5d ago

rule

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That would just confirm my suspicion that God is a moron.
- You understand it actually is pronounced jif right?
  
  it's pronounced jod right
  
  I dunno about that, but seems like a lot of people aren't aware of the intended pronunciation.
  https://edition.cnn.com/2013/05/22/tech/web/pronounce-gif
  
  and the beautiful thing is, language does not work that way.
  
  I'm not sure what you mean. Are you some sort of cunning linguist?
  
  a sort. you can intend people to use a word you made up or pronounce it a certain way, but how it's used or pronounced is how it's going to be in the language regardless of its creator's intent.
  
  Language is not completely a democratic process. A 30:70 split on pronunciation doesn't indicate that one version is going to fade into oblivion. Pronunciation can evolve but so can definition. The word "literally" no longer means what it used to mean in common vernacular. Not everyone should be expected to accept these majority trends though. Many of us still want "literally" to preserve its original definition for example.
  
  "Old man yells at language changing over time."
  Edit: Sorry, I mean: "Eald mann hlýhst æt spræce wandlunge ofer tíde."
  
  The letter 's' was added to "Island" as a stylistic choice in order to make a word that has no Latin root appear more Latin. Do you go around telling people "the intended spelling is eyland"?
  
  The fact that you had to spell it wrong to communicate the "proper" pronouciation is not a good sign for your argument.
  
  There is a whole famous book where words are spelled funny so that people understand how to pronounce them.
  
  So we agree "jif" is not an intuitive pronouciation.
  
  No. It's ambiguous, hence the confusion. Just today actually I had a German guy asking me about GHAR-EE-man-dering actually!
  
  "Someone else intuitively used a hard 'g' for a different word" is not the argument you think it is.
  Did you understand what they were asking about?
  
  They were trying to ask about gerrymandering. It's a hot topic in American politics right now, but it's something that has been used similarly in other places as well so it's worth being familiar with.
  I sorry if you like hard Gs better. When you invent a technology and acronym for it and publically write and announce how it's pronounced, I promise I'll respect that too.
  
  They were trying to ask about gerrymandering
  I know. I understood what they were trying to ask clearly from the phonetics they used. Did you?
  My point here is what do you think the purpose of language is?
  Is the purpose of language for people to "own" words and they can dictate how they are used?
  Is the purpose to gatekeep communication and stop conversations if the language is not used "properly" or "as intended"?
  Or is the purpose to communicate ideas, and as long as the idea is communicated efficiently the purpose of language has been served even if the usage is slightly different?
  Aluminum has two very different common pronunciations and I understand both just fine. I don't feel the need to tell people "actually it's pronounced aluminum."
  
  Sure. But context matters right? I also wouldn't correct someone if they said sontimeters instead of cenimeters, but if it was a specific conversation explicitly about how to say centimeters, I might chime in with an opinion and some historical facts right?
  
  And if it was a conversation about how to say "aluminum" a response of "it's regional, both are acceptable" would be reasonable.

179 comments