this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2024
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xkcd #2942: Fluid Speech

https://xkcd.com/2942

explainxkcd.com for #2942

Alt text:

Thank you to linguist Gretchen McCulloch for teaching me about phonetic assimilation, and for teaching me that if you stand around in public reading texts from a linguist and murmuring example phrases to yourself, people will eventually ask if you're okay.

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[โ€“] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago (1 children)

OMG, that makes it so much worse. If someone tells you about a specific place, and you want to look it up later, you have absolutely zero chance of ever spelling it correctly. Good luck typing lester or woster in Wikipedia or Maps.

[โ€“] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago

As it happens, that worked just fine:

Worcester is famous even outside the UK because of Worcestershire sauce (pronounced "woster-shuh" sauce), the condiment named after the region. And because the name is on the bottle, it's easy for people to remember.