‘Choose’ rhymes with ‘lose’? I mean c’mon, someone did that shit on purpose 👀

  • emeralddawn45@discuss.tchncs.de
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    10 hours ago

    I mean yeah ‘loose’ could probably be pronounced like ‘choose’ and it would still make sense, but it absolutely wouldnt make sense for ‘lose’ to be pronounced like ‘moose’ or ‘goose’. Im not sure what you even mean when you say they switched meanings either because thats just false.

  • scarabic@lemmy.world
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    8 hours ago

    English is idiosyncratic as hell. Didn’t someone famous call it “not a language but 3 languages in an overcoat.”

    Adding to this specific instance is that even native speakers spell things wrong. They loose their keys, etc.

  • Diddlydee@feddit.uk
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    13 hours ago

    They never did. Their spelling, meaning, and pronunciation are the same as they have always been.

  • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
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    9 hours ago

    Wait, if they swapped meanings and then swapped spellings then doesn’t that mean they’re the same as before?

  • vaper@lemmy.world
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    18 hours ago

    Loose rhymes with noose. I can’t think of a word that’s spelled and pronounced like lose so you have me there.

    choose lose cruise booze

    all rhyme lol

  • jimmy90@lemmy.world
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    21 hours ago

    english is a very silly language that’s evolved so you can do almost anything with it

    it’s a risky strat but it seems to have worked

  • NorthWestWind@lemmy.world
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    18 hours ago

    May as well combine words with the same pronunciation into one word and call it Simplified English (/s)

    Honestly tho, this is one of the features of Simplified Chinese, which created the infamous “fuck vegetables” (干菜类).

    It’s meant to say “dried vegetables” (乾菜類 in TC), but 乾→干. Meanwhile, there exists 幹→干 as well, which means “fuck”.

    fuck vegetables

    • snooggums@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      Don’t get me started on ough and ead.

      The lead soldier kneaded dough in the bough brush while they read the book that they previously read while taking a furlough in the rough.

    • over_clox@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      Hoes drop their clothes.

      Who the hell decided that close is pronounced the same as clothes?

      • samus12345@lemmy.world
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        9 hours ago

        They aren’t universally, just in certain dialects. I pronounce the “th” just like with “clothing.”

      • darkdemize@sh.itjust.works
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        1 day ago

        No one? They aren’t pronounced the same in any accent that I’m aware of.

        Edit: I’m dumb. I was reading that as the “nearby” close and not the "shut " close.

        • teft@lemmy.world
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          17 hours ago

          Even the second one isn’t pronounced the same. Some accents drop the th sound in clothes which is why they can sound similar.

        • NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io
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          1 day ago

          I don’t know shit about fuck when it comes to the differences between accents/dialects but it’s at least enough of a thing to be there in dictionaries.

        • over_clox@lemmy.world
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          1 day ago

          You’re probably thinking of the pronunciation of close as in ‘close to you’

          I was thinking of the pronunciation of close as in ‘close the door’

          Which is pronounced the same as clothes.

          • corvi@lemm.ee
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            1 day ago

            Those still aren’t pronounced the same. The th in clothes isn’t silent.

            • CarbonatedPastaSauce@lemmy.world
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              1 day ago

              Huh? I have lived in every corner and the middle of the United States and I have never heard anyone pronounce the TH in clothes no matter the accent. It always sounds like close as in to close the door.

              Unless you are thinking of cloths, as in a pile of wash cloths.

              English kinda sucks sometimes.

              • emeralddawn45@discuss.tchncs.de
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                10 hours ago

                This is just wrong. Im canadian but think about how you would pronounce the word ‘clothe’ as in 'he can barely clothe himself" and then add an s sound. Although it is more of a ‘z’ sound abd can blend with the ‘th’ a little bit, the ‘th’ is definitely pronounced clo-th-z.

              • tyler@programming.dev
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                23 hours ago

                I’m American and I’ve never heard a single person ever pronounce it “close”. Listen closely and you’ll hear that the word sounds longer. That’s the pronunciation. It’s not a hard “thuh”. It’s a soft “ths”. Say the word “cloths” but use a long “o” sound rather than “awh”.

            • 0ops@lemm.ee
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              24 hours ago

              I pronounce the th sometimes, but not always, depends how fast I’m talking

            • over_clox@lemmy.world
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              1 day ago

              I’m not sure where you’re from, but the th is indeed silent in my area regarding the word ‘clothes’. I’ve never heard it pronounced any different than ‘close’.

              Now if it’s said as ‘clothing’, the th is indeed pronounced. But not for ‘clothes’. And I’ve worked at a clothing store before.

              You might be thinking of the word ‘cloths’, which indeed does pronounce the th.

              English is weird like that.

              • HorseChandelier@lemmy.world
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                1 day ago

                I’m not sure where you’re from, but the th is indeed silent in my area regarding the word ‘clothes’. I’ve never heard it pronounced any different than ‘close’.

                I’m not sure where you’re from, the th in is always pronounced in my area regarding the word ‘clothes’. I’ve never heard it pronounced the same as ‘close’

                I will say that people got called out for pronouncing it the same as the spice ‘cloves’.

                FWIW My area = rural southern UK.

                • ODuffer @lemmy.world
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                  23 hours ago

                  Yeah absolutely not silent. Unless perhaps you’re a cockney. Source: I’m in northern England. Perhaps it is a British thing.

                • Asidonhopo@lemmy.world
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                  1 day ago

                  I’m in the US and I pronounce it, I think a lot of people do? Maybe I just know a lot of snobs and “regular” Americans mush the word together but I don’t think so

                • CarbonatedPastaSauce@lemmy.world
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                  1 day ago

                  Oh well that’s easy then, it’s because you guys speak British, not English!

                  Kidding aside, I lived in East Anglia for a few years as a kid and I don’t remember the British kids saying it that way either, but that was a really long time ago and my memory ain’t what it used to be! I think. I can’t remember how it used to be actually.

                • over_clox@lemmy.world
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                  1 day ago

                  You seem like the sort of person that would pronounce the word often with a hard T, yet still pronounce the letter A as if it was an O.

              • db2@lemmy.world
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                24 hours ago

                So on laundry day you put away your clo_s_ing? The rest of us have clo_th_ing.

                I can edit also.

              • Eiri@lemmy.ca
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                16 hours ago

                Ooh wow you’re right.

                Close to me is “closs”

                Close the door is “cloz”

                I never noticed

                • teft@lemmy.world
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                  16 hours ago

                  I’ve had to train my ear because I learned to speak spanish so I notice these things with my friends who are learning english.

                  The one that broke my mind the other day is that the D in drink is pronounced like a J. My friend was practicing his D sounds and came up with that out of the blue.

      • SandLight@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        I don’t know that they sound that different, but I definitely “pronounce” them differently in that my tongue is in a different party of my mouth for both of them. When I say clothes, my tongue is near touching my front teeth, where as close is more just below that ridge behind my teeth, so farther back.

        I’m from the center of the U.S. for reference.

      • NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io
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        1 day ago

        Okay as a non-native speaker who struggles with consonant clusters this is both the best and worst thing I learned today.

        • ThisIsNotHim@sopuli.xyz
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          3 hours ago

          At least in my dialect (US northeast) clothes and close don’t quite share a pronunciation. They’re similar enough that you could probably fully elide the th sound, and I’m not sure anyone would notice.

          When I pronounce clothes I can still feel my tongue move into the th position, and hear a small difference.

        • CarbonatedPastaSauce@lemmy.world
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          1 day ago

          Hey we may have our language rules pulled from 30 different other languages and applied seemingly at random, but at least we don’t have to memorize the gender of every inanimate object in the world!

          I’ve taken 5 years of German and self studied some Russian and Spanish, and goddamn that gendered noun shit is really, really hard for native English speakers.

          • NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io
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            22 hours ago

            Okay you got me there. Also for what it’s worth, gendered nouns are hard even when you natively speak a language with gendered nouns. Source: Am an Arabic speaker and will Jihad anyone who says a chair is female.

  • yeehaw@lemmy.ca
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    23 hours ago

    It’s a miracle I know it, and having to teach someone how to read and spell was an eye opener for me trying to explain “this is like this except for this one word because… Reasons and sometimes there’s a variation like this because…reasons” so many times.

    • samus12345@lemmy.world
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      9 hours ago

      Usually the reason is either because some jerks intentionally changed certain spellings to look more French/Latin (“receipt” didn’t have a “p” originally, for example), or just because English is such a mongrel language with words taken from various other languages with different spelling and pronunciation rules.

    • Kidra@sopuli.xyz
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      13 hours ago

      I once had a roommate from Chile and he asked what the difference in pronunciation was for “juice” versus “Jews”. I’m still not sure I properly got the difference across…

      Also the difference between “to rob” and “to steal” was an interesting thing to think through and then explain.

      • samus12345@lemmy.world
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        9 hours ago

        I can see why he’d have trouble with those two, because Spanish doesn’t have the English “z” sound. They’ll both sound the same using Spanish pronunciation .

    • absGeekNZ@lemmy.nz
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      21 hours ago

      Agreed, I am teaching my second son to read.

      I am having the same conversations as when I taught my first to read.

      “ok, this word is a ‘sight word’ because it doesn’t make the sounds you expect. It says won, but it looks like it says on-e”

    • teft@lemmy.world
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      17 hours ago

      Having to explain to my spanish speaking friends why an english word is spelled one way but pronounced another entirely different way gave me the same experience. So many times i have to tell them: “i don’t know english is just weird.”