish is pretty impenetrable to me in general for some reason, though I love the sound of it.

I find Finnish intersting for some reason. The fact that no-one really knows for sure where it originated and there aren't really any other languages like it. Except Estonian and some other less known languages.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finno-ugric

It seems to me that it Finnish is a language that makes sense and would be easy-ish to learn but someone told me it's quite hard. Who knows.

Language teaching in the UK is pretty terrible. As Hip Priest mentioned, we don't really even learn the 'rules' of English...we just speak it so we know it. Also, we have this awful attitude that people should learn English while we don't bother to learn any other language.

We should all learn Esperanto or something.

Here's a phnomenally irritating English hypocrisy: people who absolutely insist on pronouncing Welsh place names with the ful Chchll or whatever, yet somehow fail to maintain the principle with German, French, Finnish names, or any number of others.

Or, the ones who insist on saying Pari for paris or Munchen for Munich, but don't expect foreign people to make the same concession for England (so they can say Angleterre for England, and aren't expected to just say England.

I think everyone should have the option of using either their natural pronunciation or the 'proper' pronunciation of the place name, by the way. I just don't like the very obvious and avoidable hypocrisy of double standards.

huey is fine by me, truncated. or ryan better yet, since that's my real name.

since this is a grammar nazi thread i feel no compunction in correcting you by saying it's Qprogeny79 (only with a small q), not a. not to worry -- happened incessantly on the old board.

Jesus H. Christ, how did I miss that? Sincerest apologies.

I'll have to mull over Huey vs. Ryan. If you prefer your real name, that's alright with me, but I must admit I'm rather fond of Huey. It's quirky, and makes me picture you with an omnipresent, silly vacuous grin.

I love the look of written Finnish. I think it's all of those double a's.

yeah, you can call me al;dfknawoinasdln for all i care . . . though that might be a tad difficult to pronounce.

No more difficult than !@#$%!

^^^

Pronounced 'Ned'.

Regarding prononciation, I think standardisation would be a terrible thing... I think your dialect asserts your cultural identity. For instance, a standardised English would have a devastating affect on reggae, hip-hop, all British and American folk music... I can't imagine a world without Irish, Yorkshire, Scottish (particularly 'wegie), Nashville... terrible.

Relatedly:part of the problem with British hip-hop, up until grime (with a few exceptions) is that the 'flow' was often reliant upon American styles, which just ruins any sense of being 'real' and 'true' and all that rhetorical gash that's thrown about by rappers.

Having said all that, and being full aware that American often has more 'orthodox' prononciation, many American accents (mostly West Coast) make my teeth curl.

that's how a language i invented works.


pages from a forthcoming
poster-sized picture dictionary

Genius is spelled without an o. "Genious" appears on here about once a week or so. Drives me nuts.

Did I miss this thread before?

Bump.

how MUCH spelling errors? i believe you should use the the word MANY in place of MUCH. fuck spelling, you need to brush up on your grammar, boy. also, the word DO at the end should be replaced with MAKE.

^^^^ that was not ment seriously, it was a joke

anyone who bitches about spelling or grammar is subject to their own scrutiny. you the fuck cares about spelling errors? we're on the internet!!!! we come to this forum to speak casually!!!!

Haha. I love you so many.

i love you too. lets do love