as a swede whose accent is a hodgepodge of everything between scottish to RP to some vague average of american plus of course swenglish, i have spoken into the void and it spake back.
Thus spake Zarathrustra. (if I spelled that wrong -well, I'm an American). I'd rather not hear any voices out of the void - this whole thing makes me shiver, recalling my lifelong fear of the black void of space and the movie "2001 A Space Odyssey." (Shudders).
In America a lot of people say "reckonize." In fact, I never hear it pronounced as if there is an actual "g" in the word anymore. I think they're just imitating habits of others but I hope they know that, there really is a "g" in the word (if it comes to having to spell it).
fun fact: the S in island is completely fucking made up, the original spelling was “iland” with “i” being cognate with “ö” in swedish. It basically means island land and the only reason why there’s an S in there is because some shithead thought it was related to the french word “isle” and felt that INCORRECT idea warranted changing the spelling.
I think what you said is slightly wrong. Island and isle are both English words that seem to have no ethymological connection. However close semantic relation of “isle” might have cause the introduction of the “s” at some point. Isle itself probably comes from latin “insula”. The French still have only one word “Île”. Germans have “Eiland” and “Insel”.
island [OE] Despite their similarity, island has no etymological connection with isle (their resemblance is due to a 16th-century change in the spelling of island under the influence of its semantic neighbour isle). Island comes ultimately from a prehistoric Germanic *aujō, which denoted ‘land associated with water,’ and was distantly related to Latin aqua ‘water’. This passed into Old English as īeg ‘island,’ which was subsequently compounded with land to form īegland ‘island’. By the late Middle English period this had developed to iland, the form which was turned into island. (A diminutive form of Old English īeg, incidentally, has given us eyot ‘small island in a river’ [OE].)
Isle [13] itself comes via Old French ile from Latin insula (the s is a 15th-century reintroduction from Latin). Other contributions made by insula to English include insular [17], insulate [16], insulin, isolate [via Italian) [18], and peninsula [16].
etymologically the word is made up of “i” and “land”, the “s” was added by some idiot in the 15th century. “i” is cognate with “ö” in swedish which simply means “island”, so just pull a power move and drop all the other letters completely.
While we are at it, the. The t doesn’t sound like a t. The h doesn’t sound like an h. The e doesn’t sound like an e.
None of the letters sound like how they should when looked at individually. I propose we change this. From now on, each letter gets pronounced as itself in the word the.
We used to have a letter for ‘th’ (thorn (Þ, þ)), but it was replaced by ‘th’. There are people trying to bring back, but I wonder if they just like typing þorn (thorn)
Geuss I ain’t ever gonna pronounce this damn language correctly . You can’t blame this on French tho because in that language it’s saumon pronounced somon. They didn’t drop a consonant in the middle of the word.
The word comes ultimately from the Latin salmon, but we got it by way of French, as we did with so many other food words. The French, as was their wont, had swallowed up the Latin L in their pronunciation, so by the time we English borrowed the word, it was saumon, no L in the spelling and so no L in the pronunciation.
Pronouncing the word based on how another language says it is strange to say the least. Imagine if train had the same treatment. In French it’s a short tr-un instead of English tr-ayn.
Pronouncing the word based on how another language says it
French influence on English is rather unique in this regard. French was the language of the upper class, so an effort was made for English to sound more French when possible.
My favorite example of how this has carried into modern day is the expressions “cordial reception” and “hearty welcome.” They both effectively mean the same thing, but the first, which is latin-derived, sounds fancy, while the second, which is germanic-derived, sounds more informal.
The word comes ultimately from the Latin salmon, but we got it by way of French, as we did with so many other food words. The French, as was their wont, had swallowed up the Latin L in their pronunciation, so by the time we English borrowed the word, it was saumon, no L in the spelling and so no L in the pronunciation.
I already do this with the word “solder” which confuses my fellow Americans greatly. They seem to think I’m lying that the L is sounded out in some other English speaking countries.
I just think the American pronunciation (SAW-dur) sounds wrong.
It was friends and YouTube content creators from the UK that made me realize that dropping the L isn’t done everywhere else. I grew up thinking that it was just one of those English words that break all the pronunciation rules.
That’s a lot or a little or a standard amount of years! And, still will be and is if people read or are reading these comments years from now. Or before now.
I’m in the US and I’ve never heard anyone pronounce it “SAW-dur” in person or in any form of media. You are supposed to pronounce the L in the General American accent.
If you use Google’s word pronunciation tools, both General American and Received Pronunciation pronounce the L in soldier.
Edit: I like the downvotes to all my comments without anyone showing me people pronouncing it that way.
Can you link me a to a clip or a pronunciation source that has someone pronouncing it like that? I’ve never heard that anywhere in my life. I’m guessing it’s a less common accent.
I think this is a misunderstanding. The poster you’re replying to is talking about solder, not soldier (which you wrote, assuming that’s the word you meant). Solder, as in a soldering iron, is pronounced Saw-dur in the US. Ya dingus 😉
You say that, but there’s the anachronistic nautical slang “soger” for an inept or lazy sailor. It came from the soldiers assigned to British navy ships, who did not participate in the sailing of the vessel.
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