It is a common experience to hear people mispronounce English words.
The fault lies with the language, not with the people who speak it. Why should 'but' and 'put' be pronounced differently? Why should the words like 'psychology' and 'tsunami' have a letter which has to remain silent? Why should 'schedule' be pronounced as 'shedul' and not as 'skedul'?
I have read in a popular encyclopaedia that the reason for the confusion lies in the fact that while the sounds made by human beings can be of about 50 types, the English language has only 26 letters to represent these. Indian languages have about 49 letters which almost completely represent these sounds. Indians read and pronounce almost exactly what they write. Of course a few Indians (including yours truly) are not able to differentiate while pronouncing certain letters like 'dantya sa', 'talavya sha' and 'murdhanya sha' but most people pronounce more or less correctly.
Englishmen are conscious about this deficiency in their language. Yet nothing has been done about this. To highlight this aspect of English language, George Bernard Shaw had coined the word 'ghoti' and prononounced it as 'fish'! He reasoned it like this: Pronounce 'gh' as in 'laugh', 'o' as in 'women', and 'ti' as in 'nation'! So you have 'fish'!!!
In that way, American English is better and more practical as the spellings in it in most cases are as the words are pronounced, e.g., program, color etc.
Recently, some have started pronouncing 'schedule' as 'skedul' instead of 'shedul' in English as was done earlier.
Happy pronouncing! :)))))))))))))))
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Welcome Uncle to the blogging world. Since a long time many readers were waiting for you to start your own blog. I hope that you publish 365+ posts (every new blogger thinks he/she will do 365; even I had planned, but never managed to) in your virtual garden. By the way, this post had me hooked till the explanation on the subject line.
ReplyDeleteI'm in UK, and believe me, the English are proud of their language, but their pronunciation is bad! The Ghoti as Fish example was given to me by one of my British friends!
ReplyDeleteSudeep,
ReplyDeleteWelcome to my blog.
I hope to publish about 300 blogs, if not 365, a year. Your comments will help me in doing that.
t,
ReplyDeleteBecause of this, we should not laugh at a person who mispronounces an English word.
hello Uncle, I have been waiting to see your posts and finally landed here. I must say, your family is blessed with wonderful writers (You and Sayesha)and this piece of writing is a hilarious one!
ReplyDeleteHope to see more of your posts. Happy Blogging :)
PragyaN'
ReplyDeleteThank you.
Your observations will help me in posting more blogs.