English has been my pain for 15 years (2013)

Re:English has been my pain for 15 years (2013) by frooxie on Saturday November 28, 2015 @11:09AM (#10641405)

English is my third language; I've read and written English almost every day for 30 years, but I've only ever spent two weeks in English-speaking countries. I sometimes find myself unable to pronounce words that I've used for decades in writing – often, it's the type of more formal vocabulary that doesn't often come up in movies or TV series. For instance: cuticle, paean, echelon, emaciated, heinous, comely, disreputable, hearth, dearth, contumely, beatify, subsequent, etc.

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Re:English has been my pain for 15 years (2013) by grecy on Saturday November 28, 2015 @11:13AM (#10641421)

English is my first language, I've spoken it all of my 33 years, and I am an Engineer.

I have no idea what "contumely" means, or how to pronounce it. You're doing great :)

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Re:English has been my pain for 15 years (2013) by selimthegrim on Saturday November 28, 2015 @11:17AM (#10641435)

contumely means an insult, it almost exclusively comes up in Shakespeare. 99% of people on the street would not know that word

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Re:English has been my pain for 15 years (2013) by bshimmin on Saturday November 28, 2015 @11:55AM (#10641562)

I'm guessing 99% of people wouldn't know what "beatify" meant either, and a significant number would think it was a typo for "beautify". Those two words also rather nicely express the vagaries of English pronunciation (the latter is pronounced to rhyme with "pew", the former "bee-A...", which almost feels like it deserves a diaeresis, except we don't do those in English).

I leave the gentle reader with the English place name Beaulieu, which probably isn't pronounced anything like you'd expect, or how it should be.

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Re:English has been my pain for 15 years (2013) by vacri on Saturday November 28, 2015 @07:06PM (#10643106)

There's a lot of Catholics out there. They might not know how to spell it, but most of them would know what beatify is about. To be fair, beatify is more 'Catholic jargon' and less 'standard English' - I wouldn't expect anyone unfamiliar with Catholicism to know it.

As for names, my favourite wtf is Featherstonehaugh, pronounced fan-shaw. Then there's Chalmondley (chum-lee)...

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Re:English has been my pain for 15 years (2013) by henriquemaia on Saturday November 28, 2015 @04:11PM (#10642448)

If you use Chromium (or Google Chrome), you can use this extension. It has helped me greatly with my pronunciation.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/english-dictionary...

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Re:English has been my pain for 15 years (2013) by id on Saturday November 28, 2015 @11:42AM (#10641503)

"heinous" is featured in every episode of Law & Order: SVU.

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Re:English has been my pain for 15 years (2013) by nommm-nommm on Saturday November 28, 2015 @12:37PM (#10641700)

Yeah, its in the intro:

"In the criminal justice system, sexually based offenses are considered especially heinous. In New York City, the dedicated detectives who investigate these vicious felonies are members of an elite squad, known as the Special Victims Unit. These are their stories."

Vicious is another word I want to pronounce wrong if I see it in writing.

I think often English speakers have a similar but opposite problem - they are used to speaking words but when you come across them in writing you cant recognize them. The "typical" examples of this are gazebo and hyperbole.

I also think only very educated and well read people would know what half those words mean or how to pronounce them.

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Re:English has been my pain for 15 years (2013) by jacobolus on Saturday November 28, 2015 @12:01PM (#10641588)

kyoo-tih-kul, pee-uhn, esh-uh-lon, eh-may-she-ay-ted, hey-nuhs, cuhm-ly, dis-reh-pyoo-tah-bul, hahrth, derth, kuhn-too-muh-ly, bee-at-if-iy, sub-seh-kuent

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Re:English has been my pain for 15 years (2013) by sampo on Saturday November 28, 2015 @05:00PM (#10642629)

Haha, that is helpful only if you already know how to pronounce English.

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Re:English has been my pain for 15 years (2013) by Rondom on Saturday November 28, 2015 @07:18PM (#10643145)

While intuitive for English speakers, this notation (don't know what it is called like) is actually discouraged because it is not even able to unambiguously describe English pronunciation...

(The alternative is the International Phonetic Alphabet, which after getting used to it is not that hard to master)

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