Interstellar_1@lemmy.blahaj.zone to Ask Lemmy@lemmy.worldEnglish · 1 month agoWhat is the (subjectively) weirdest word in the English language?message-squaremessage-square228fedilinkarrow-up1153arrow-down12
arrow-up1151arrow-down1message-squareWhat is the (subjectively) weirdest word in the English language?Interstellar_1@lemmy.blahaj.zone to Ask Lemmy@lemmy.worldEnglish · 1 month agomessage-square228fedilink
minus-squarePiranha Phish@lemmy.worldlinkfedilinkarrow-up10·1 month ago“Sphere” That pronunciation … like WTF … did word inventors just figure we had totally exhausted the sound combinations that we could splice together?!
minus-squareowenfromcanada@lemmy.worldlinkfedilinkEnglisharrow-up6·1 month agoSounds like the linguists got drunk. “No no no no no… iss’not a ball, issa sphhhere”
minus-squareBob@feddit.nllinkfedilinkarrow-up2·1 month agoThat’s one of the things that put me off learning Greek in the end. English has unwritten rules about which clusters of consonants can come at the start of a word; Greek not so much.
“Sphere”
That pronunciation … like WTF … did word inventors just figure we had totally exhausted the sound combinations that we could splice together?!
Sounds like the linguists got drunk.
“No no no no no… iss’not a ball, issa sphhhere”
That’s one of the things that put me off learning Greek in the end. English has unwritten rules about which clusters of consonants can come at the start of a word; Greek not so much.