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English is weird
BeoPuppy:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/lifestyle/spelling-bee/
Is it cold in here?:
A dog who is "paper trained" is one which reliably eliminates on newspapers.
People brag about their dogs being "well trained".
Akima:
A person who is heartbroken has a broken heart. A dog that is housebroken has a broken... house?
English spelling vs. pronunciation is pretty random, but far less arbitrary than the pronunciation of Chinese characters so I'm not going to complain too much. On the other hand, the pronunciations given in this video clip just seem downright capricious:
//www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOd3lwluQIw
Carl-E:
Ah, but those are all proper names, not really a linguistic issue - they've had centuries to be mangled by a quasi-literate populace talking with most of their teeth missing in backwoods accents that would stump the residents two towns over.
And oddly enough, most have the first and last sounds intact, it's just the middles that winds up mangled/missing.
One of my favorites he missed was "Saint John" pronounced "sin-gin"
pwhodges:
--- Quote from: Carl-E on 10 Jul 2014, 07:00 ---And oddly enough, most have the first and last sounds intact, it's just the middles that winds up mangled/missing.
--- End quote ---
The English town "Cirencester" is nowadays mainly pronounced as spelt; but my mother said it the same as "sister".
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