w(uh)man to w(ih)men
nah i say wuh-man and wih-min
To distinguish between the word woman and women, we change the A to an E, but only change the pronunciation on the O.
Submitted 3 months ago by JeSuisUnHombre@lemm.ee to showerthoughts@lemmy.world
Comments
tilefan@lemm.ee 3 months ago
EdanGrey@sh.itjust.works 3 months ago
It must only be in some places because where I live in the UK both parts change pronunciation.
BingBong@sh.itjust.works 3 months ago
Does in Midwest USA too.
intensely_human@lemm.ee 3 months ago
Where’s that?
lazynooblet@lazysoci.al 3 months ago
In UK it goes from
Woman – Wu mun Women - Wi men
Iamsqueegee@sh.itjust.works 3 months ago
That’s a darn good shower thought.
Carighan@lemmy.world 3 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 3 months ago
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.
ornery_chemist@mander.xyz 3 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.
ivanafterall@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Isn’t it just pronounced how it looks?
grozzle@lemm.ee 3 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.
Assman@sh.itjust.works 3 months ago
What kind of weirdo says chick-uhn?
TrickDacy@lemmy.world 3 months ago
English speakers globally
EmoDuck@sh.itjust.works 3 months ago
BirdyBoogleBop@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 months ago
Except for stadium I don’t prnounce any of those words like that.
expatriado@lemmy.world 3 months ago
English phonetics suck more than any other language ever spoke or tried to learn
clockwork_octopus@lemmy.world 3 months ago
That’s cuz English is a bully that beats up all the other languages and steals their words
Draghetta@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Nah fam… the leader took the lead, then he lead while wearing lead. This is pure English, no loanwords.
teft@lemmy.world 3 months ago
tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip 3 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 3 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 3 months ago
North Atlantic accent I think it’s called. Have a read of the wiki. Kinda interesting.
1371113@lemmy.world 3 months ago
I know when I pronounce it, it’s different on the a/e - NZ English.
BlueEther@no.lastname.nz 3 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.
sparky@lemmy.federate.cc 3 months ago
Native Portlander here, that’s definitely not us. Wuh-man and Wim-min.
ornery_chemist@mander.xyz 3 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
DarkDarkHouse@lemmy.sdf.org 3 months ago
How come it’s Germans and not Germen
lauha@lemmy.one 3 months ago
How come it’s humans, not humen
TheTechnician27@lemmy.world 3 months ago
ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 3 months ago
Op, you just aren’t saying them correctly, I guess.
ccunning@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Except by your own pronunciation guide:
intensely_human@lemm.ee 3 months ago
Yeah that’s the spelling part OP is referring to
ccunning@lemmy.world 3 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?^