• VonReposti@feddit.dk
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    7 days ago

    As a Danish guy, please don’t. I get confused enough when you mash æ, ø, or å into random words.

  • SpookyBogMonster@lemmy.ml
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    7 days ago

    Where’s the Lemmy user who unironically uses the thorn in all of their posts? You should hook up with that person!

  • VibeSurgeon@piefed.social
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    7 days ago

    How to pronounce Swedish umlauted vowels:

    Å => how the British pronounce “awe”, “oo” in “floor”

    Ä => how the Americans pronounce the “a” in “cat”

    Ö => “ea” in “earl”, “yearn” or “u” in “turn”

    • boonhet@sopuli.xyz
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      7 days ago

      Oh I’ll add the Estonian ones because we’ve got fun ones

      Ü - pretty much does not exist in English, you might hear it in a weird dialect, apparently in the word “few” as spoken by scousers and some South Africans?

      Õ - same preface, apparently you might hear a person from Cardiff pronounce “foot” this way or a southern USian might say “nut” this way, but I’ve never heard either.

      Ö and Ä are the same as in Swedish and we do not have Å

      • Noobnarski@lemmy.world
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        7 days ago

        So ä ö and ü are pronounced the same as in German?

        Then i’d just have to learn how to say å and õ if I visit the Baltics or Scandinavia.

        • boonhet@sopuli.xyz
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          7 days ago

          Yes, ü sounds like the ü in über and ö like Österreich at least. I’m not entirely sure about the German vs Estonian pronunciation of ä. Sounds closer to the ä in Käfer than the ä in Käse if you go to wiktionary and listen to the example pronunciations. I did study German in school because it sounded preferable to learning an entire new alphabet and recall the German ä was taught as sort of a cross between the Estonian ä and Estonian e, leaning towards one or the other depending on context, but then again I’m not sure how good my German teachers were, I know I only ever had two or three English teachers out of like 8 or 9 that actually spoke the language and knew how to pronounce words.

  • atcorebcor@sh.itjust.works
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    6 days ago

    The a in anyone is actually pronounced like æ. Unlike the a in hand.

    The ø, however, is nothing like the o in one. It’s more like the eu in French, but doesn’t exist in English sounds. The Daniel word bøh (meaning boo) or øh (meaning uhm), does sound like the ir in bird, but that’s a rare pronounciation of ø that depends on the h.

    • bartvbl@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      I’d argue as a sound it does exist, think of the ‘uh’ in ‘duh’. But it doesn’t have a single letter associated with it.

      • atcorebcor@sh.itjust.works
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        4 days ago

        That’s not the same sound. I tried thinking of words in English that would use the sound, but I couldn’t come up with one. If you think duh has the sound, then you’re not pronouncing “eu” correctly in French.

  • kamen@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    Many people can’t handle the existing alphabet, imagine for a second if they have to deal with extra letters.

    • ReHomed@lemmy.cafe
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      6 days ago

      Folks can’t handle the current alphabet because it’s being used in the shittiest way possible

      Multi-century archaic spelling, preserved spellings in loaned words despite the sounds being different, hell there was a point where Big Dictionary was shoehorning random letters into words to make them more adjacent to their latin counterparts

      By all means you could triple the amount of letters in the alphabet and make it work, but as of now it’s kinda just the worst case of sunk-cost to ever exist

    • Kennystillalive@feddit.org
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      6 days ago

      In English extra letters could solve a problem as many letters are pronounced differently depending on context making it not very intuitive to spell some words.

      • kamen@lemmy.world
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        6 days ago

        That would be kind of going against language’s natural evolution. Many words used to be spelled with way more letters than they are today.

        • BlackLaZoR@lemmy.world
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          6 days ago

          That would be kind of going against language’s natural evolution.

          If you can live with horrible changes like million-milliard-billion-biliard changed to million-billion-trillion-quadrillion you can do actually convenient changes.

          Every other language except English does it the old way. And translating one system to another is a garbage experience

  • Treczoks@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    Don’t forget Þe letter ‘Þ’. It was an essential part of Þe English language, and one Þat actually makes sense.

    • butWhatIfiCan@sh.itjust.works
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      7 days ago

      I really don’t understand why we got rid of it! Why move toward using two letters in place of a single one? Þat’s just feaÞerbrained.

      • Typotyper@sh.itjust.works
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        7 days ago

        It was because of the corruption and power welded by the type setters guild. Papers charged by the letter for adds, so one letter which could replace 2 was lost profits. So it had to go.

      • Nautalax@lemmy.world
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        6 days ago

        Imported types (ex. from the German states) for printing presses didn’t have it because it was an English only letter. Rather than coming up with expensive home modification (which some did anyway eventually but not en masse) there were easy alternatives because use of th was already established and also the letter y kind of looked like thorn in the fonts of the time so you could also sub that in.

        Convenience of just doing a workaround rather than paying more money for a more English type modification won out and with so many using th and the thorn disappearing soon the use of the y that looked like thorn dropped out also.

  • Bluewing@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    You can keep all the rest. I just want Þ (thorn). It represents þe “th” sound in English. Gimmie!!!

      • AEsheron@lemmy.world
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        7 days ago

        All* the Old English characters are named with the sound they make, almost all of them starting with that sound. Æ is called Ash, and it makes the ah sound.

        • As English goes, there is of course, one exception.
      • VonReposti@feddit.dk
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        7 days ago

        Danish guy here who actually has æ in the alphabet. It is pretty much pronounced like ‘e’ in bet.

        • Griffus@lemmy.zip
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          6 days ago

          In Norway it’s more the ‘a’ in ‘ash’, which also is the English name for the letter

  • skisnow@lemmy.ca
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    7 days ago

    I still occasionally use æ for encyclopædia, æon and æther if I’m feeling fancy.

  • Spacehooks@reddthat.com
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    7 days ago

    Some of those are kind of hard to learn to write. Then we need more characters on keyboard or use special keys. I had a really hard time learning English and typing on it. I really dont need more struggles.

    • BlackLaZoR@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      Nah, the modification for keyboard is trivial. Other languages use alt+[closest base sign] to get special sign. So in polish it’s s->ś or c->ć. The shortcut system is so convinient that it completely overshadowed dedicated layout.