220
Except by your own pronunciation guide:
w(uh)man to w(ih)men
Yeah that’s the spelling part OP is referring to
But the pronunciation changes there too^*^, contrary to what OP says.
^*^ ^Maybe^ ^there^ ^are^ ^regional^ ^pronunciation^ ^differences^ ^I’ve^ ^never^ ^heard^ ^of^ ^before?^
nah i say wuh-man and wih-min
It must only be in some places because where I live in the UK both parts change pronunciation.
Does in Midwest USA too.
Where’s that?
In UK it goes from
Woman -- Wu mun
Women - Wi men
it's normal for unstressed short vowels in English to all come out as a "schwa", which the most common phoneme of the language.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid_central_vowel
What kind of weirdo says chick-uhn?
English speakers globally
I don't pronunce any of those words like that. Maybe stadium I pronounce the same. Maybe.
Wait until you try to figure out how to pronounce "ough", like in rough or through or dough.
Looks like it's time to recommend one of my favorite books:
I found it via an interview with the author on the 99% Invisible podcast:
Corpse, Corps, Horse and Worse
It's a great book because it lays out, very logically, all the ways our language went to shit. It was a product of the Great Vowel Shift and crappy timing regarding it, plus competing cultures ruling the lands in England.
Corpse, Corps, Horse, and Worse
I will keep you, Susy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy;
Tear in eye, your dress you'll tear;
Queer, fair seer, hear my prayer.
Isn't it just pronounced how it looks?
That’s a darn good shower thought.
English phonetics suck more than any other language ever spoke or tried to learn
That’s cuz English is a bully that beats up all the other languages and steals their words
Nah fam.. the leader took the lead, then he lead while wearing lead. This is pure English, no loanwords.
Yes, English can be weird. It can be understood through tough thorough thought, though.
I remember a discussion on reddit saying there was a US dialect (perhaps PNW?) that changed the pronunciation of the -man/-men part of the word rather than the o, but I couldn't get many further details at the time.
Anyone heard anything about this?
As someone who learned English as a second language. Yes, that pronunciation exists, I've heard it used on films. I don't know if it is a formally defined or linguistically studied thing. But I can hear the different ways the exact same word is vocalized wildly different by different native English speakers. And they always claim theirs is the only correct way of saying it, even though they still somehow understood what was said.
North Atlantic accent I think it’s called. Have a read of the wiki. Kinda interesting.
I know when I pronounce it, it’s different on the a/e - NZ English.
We do also tend to change the o at the same time, at least I do. Although I spent 10 years in the uk in my 20's so that has had some effect on how I speak.
Depends on how fast I’m talking but, yup. South islanders do it more than north ime.
Native Portlander here, that’s definitely not us. Wuh-man and Wim-min.
How come it’s Germans and not Germen
How come it's humans, not humen
It's strangely kind of either/or for the pronunciation if you take a look at the IPA pronunciation of the words.
I wonder, though, if this lack of difference in pronunciation is behind a question that's confounded me for years: "why do so many people spell the singular as 'women' by accident (e.g. 'a women'), but I've never seen something like 'a men')?" I always chalked it up to "a men" looking weird as basically "amen", but this could be it instead.
Best I can tell from quick internet searches: Old English: wīfmann/menn ("female person/s"). The w rounded the following vowel giving a wo- pronunciation, which for some reason (umlaut?) stuck for the singular but not the plural. The spelling of the plural changed to match that of the singular in spite of the pronunciation.
* Everything here carries the caveat "in some dialects, ..." because English
Op, you just aren't saying them correctly, I guess.
this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2024
220 points (86.7% liked)
Showerthoughts
35769 readers
486 users here now
A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:
- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
Rules
- All posts must be showerthoughts
- The entire showerthought must be in the title
- No politics
- If your topic is in a grey area, please phrase it to emphasize the fascinating aspects, not the dramatic aspects. You can do this by avoiding overly politicized terms such as "capitalism" and "communism". If you must make comparisons, you can say something is different without saying something is better/worse.
- A good place for politics is c/politicaldiscussion
- Posts must be original/unique
- Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct and the TOS
If you made it this far, showerthoughts is accepting new mods. This community is generally tame so its not a lot of work, but having a few more mods would help reports get addressed a little sooner.
Whats it like to be a mod? Reports just show up as messages in your Lemmy inbox, and if a different mod has already addressed the report, the message goes away and you never worry about it.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS