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[–] 13 points 1 year ago (10 children)

To be fair, most of the weirdly spelled words come from other languages. Especially French.

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  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Yup, in this case: Yacht comes from the Dutch word "jacht" (hunt). Named after fast sailing vessels to hunt down pirates and enemies.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    Brings back a fun memory. On a business trip in France, I was driving and with my coworker (French national).

    I had the GPS set to English pronunciation of the signs etc. My coworker spent most of the two hour drive a complaining about the pronunciation and begging to change the settings. I spent the trip laughing my ass off at him and refusing to change it.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    Sure we did that. But look at how you spell and pronounce them ! What a slaughter.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago* (4 children)

    French people will see a 10-letter word and pronounce it as a single syllable. No language is particularly good in this respect, English is just the most common target of criticism for this

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    I think phonetic alphabets are a pretty good idea (though I suppose they're mostly phonemic).

    I'm surprised more people don't make fun of abjads.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    There are some languages that use strictly phonetic writing systems. Cherokee (indigenous American language) and Esperanto (constructed international auxiliary language) come to mind, but I'm sure there are others. None of the major world languages (English, Spanish, French, Arabic, Russian, Standard Chinese) are perfectly phonetic.

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