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w(uh)man to w(ih)men

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[-] ccunning@lemmy.world 67 points 11 months ago

Except by your own pronunciation guide:

w(uh)man to w(ih)men

[-] intensely_human@lemm.ee 7 points 11 months ago

Yeah that’s the spelling part OP is referring to

[-] ccunning@lemmy.world 6 points 11 months ago

But the pronunciation changes there too^*^, contrary to what OP says.

^*^ ^Maybe^ ^there^ ^are^ ^regional^ ^pronunciation^ ^differences^ ^I’ve^ ^never^ ^heard^ ^of^ ^before?^

[-] tilefan@lemm.ee 31 points 11 months ago

nah i say wuh-man and wih-min

[-] EdanGrey@sh.itjust.works 24 points 11 months ago

It must only be in some places because where I live in the UK both parts change pronunciation.

[-] BingBong@sh.itjust.works 10 points 11 months ago

Does in Midwest USA too.

[-] intensely_human@lemm.ee 0 points 11 months ago
[-] lazynooblet@lazysoci.al 14 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

In UK it goes from

Woman -- Wu mun

Women - Wi men

[-] grozzle@lemm.ee 21 points 11 months ago

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

[-] Assman@sh.itjust.works 10 points 11 months ago

What kind of weirdo says chick-uhn?

[-] BirdyBoogleBop@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

I don't pronunce any of those words like that. Maybe stadium I pronounce the same. Maybe.

[-] Carighan@lemmy.world 20 points 11 months ago

Wait until you try to figure out how to pronounce "ough", like in rough or through or dough.

[-] some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 6 points 11 months ago

Looks like it's time to recommend one of my favorite books:

Highly Irregular: Why Tough, Through, and Dough Don't Rhyme―And Other Oddities of the English Language

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.

[-] ornery_chemist@mander.xyz 2 points 11 months ago

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.

banger poem

[-] ivanafterall@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago

Isn't it just pronounced how it looks?

[-] Iamsqueegee@sh.itjust.works 18 points 11 months ago

That’s a darn good shower thought.

[-] expatriado@lemmy.world 12 points 11 months ago

English phonetics suck more than any other language ever spoke or tried to learn

[-] clockwork_octopus@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago

That’s cuz English is a bully that beats up all the other languages and steals their words

[-] Draghetta@lemmy.world 6 points 11 months ago

Nah fam.. the leader took the lead, then he lead while wearing lead. This is pure English, no loanwords.

[-] Mr_Fish@lemmy.world 3 points 11 months ago

Yes, English can be weird. It can be understood through tough thorough thought, though.

[-] teft@lemmy.world 9 points 11 months ago
[-] tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip 5 points 11 months ago

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?

[-] dustyData@lemmy.world 5 points 11 months ago

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.

[-] 1371113@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago

North Atlantic accent I think it’s called. Have a read of the wiki. Kinda interesting.

[-] 1371113@lemmy.world 3 points 11 months ago

I know when I pronounce it, it’s different on the a/e - NZ English.

[-] BlueEther@no.lastname.nz 2 points 11 months ago

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.

[-] 1371113@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago

Depends on how fast I’m talking but, yup. South islanders do it more than north ime.

[-] sparky@lemmy.federate.cc 2 points 11 months ago

Native Portlander here, that’s definitely not us. Wuh-man and Wim-min.

[-] DarkDarkHouse@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 11 months ago

How come it’s Germans and not Germen

[-] lauha@lemmy.one 5 points 11 months ago

How come it's humans, not humen

[-] TheTechnician27@lemmy.world 4 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

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.

[-] ornery_chemist@mander.xyz 4 points 11 months ago

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

[-] ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de -3 points 11 months ago

Op, you just aren't saying them correctly, I guess.

this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2024
220 points (86.7% liked)

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