@StableInvadeel It's phonetic. The w is silent, like the k in knight...
All kidding aside, that spelling was supposed to make clear that the vowels in between weren't supposed to be read as ee-oo, e-o or whatever other weird thing people make of it. When you spell ou, a lot of people might suspect something French, but if you say ouch, you know what the ou is supposed to sound like.
In that respect, consonants can actually kind of be seen as training wheels for our language skills...
'The console wars are like boobs: Sony and Microsoft fight over which ones look the nicest and Nintendo's are the most fun to play with.'
@ThanosReXXX - We were talking about cooking lobsters, so I decided to throw some Swedish Chef into the chatter. I regret not adding “Bork! Bork! Bork!” to make it clear.
I love the subject of animal noises and how people describe them. We covered it in one of my speech and communication classes in college. It’s the entirety of the communication model in its simplest form. People hear different animals make different sounds, and describe those sounds differently using different languages with different alphabets. There’s certainly no right or wrong way to describe an animal noise.
My dog makes lots of different alert sounds, but none of them sound like “bark”. Roosters don’t make a noise that sounds like “cock-a-doodle-do”, it’s usually an “errr” sound repeated any number of times, though we all tend to make it a five part sound even though I’ve heard roosters crow many different ways. It’s really fascinating in my opinion.
@bimmy-lee I know there's a difference, but we all have ears, so whereas we might have different words for a dog's bark or howl, the SOUND should be the same. Dogs don't speak any other language than their own, so there are no dialects in that respect. And my stress point was the sound, not so much the phonetic spelling, although that too eludes me, as I showed with listing the various ways of spelling out a rooster's crow.
Which, by the way, is none of those phonetic spellings, but simply a string of u's, separated by length, tone and pitch. Listen to it with that in mind, next time, and you'll notice. It's the Yanni/Laurel of today...
But I will refer again to the video with the nice Japanese lady, trying to "imitate" all kinds of animals. And then compare them to the two videos under that one, and there's a rather stark difference. And even these two ladies don't get everything right, but at least they don't make pigs and monkeys sound like something not of this Earth...
@StableInvadeel I've always ordered ice cream in Spain WITH an h...
@StableInvadeel Well, obviously like a more soft, back in the throat h, but most definitely not "elado".
Mind you: Euro-Spanish, obviously. It has been brought to my attention many times by several people that the Spanish spoken in other countries is not necessarily always the same, and in some cases even completely different in some ways or words.
Much like Portuguese and Brazilian, to name one other example...
'The console wars are like boobs: Sony and Microsoft fight over which ones look the nicest and Nintendo's are the most fun to play with.'
But all kidding aside, point taken. I guess that with a Western mind, you compare a word like that with other words that either have a silent h or no h and for me personally, a word without, starts with an eh sound, but in the, for lack of a better word, rather harsh and staccato Caucasian/"white" way, whereas I've always found languages like Spanish to use syllables a bit (or sometimes a lot) more subtle, which is what makes that maybe ever so faint, back in the throat h sound to me.
But regardless, as long as people understand me and don't laugh at me, I'll be just fine. Besides: few of them would dare. I look far too imposing to be laughed at face to face...
It's one of those weird almost unnecessary things in Spanish. The h is completely mute (except in loan words like "hamster", of course).
In some cases, however it serves as a separation between vowels, like in zanahoria (carrot). There it clearly separates the a from the o, and makes the "ho" it's own syllable.
In cases like helado though, it's completely useless. As far as I can tell.
About foreigners pronouncing the H like they would in their own languages, I think most people find that endearing.
@StableInvadeel Well, I never said I pronounced the h like that, and in fact, I don't. After having spent many a summer and winter vacation in Spain, I think I more or less have the real (Euro-)Spanish accent down. And most of what I've learned, is simply from usage in every day situations, and from friends made over there, so if I find out that there's still words that are wrong, then that bugs me, especially since those who taught me ARE Spanish, and apparently never felt the need to correct me. Or maybe it was their specific accent, that I learned to mimic over the years, I don't know. I have noticed the variety, though.
Either way, endearing concerning most foreigners, maybe. Not for me. I like languages and like learning them, and I always try to speak them as fluently as possible. I don't want to sound like a "Dutch guy with a weird accent that both is and isn't really Amsterdams", as one of my former colleagues once tried to peg me, because he couldn't figure out that a fluent Dutch speaker was actually a former yank...
The being a "linguist" is more than likely also a large part of the reason why all the aforementioned things bother me. That, and a lack of logic in a lot of these instances.
@NEStalgia YOU'RE offended? Well, get in line, son 'cause there's quite a queue already...
'The console wars are like boobs: Sony and Microsoft fight over which ones look the nicest and Nintendo's are the most fun to play with.'
@NEStalgia No! Don't point your finger at me! I... I must run, flee...
I need to put on a comfy turtleneck or fleece sweater and crawl under my blanky and mounds and mounds of soft, comfy pillows. Oh, the hurts....
Finally! I have time! I spent the last three months working on writing projects for some friends, I didn't realize how much I was missing out on until I sat down to play games for the first time since this July, and I realized I had a stack of 10 games from when I went on a pre-order binge after E3. So many of them are well-recieved, too. The Outer Worlds should arrive at my house this Friday! It felt like yesterday that I was excited for the E3 trailer! So much went on! I missed almost an entire season of anime, too, and there's so many good shows I want to watch!
I mean, I'll still write, but clearly I need to spend my free time on a wider variety of things. I'm terrible at doing anything in moderation, hah.
Speaking of writing, how is everyone? I realized I stopped posting for a while, what did I miss?
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