Showerthoughts

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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 best ones are thoughts that many people can relate to and they find something funny or interesting in regular stuff.

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The word "phonetic" is not spelled phonetically. (lemmy.world)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago (2 children)

I don't even know what "spelled phonetically" is supposed to mean in English. As far as I'm concerned that language is just a jumble of vowels that all sound the same but generate long arguments about how to pronounce things "correctly".

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago (2 children)

This is why the IPA is useful.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Kind of. The IPA doesn't show weak forms so non-native speakers can be confused by them if they only ever learned the dictionary way of pronouncing a word.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

Ah that's interesting, I didn't know that.

Still, the IPA is really helpful when trying to discuss pronunciation with someone who has a very different accent to ourselves.

As a New Zealander I find some US phonetic spellings baffling.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

IPA is also useful for cleaning and drinking.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (4 children)

Phonetically means the way it sounds which would be “fonetik”

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

So pronounced phone-tick?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

Three syllables, so it would be fo-ne-tik.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

This is not correct. English is simply not phonetic and therefore it's impossible to spell any English word phonetically.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

funneddic (US)
funnettic (UK)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

That's transposing it how we sound to them, though!

If the above were pronounced in a baseline kiwi accent the U would just get deeper. The vowel shift goes the other way if I'm to recreate their pronunciation using my own accent:

Fehr ned ik (US)

Foe net eck (UK)