mispronunciations of the written word

[Green_Fairy]

...ya lost me

[EricKei]

There is no R-sound, and neither is there in "kernel" despite the spelling.

Kernel and Colonel are homynyms -- at least, in US English -- and they both have an "er" sound in there. I have never heard the former pronounced *without* it. I cannot speak for other dialects.

[Chromatix]

In Finnish, a language with very straightforward spelling rules, it would be spelled "Köönel".

No R-sound, just a vowel sound - which in English is usually spelled "er", because we only have five and a half vowels in the alphabet but a lot more vowel sounds to choose from.

It's something you get familiar with only if you learn a foreign language with sane orthography.

[BarbieGirl]

I've noticed a lot of people pronounce Frustrated as fustrated. I've always had trouble with the following words..

Lawyer--- Law yer
always--- all was
both--- bolth (so hard to get rid of that l)
Blender--- Blin der
pen--- Pin

[BeeMused]

Kernel and Colonel are homynyms -- at least, in US English -- and they both have an "er" sound in there. I have never heard the former pronounced *without* it. I cannot speak for other dialects.

Most American accents are rhotic - they pronounce the /r/, where as most British variants don't (non-rhotic).
In a non-rhotic accent such as received pronunciation /r/ does not occur unless followed immediately by a vowel. Pairs such as father/farther, pawn/porn, caught/court and formally/formerly are homophones.
Here's a Wikipedia article about this topic.

If you want to explore the accents and dialects of the UK check out this site from the British Library, it's fun to listen to speakers of all ages, plus they give you hints what to listen for and they have transcripts.

[EricKei]

It's something you get familiar with only if you learn a foreign language with sane orthography.

Come now, are suggesting that *snerk* English may have some *giggle* words which are spelled in completely illogical ways *weheeheeheeeeeeeee* which are completely unrelated to how they sound....?

Sorry ^_^ I just couldn't get through that with a straight face

Our spelling "system", such as it is, can be pretty FUBAR at times, can't it?

[simplyanother]

Is this where we now tell how we pronounce the word Aunt?

[dalesys]

It's something you get familiar with only if you learn a foreign language with sane orthography.

Try Gaelic spelling.

St. Paddy got hwalloped upside the head with a shillelagh a few too many times.

sidhe dubh anybody?

[Green_Fairy]

mmm...i want to learn Gaelic.

when i was born, the nurse said that my parents should spell my name (megan) the gaelic way to match my last name. it was something like "megwyn" or something. hrm. no thanks.

[Chromatix]

Apparently, there are two reasons why have such awful orthography.

1) The Dutch published our first truly major literary work - the English translation of the Bible. And because they did the typesetting, they were the ones to figure out how to spell everything in it. Only some time after that did they reform their *own* spelling.

2) Since then, we've included many words from other languages, and often kept *their* spelling of it. This is particularly confusing with French, for example. And Gaelic.

[Flying Grype]

and magenta becomes mag-neta

I just have to say that we use software called Magento, but a couple of people in the office called it Magneto for a long time.

[Imogene]

sidhe dubh anybody?

'She what'?

[the_std]

Oh man, I had graduated high school by the first time I'd ever had to say "Ecuador" out loud. Instead of the correct Eck-wa-dor, I thought it was You-kway-dor. Still haven't lived that one down.

[Chanlin]

fine and dandy, but it still doesn't explain where the "r" came from

Colonel actually used to be spelled Coronell from early French which is where English adapted the word. The R was and still is pronounced despite the fact hat the modern spelling of the word has dropped it. It also used to be pronounced with 3 syllables instead of 2. Very long history of word use made very short when the printing press was invented they standardized the spelling of many words, in which case the Italian/Latin way of spelling the word typically won out since that was the prevailing language of the church at the time, but the French pronunciation was what every English speaker was used to because for a very long time French was the language of the royal court (which incidentally is why so many words are borrowed from French into English, and borrowings from other languages result from proximity/conquest over the years).

There are many words where spellings don't make sense in the English language. This has to do with spelling conventions remaining the same even though sound changes were occurring. Many words with a silent E on the end are a direct result of this. For example name in old English was nama. The French way of spelling it was adapted as name with the E still pronounced and then when the historical "Great Vowel Shift" occurred which changed much of the way we pronounce words in modern English the final vowel sound was dropped, but the spelling remained the same.

I could go on and on and on and on on the subject (English Major and Linguistics minor) but that would be better reserved for a different forum

[Green_Fairy]

that is so cool O_O