words not pronounced the way they're spelled (quote)

[MillennialUrbanist]

Originally Posted by Nodpete

'F' as in elephant !

Or 'K' as in knife.
Or 'P' as in pterodactyl
Or 'R' as in colonel

On a slightly more serious note, Spanish doesn't have a PH digraph, so it's spelled "elefante".

[volosong]

Read a saying the other day about people mispronouncing words. It said, (paraphrased),

Don't make fun of people who mispronounce words...
they probably learned it by reading.

[MillennialUrbanist]

Originally Posted by volosong

Read a saying the other day about people mispronouncing words. It said, (paraphrased),

Don't make fun of people who mispronounce words...
they probably learned it by reading.

Tell me about it! I had trouble with the word "turtle" as a kid. I pronounced it like [turd-el], until I was corrected. Which made people laugh, since Ninja Turtles were all the rage back then. The T often degenerates into a glottal stop in the Chicago dialect, which I had trouble enunciating. (Well, a turtle's head sticking out looks kind of like the thing I mispronounced the word as.)

It's interesting how US English pronounces it as [tur'l] and UK English as [tut'l]. (Both when spoken fast.)

[steiconi]

The first time I read The Three Musketeers, I thought the main character's name was pronounced Dee ar tag nan. I kept wondering when Dartanyan I loved from the TV show was going to show up.

[NW4me]

Originally Posted by KathrynAragon

Colonel. That's the first one that pops into my head.

And in the UK, lieutenant is pronounced "lef-tenant."

How they came up with that, I have no idea.

[MillennialUrbanist]

Originally Posted by NW4me

And in the UK, lieutenant is pronounced "lef-tenant."

How they came up with that, I have no idea.

Probably similar to how "rough" is pronounced [ruff]. I mean, really, how do you turn a G and an H into an F? Pronouncing it [ruy], in parallel to "light", would be more accurate.

Or maybe UK English is more heavily influenced by French, where you can pronounce letters however your heart desires, than US English is. Hence, "lieutenant" sounding like [lef-TEH-nant].

[adjusterjack]

The composer Antonin Dvorak. Pronounced Dvorzhak.

Writer Karel Capek. Pronounced Chahpek.

Keep in mind that the native languages have vowels, consonants and diacritical marks that result in the correct pronunciation in those languages.

Another example is USSR. Written in the Russian alphabet is CCCP which, written in Russian is:

Союз Советских Социалистических Республик

Pronounced (using English letters):

Soyuz Sovetskich Sotsialisticheskich Respublik

Though we call it the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

[steiconi]

This may sound odd, but the Hawaiian language is fairly easy to pronounce because it was only a spoken language until a couple of hundred years ago. A European linguist wrote it down the way it was pronounced, and it hasn't had a chance to evolve away.

I suspect most odd spellings are just really old.

[ILTXwhatnext]

bough
rough
cough
though
through
hiccough

They "eye rhyme" but they don't "ear rhyme."

What do job, polish, and herb have in common?
They may all be pronounced differently when they're capitalized.

[harry chickpea]

Slough - either sluff or sloo or slou