[Sca-cooks] New Email address

[Huette von Ahrens]

Which proves the witticism, "America and Britain: two countries separated by a common language."

The problem with the English language is that for every example to prove one theory, you can find at least one other example to disprove it.

duke = dyook?  puke = pyook?

How about Luke?  Or nuke?  Or fluke?  None of them are pronounced with that extra vowel.  Not even in Britain.  We don't say Lyook or nyook.  Fluke is a nice Old English word.  It isn't pronounced flyook.

And who really thinks that ook should be pronounced ewk?  Not words like look, book, or cook.  Let's go kewk some food!  That is not how it is pronounced.  Not even in Britain.  The double o's in cook are not pronounced the same as in coon or spoon.

This is even worse with the o, n, e.

There is this first pronunciation: one, done, none.
Then there is this second pronunciation: bone, cone, lone, phone.
And thirdly, this pronunciation: gone.

Let Americans pronounce words as they wish to and the Brits pronounce them as they wish to.  But neither should be telling the other that one pronunciation or the other is wrong.

Finally, we have to consider the word 'ghoti'.  By some rules, this word should be pronounced 'fish'.  'gh' as in 'laugh', 'o' as in 'women' and 'ti' as in 'nation'.

There is good reason that English is tied for first with Chinese as the hardest language for a non-native speaker to learn.  Chinese has a ton of rules to learn, but they don't vary much.  English claims it has rules, but there are exceptions to exceptions to exceptions, to the point that there might as well be no rules at all.

Grumpily and pedantically yours,

Huette

'i' before 'e', except after 'c', or in the case of 'neighbor' or 'weigh'.


  



--- On Sat, 2/6/10, Ian Kusz <sprucebranch at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: Ian Kusz <sprucebranch at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] New Email address
> To: "Cooks within the SCA" <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>
> Date: Saturday, February 6, 2010, 3:23 AM
> Which is still better than the one
> that appeared on British radio:
> 
> "Hallo, ducky!"
> 
> "How many times do I have to explain it to you? 
> D-U-K-E spells "dyook!""
> 
> On Tue, Feb 2, 2010 at 12:12 PM, <lilinah at earthlink.net>
> wrote:
> 
> > Dook Gunthar wrote:
> >
> >> ...people have suggested I change my email to
> befit my new
> >>
> >> rank and, considering my rather ferrety nature,
> this seemed
> >> a good fit.
> >>
> >> Please send all new correspondences to dookgunthar at hotmail.com
> >>
> >
> > A British director was working in the US with American
> actors on a
> > Shakespearean play.
> >
> > One actor could not seem to be able to pronounce
> d-u-k-e in the British
> > fashion (as dyook or perhaps even jyook), but only as
> many Americans say it,
> > dook. The director became more and more infuriated at
> this.
> >
> > Finally, in utter exasperation, he said to the actor,
> "If you say "dook"
> > one more time, i'm going to POOK!"
> >
> > --
> > Someone sometimes called Urtatim