'Read' and its past tense are spelled the same. How should they be spelled?
What about similar oddities in English?
(This question is inspired by this comic by https://www.exocomics.com/193/ (link found by BunScientist@lemmy.zip))
Edit: it's to its in the title. Damn autocorrect.
My wife and I had a good snicker one time when I brought home edamame peas in the shell.
They were shelled, but she wanted them shelled.
Flammable/imflammable is another one that comes to mind.
As carved into history by Dr. Nick:
English has many contronyms.
And the alarm goes off means it actually starts ringing. Weird language indeed!
And this might just be a UK thing but if a person goes off it means they get really angry. And it can mean to leave for somewhere.
So a firework goes off which makes the fire alarm go off which makes the safety officer go off. Then he goes off to get a fireman. But he leaves the milk out, so it goes off.
Pitted olives got me in a similar fashion.
Also sanction and sanction, same word but completely opposite meanings.
It's "its," by the way.
This is the grammar thing I fuck up the most, and I don't call people on it because I'm pretty sure I don't know how it works. Autocorrect changes it & I just say "oh, whoops", and it still looks wrong...
it's means "it is". It is really not difficult, just pretend you are Data and swear off contractions.
Here's a shortcut: test if you could drop "his" into the same spot and have it make sense. (And of course you'd never write hi's or his's.) If "his" would work, "its" would work.
My keyboard is very keen on completing "it's" regardless of context. I imagine this is the case for most people, since usually I see "it's" when "its" would be correct.
I also think it's difficult to know that "it's" is wrong to use because it feels like it follows the common apostrophe for possession rule:
"Australia's capital is Canberra" -> "Australia is the largest country in Oceania. It's capital is Canberra." (wrong, but intuitive)
Bought, caught, taught, fought, thought, sought, and wrought are all past tense verbs and all rhyme. The present tense forms are buy, catch, teach, fight, think, seek, and work, none of which rhyme.
https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/304867/the-wrought-wreaked-havoc-misunderstanding
Today I learned...
Me too, thanks!
And that's one of the sounds "ou" can make.
Inglish speling iz stoopid.
Fast can mean moving with great speed or fixed securely in place (among other things).
The alarm went off so i turned it off.
My ally turned on me and then I turned her on
The Chaos by Gerard Nolst Trenité (1922)
https://ncf.idallen.com/english.html
Dearest creature in creation
\ Studying English pronunciation,
\ I will teach you in my verse
\ Sounds like corpse, corps, horse and worse.I will keep you, Susy, busy,
\ Make your head with heat grow dizzy;
\ Tear in eye, your dress you'll tear;
\ Queer, fair seer, hear my prayer.Pray, console your loving poet,
\ Make my coat look new, dear, sew it!
\ Just compare heart, hear and heard,
\ Dies and diet, lord and word.
\ ...
Very long. Highly recommended
It's because the people who set the rules for the English language, could barely speak it.
The first guy to popularize the printing press was Dutch, so the guy who bought England's first one didn't know how it worked and neither did any English speaker
So he hired a bunch of Dutch who knew how to operate it.
And they got a bunch of handwritten books and were told to mass reproduce them.
Sometimes it was a mistake in the original, sometimes the typesetter made a mistake. Sometimes the writer just disagreed with how it should be written, and sometimes even the typesetters who couldn't speak English made choices to change it
No one gave a fuck about accuracy, it was about pumping out as many books as possible. Because just owning a book was a huge status symbol still from when they were handwritten and crazy expensive.
But all those books eventually got read, and the people who learned to read them were very proud that they could read. So they insisted that all the random bullshit was intentional and had to be followed to a T by everyone forever.
Most other languages had a noble class who kept it sensical, but for a long ass time only peasants spoke English, the wealthy in England all spoke French, cuz they were French.
Anyways, that's why English doesn't make any sense. There was also a natural thing happening where vowel pronunciation was changing. So when the typecasters solidified everything, it was already in a state of flux. That's why pronunciation doesn't line up with spelling.
This also occurred in the middle of the Great Vowel Shift, a period when spoken English pronunciation was changing significantly.
It certainly doesn't help that English is about as pure as a cribhouse removed. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.
The first guy to popularize the printing press was Dutch
Are you talking about Johannes Gutenberg?
The primary accent for 2-syllable words that are used as both a noun and a verb depends on the part of speech. The noun places the primary accent on the 1st syllable, the verb on the 2nd syllable.
Examples:
The musician records a record.
The farmer produces produce.
You're not permitted to fish without a permit.
Potential exception: "Adult." Arguably because it generally isn't a verb when emphasis is on the second syllable, some people do that even when it's a noun.
I'm an Adult vs. I'm an aDULT.
Use as of "adult" as a verb is non-standard and where to emphasise that is even less clear-cut for those of us who put the emphasis on the first syllable of the noun. Interestingly, "adulterate" is less strange as a verb and the emphasis is definitely on the second syllable there.
We could tie ourselves in knots analysing the late emphasis form as a verbified noun, re-nounified. Ow.
The underlying truth of said statement is irrelevant. Chronologically, I have been one for some time. Mentally... ehh.
Not an exception for me, I definitely use different accents for adulting / adulteration and adult. Maybe that's a British vs US English difference?
One of my favourites is the word jam, which can mean:
And probably others, all spelled and pronounced the same way but with wildly different meanings depending on the context.
The other English thing I find super interesting is how there's a sort of unspoken but very clearly understood order to adjectives. So for example, if I say "The big old red wooden door" it works as a description, but if I say "The wooden old red big door" it sounds weird even though it's the same information. People aren't usually formally taught the order (as far as I know), but everyone seems to understand it.
Would be interested in more about the order - wondering if there is a name for that? I have been called out by teachers and friends and colleagues about strange sentences and it was often because I wouldn't write the 'normal' way. I've learned the conventions over the years and often find myself making edits to swap words and phrases around to meet expectations.
Apparently it's called the Royal Order of Adjectives, and it's essentially: determiner, opinion, size, shape, age, colour, origin, material, qualifier.
You don't have to use all of those in the description, but that's broadly the order to use them in to make it sound 'right'. So for example in the comment I made above, it fits because I used:
in that order. I'm sure I was never taught that in any organized way (I just had to look up what it was called lol) but I still got it in the right order anyway just by typing it out in the way that felt right, which I think is interesting.
Welcome to english, where rules are actually the exceptions
I before E, except after C!
As long as you don't count the word caffeine. Or protein. Or species. Or seize or heinous or leisure or weird or feign or their or reignite or any of the other 923 words that are exceptions to this rule lol.
Where, were, we're. Even native speakers have problems with this. I don't know how many times I had to correct such cases, especially with American authors.
Pretty much only native speakers have problems with this, I see this type of mistake far less frequently with those who learned English as an additional language.
Exactly. People with English as a second language go from meaning to writing. Native speakers go from sound to writing.
There, their, they’re is something native speakers confuse as well. I have only ever observed native speaker write should of instead of should‘ve or should have.
Pretty much only native speakers have problems with this
99% agree with this. This is a native speaker issue, except where someone took up bad habits from the natives...
Pretty much only native speakers have problems with this
That makes no sense since they would use it more, however native speakers from the US do have problems with it, and other words (they're/their).
Rarely encounter it with others.
Their spelling is embarrassing, same as their very limited vocabulary.
IDK what they do in schools.
I pronounce these all differently though? [wɛɹ], [wəɹ] and [wiɹ]
Maybe, yes, but as someone who has seen tons of unedited writings, I can tell you those mixup as common as muck.
This one has also bothered me because I pronounce all three of these differently.
Where, were, we’re.
I never had a problem with those, until I started with stuff like Reddit.
Now, I find myself making the mistake and catching it in proofreading.
Guess my brain is starting to age too.
English has way more vowel sounds than it has vowels.
Those are just words where the primary vowel letter is "a".
The terrible attempt to solve this is by using double letters, but then consistency goes out the window. There's times when "ea" is a single vowel sound like /rid/ (reed) or /rɛd/ (red). But it can also be /ɛrn/ as in earn, which rhymes with urn and burn. It can be /ˈɡɹeɪt/ as in great, where the "ea" is a diphthong and pronounced like the "a" in grate or vague. Or, for more fun, the two letters can each fully get their own pronunciation like "react" or "theatre".
We're really at the "bearn it all down and start over" stage with English. Let's just all agree to switch to español.
"Read" and "readed."
Lead and lead as well. I got a lead on those lead undergarments you wanted. I'll lead you there later.
How did I get to the lead merchant? I was led here. But in the price negotiation, I took the lead.
That works for your way of saying it but there is nothing wrong with the way I said it. You don't say I'll led you there later. My statement wasn't past tense at all.
Actually I don't think this one is true. Past tense of "to lead" is led. But also lead can be pronounced like led when referring to the metal or the element.
I found it! https://www.exocomics.com/193/
Nice! Thank you
The digraph oo is pronounced at least six different ways:
Are the first 2 lines really different?
Genuine question from a non native speaker.
first line is a long oo, second line is a short oo.
That's the fun part, depending on your dialect and regional accent, sometimes there is no discernable difference in some of these lines. But each line has distinct pronunciation from each other in some dialects.
Ehh technically I think they are the same but in common pronunciation they differ subtly. Don't overthink it though.
Floor/door and poor might differ depending on dialect
And the whole point of zoology and cooperative is that they aren't digraphs (hence why some super posh people write coöperative)
On a different note there is Reading, a football club in UK, which is pronounced "Redding". This pronunciation is akin to the Reading Railroad from Monopoly (which I mispronounced all my life until today).
Little details, picked up along the way.
Reading is a place itself, the football club is the club for that place
Next you're going to tell me there are places in the UK named Manchester and Liverpool and Notts County and St Johnstone and Celtic and Rangers and Port Vale.
Indeed, I just blurted out the biggest association in my mind to the place
It's pronounced "Redding" Railroad?? All those times I sang "Take a look, it's in a book, Reading Railroad!" were a lie!
Reed, red. Homophones should be homographs too.
What dialect of English will we base the new spelling system on?
Transatlantic English
All of them. If you speak some weird rural UK accent you spell it differently. And certain people from New York, for example, spell curl as coil.
I think this would be the same in RP as it is in most American-ish accents, though.
Reed and Red
The English language is so removed yet we use it for international communication, and it is too late to stop it.
The problem is the spelling, not the language. But the problem with spelling reform is that it necessarily favours certain dialects over others so you can never please everyone.
How about we go with reed and red... see, you already know how to pronounce them!
Read and readed
Wind as in air moving and wind as in a pathway with twists and turns.
I've never been a fan of read/read/red They're too popular to all be comingled like that.
Just place read/read with Peruse/Perused
Looking up the etymology is often helpful in theoretical discussions about pronunciation and spelling :)
Words that produce the same sounds should have same spelling. Read in past tense and red is the same sound, so why isn't past tense of read - red?
Why most 'c' in words produce 'k' sounds?
Car and kar also produce the same sounds, so why C instead of K?
You should wrede a book they wrote, and after you've wred the book, write your own.
Words in which I can never remember h and g order:
Inconsistent pronunciation of "ae"
And many more...
Façade is written using a letter that doesn't appear in English language keyboards (or in any other English word that I'm aware of).
Just like naïve
one would say that word is a
Using loan words is cheating, but also disqualifies half the English language
Thing is, reasonable languages adapt loan words to their own rules to make their speakers' lives easier.
English, though? Nah, English just stalks other languages in dark alleys, stabs them, rips some random words off, and runs away giggling like a maniac, bits of the original language dragging behind, leaving a trail of gore.
That's how you end up with things like façade, or naïve, or fiancé, or the plural of radius being radii, or château / châteaux, or referendum / referenda, and so on, turning what should be a matter of just applying some standard rules into a veritable minefield of non-standard forms which must be memorised by its speakers.
We should be consistent and say "readed". While we're on the subject, why isn't the past tense of go "goed"?
We should be consistent and say “readed”.
But you should still pronounce it redded.
But then it would get confused with "redead" which could be detrimental when dealing with necromancers.
Although the past tense of write is wrote, so maybe for read it should be rode.... dammit!
Read and Reddit
Read should be said "read" and read read. Read, on the other hand, I would leave as is.
English has so much of this sort of nonsense. Like the fish can be spelled ghoti thing.
Except that "gh" is never pronounced "f" at the start of a word and "ti" is never "sh" at the end. The "o" is perfectly correct, though. Phosh.
Of course. But it does illustrate some of the confusing quirks of the language though.
"well" is a noun, a verb, an adjective, an adverb and an interjection
Are reed and red taken?
Rob Words youtube channel is basically wtf english. And he has tons of content, and it keeps comming.
what if we just change the past tense to red? simpler?
People already struggle with 'led' being the past tense of "lead". It seems like quite a few people extend the "read/read" rule to "lead".
In other words, I don't know if that would actually solve anything 😅
English a very difficult language
English pronunciation is weird. It can be mastered through tough thorough thought though.
Put: "hold my beer"
its, not it's.
Read.
Have read.
They should be spelled the way they currently are.
The meta aspect of 'shit' has to be up there.
Spelt.
Wheat.
Maybe to reed (infinitive) and read (past tense), but you can usually infer which one it is from context so no need to change the spelling.
"I read the magazines" isn't clear on its own, but with other text it probably is.
"I read a lot of books about English spelling!"
Is this past tense?
Depends on the context
They should be left exactly the same as an example of context.
Just remember
Pretty sure the past tense of "lead" is actually "led."
Unless of course you're referring to the type of metal, lead, which I guess the meme isn't clear on.
Pretty sure there’s a chemical element named “lead”
It's not saying anything about past tenses in that meme, it's just saying that each word has two different pronunciations that rhyme with the other.
What's not clear? It's written right there!
It's all about led vs lēd.
I had to look this up.
And today I learned ALL my brit friends are spelling it wrong. That's more than two!