Funny ways of saying things...

[Jimmy T. Malice]

I have a small mouth and talk incredibly fast if my sentence is more than like 5 words long so pretty much everything I say is pronounced funny. But yeah, English is kinda messy. Some stuff just doesn't make sense and is not consistent. And yet, I'm a proofreader. Because masochism?

haha that sounds like torture. Join the club, I'm an English teacher. I'm a vicious spelling hawk. I HAAAATE bad spelling. I instantly have a bad psychological reaction to incorrect grammar and spelling.
I also often wonder why we say "You are" instead of "You is" for a single person. It's a singular pronoun and we say "He is", so why not "You is"?

It's best to not try to apply logic to English grammar.

 

[Thaluikhain]

I also often wonder why we say "You are" instead of "You is" for a single person. It's a singular pronoun and we say "He is", so why not "You is"?

Well, we don't have different words for singular and plural of "you". I like "youse" as a plural, the language should have one.

which we say as "sooh-sah"

Hey, what?

 

[ShindoL Shill]

As someone who had to study English as a second language, I can safely say that's it's the most messed up language ever. One of the trillion examples is when we say the word compile as "com-pyl", but then as soon as it becomes a noun (+tion) it's pronounced as "com-pih-lation". I just say "com-pie-lation" because it makes more sense and is more consistent.
I could go on for DAYS about all the discrepancies. Days.

Yeah, I notice that sort of stuff too, sometimes, and English is my first language.

I also often wonder why we say "You are" instead of "You is" for a single person. It's a singular pronoun and we say "He is", so why not "You is"?

'He' and 'is' are third-person, 'you' and 'are' are second person (well, 'are' can be used in the first-, second- and third-person).

 

[Nejii Talnara]

haha that sounds like torture. Join the club, I'm an English teacher. I'm a vicious spelling hawk. I HAAAATE bad spelling. I instantly have a bad psychological reaction to incorrect grammar and spelling.
I also often wonder why we say "You are" instead of "You is" for a single person. It's a singular pronoun and we say "He is", so why not "You is"?

It is my understanding that English "you" used to be the plural form of "thou", and (similar to the way the French use "vous" for single "you" to be polite) "you" became the polite form for single-person usage, and then eventually we just phased out thou. And now we get confused and think thou was the formal one because it sounds so old-timey.

 

[The Artificially Prolonged]

I have a scouse accent so pretty much anything I say is a jumbled mess of butchered words and what sounds like radio static.

 

[Guffe]

I have a scouse accent so pretty much anything I say is a jumbled mess of butchered words and what sounds like radio static.

YOU'RE A SCOUSE SCOUSE!!!??? (never visited your profile before )
Seriously mate next time I come to visit Liverpool we need to take a cup of coffee or a beer

On Topic:
My local accent leaves some vocals at the end of words so according to some fellow Swedish speakers they think it sounds strange.

 

[The Artificially Prolonged]

I have a scouse accent so pretty much anything I say is a jumbled mess of butchered words and what sounds like radio static.

YOU'RE A SCOUSE SCOUSE!!!??? (never visited your profile before )
Seriously mate next time I come to visit Liverpool we need to take a cup of coffee or a beer

On Topic:
My local accent leaves some vocals at the end of words so according to some fellow Swedish speakers they think it sounds strange.

HAHA! Yep I'm Scouse through and through. Making English teachers cry for over 20 years

 

[thesilentman]

I've never fallen to this yet, so I'll remember my friend, who can't pronounce 'three'. It just comes out as 'tree' for him. It's more obsfucated when you consider that he's Malaysian and has braces that make his pronounciation more garbled. Still an awesome guy. :-D

 

[krazykidd]

Well i can't say philosophical for my life , i tend to add in extra syllables eveywhere .

I remember my friend got REAL Annoyed when i say the name if his main character in Blazblue wrong . He mains as TAGER. Apparently it's pronounced : TAY-GGER but i pronounce it TAH-GGER. Pisses him off to no end .

Speaking of Blazblue . I get annoyed when people pronouncr it BLAHZ-Blue instead of BLAZE-Blue .

Also one the really grindes my gears is Yuffie from FF7. Seriously . I always ( and still ) call her YUHF-FEE . But when i played KH , they pronounced her name YOU-FEE. Fuck that .

Speaking of FF. Up until i was 14 , i used to call chocobos , chick-a-bos . No idea why , until a friend of mine laughed st me for pronouncing it that way .

 

[Zipa]

Some of the words the local people in my town use amuses me to no end, they say things like ''over yonder'' instead of over there and going ''ome'' instead of going home.
Much to my relief though many people comment on how I don't speak like the local people even though I have lived here all my life.

 

[Angie7F]

I dont understand why english speakers still get so many japanese word wrong.
like karaoke "kara-o-key" and sake "sa-key" as in the key to your lock.
its ke like ketchup!!! drive me crazy...

 

[Da Orky Man]

I dont understand why english speakers still get so many japanese word wrong.
like karaoke "kara-o-key" and sake "sa-key" as in the key to your lock.
its ke like ketchup!!! drive me crazy...

Possibly because Japanese is one of the hardest languages for an English speaker to learn? It seems reasonable enough that there would be errors made.

Anyway, as someone from Wales, every town can count as weird pronunciation. We have places called Aberystwyth, Pontrhydyfen, Llanelli, Caerdydd, Penmaenmawr and the ever-so famous (brace yourself) Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch

 

[Pawkeshup]

My absolute pet peeve was already covered (Can I AXE you a question?).

A good secondary is the word keyfob. I work in an industry where it is used often. But it's been said KeyFAHB so often... makes my cheek twitch.

 

[Gabanuka]

Possibly because Japanese is one of the hardest languages for an English speaker to learn

Really? I found Japanese easy as shit to speak. Reading and writing is a nightmare but the actual language is pretty logical.

 

[C4tt4nn4]

My two main things are that i get bass and bass mixed up. after years of teasing for it, the fish and the thing skrillex drops are the same thing t me. i refuse to differentiate.

i also met a dude that said "striaciatella" (type of ice cream) as "stra-chia-telly". nearly punched him for that.

also:

I couldn't help but wonder what the flying fuck a 'leftenant' was while playing Space Marine. A female lieutenant? A made-up rank in the 40K-verse? Little did I know at the time, that leftenant was the English pronunciation.

a similar thing happens with the world "colonel". Is is supposed to be "kernel" or "colonel"? i never know.

 

[Worldbreaker]

Just listen to Movie Bob when he is angry, loads of laughs.

 

[SckizoBoy]

a similar thing happens with the world "colonel". Is is supposed to be "kernel" or "colonel"? i never know.

This one is a similar one to the whole 'lieutenant/leuftenant' one, insomuch that spelling etymology and pronunciation etymology were different.

The root word is from the Latin for 'column' (i.e. 'columna'), which went through Italian (first seen in officer's manuals from the c15th) as 'compagna collonella'. This then got corrupted in middle-French to 'coronell', and further corruption in English gave rise to the pronunciation of first 'cornell' then 'cernal', but the spelling went through Spanish: 'coronel', but because of language diffusion in Europe (virtually every noble - i.e. those who had the rank of colonel or senior - tended to be multilingual), 'r' and 'l' became quite interchangable, hence the arrival to English of the spelling 'colonel' but pronunciation 'kernal'.

 

[Hero in a half shell]

when we say the word compile as "com-pyl", but then as soon as it becomes a noun (+tion) it's pronounced as "com-pih-lation". I just say "com-pie-lation" because it makes more sense and is more consistent.

My friend, has no one ever told you about magic e?


The i in compile makes the sound of it's name because of the magic e after it. then when it gets changed into compilation the magic e is lost and the i sound changes back to normal (the eh sound)

The English language is actually very phonetically logical like that with British words, the only problem is that there are like a billion different rules for spelling with a very specific order that they have to be implemented in, so the practical side of using it on the fly is very cumbersome and intensive.

 

[ClockworkPenguin]

As someone who had to study English as a second language, I can safely say that's it's the most messed up language ever. One of the trillion examples is when we say the word compile as "com-pyl", but then as soon as it becomes a noun (+tion) it's pronounced as "com-pih-lation". I just say "com-pie-lation" because it makes more sense and is more consistent.
I could go on for DAYS about all the discrepancies. Days.

That one is because compile ends in an e, which changes the pronunciation of the vowel from its lower case to its upper case form (ih becomes aye). When the 'ation' is added, the e is no longer there, so the 'ih' sound is used.

It's a weird rule. Which like many others does not apply in 100% of cases.

Edit; Ninja'd. By 3 hours apparently. Oh well.