Re: OT: Language etc. Was: British GP

Yazoo <yazoo@myself.com> wrote:

On Wed, 17 Jul 2024 01:21:05 -0500, Dave Garrett <dave@compassnet.com>
wrote:

>
I remain mystified as to how one could hear a name being pronounced one
way, and then say it a completely different way, but what do I know, I'm
a Texan who was once told that I spoke German with a Czech accent.

 
I red somewhere that this ability/inability is connected with music
talent. So, some people really don't recognize the differences, and
have hard time learning foreign language, let alone to get rid of bad
accent.
And some are just lazy. Just because.

The bottom line is that we have a whole mix of languages (and I'll
speak of western europe, that I know the names best in) that share a
common alphabet...but not the same pronunciation of either the
individual vowels/consonants or digraphs, and many languages having
silent letters where the rules change from language to language.

I come from an Irish family (we're the first born outside of Ireland) so
I grew up with both English and Irish spoken. I know the rules for
Irish pronunciation, so I understand why phonetically Seán is pronounced
"shawn" or Tadgh is pronounced "tie" with a hard "g" at the end. And
while some of these have entered into common use (with or without
anglicisation), you get into problems with names like "Caitlin" which is
commonly pronounced "kate-lynn" but is nothing like that in Ireland as
it is pronounced "kotch-leen" in the west where my family comes from,
and something closer to "kaht-leen" in other dialects.

The fact the letters look the same fool us into thinking we know how to
pronounce the words. One of the hardest parts of learning Spanish has
been to learn the pronunciation and stress rules. It's critical when you
have esta, está and ésta which many English speakers would say
identically (but be confused as to the accent) but mean different
things:

- esta - feminine "this" - "esta camisa es tuya" - *this* shirt is yours.
- está - he/she/it is  - "mi coche está aquí" - my car *is* here.
- ésta - feminine "this one" - "ésta es tuya" - *this* *one* is yours.
(The last one is not really used any more unless it's to avoid confusion
where there is ambiguity).