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XKCD #2819: Pronunciation (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

I pronounce the 'u' in 'pronunciation' like in 'putting' but the 'ou' in 'pronounce' like in 'wound'.


Transcript[The word "Tuesday", with each letter labeled by a box with an arrow:] T: As in buffet u: As in minute e: As in record s: As in use d: As in moped a: As in bass y: As in gyro

[Caption below the panel:]
Pet peeve: Ambiguous pronunciation guides


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[-] [email protected] 40 points 1 year ago

"My name is Perry, not Terry, with a 'P' as in 'Pterodactyl'."

[-] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago
[-] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

"Thompson, with a 'P', as in psychology"

[-] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Yeah.. silent Ps are weird 😅

[-] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Depends on your aim.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Whatever do you mean, puh-saldorn?

[-] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

LOL I forgot where that's from!

[-] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago

The english language is ... missing some litterary updates.
A is pronounced [ei]. E is [ii] and I is [ai]. What's up with that.

[-] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

IIUC the problem is that they updated the pronunciation without updating the spelling: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift

[-] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

I started learning Japanese recently. It's made me realizehow sloppy English is with vowel sounds.

[-] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

oh hey it me

[-] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago
[-] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago
[-] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

all my troubles seemed so far away?

[-] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

or /ɪɛztɛɪaɪ/ depending on whether you treat the final phoneme of moped as /t/ or /d/ -> [t]

[-] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Yep. The ⟨s⟩ in use could also be /s/, I just wrote what first came to mind.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

And ⟨e⟩ in record /ɪ/, etc. etc.

[-] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

I didnt know gyro could be pronunced in multiple ways

[-] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

There's gyro as in gyroscope, where the Y vowel sound is like the word "eye", and there's gyro as in the Greek sandwich where the Y vowel is more like the vowel sound in "sea". The latter is often seen only as "gyros" because that's what the actual Greek word is, but because that seems like a plural in English the S is sometimes dropped.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Ohh gyros as in the food lol

[-] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

the greek food gyro is kinda pronounced "yee-ro"

[-] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

If I'm feeling less lazy and exhausted later I might just have to take voice clips and try to create this variation on pronouncing "Tuesday".

[-] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I made an antiphonetic alphabet poster a few years ago to hang at my desk.

It has things like G as in Gnu. Y as in You.

[-] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

In all fairness, the Y in "you" is totally pronounced.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

As is the Y in U.

this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2023
247 points (96.6% liked)

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