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Pronunciation errors that made the English language what it is today (theguardian.com)
3 points by ColinWright on Dec 29, 2014 | hide | past | favorite | 1 comment


Spanish speaker here (es-ar to be more precise).

Are some of this changes unique to English? What are the differences with other languages?

For example, in Spanish the oral and written forms of word are almost identical (with the "usual" pronunciation table). This is not as strict as in German (where you must use another "usual" pronunciation table and also say every "t" that is in the middle of a 10 consonant raw, we sometimes skip a few letters in Spanish).

The speaked and written forms of the word in Spanish had changed. It's very difficult to read texts from 1800 (or 1600). But we usually change the written form of the word after the oral form has changed (with a lot of complains about how the young generation is destroying the language).

For example, now in Argentina we usually say "ciudá" instead of "ciudad" (phonetically "see-oo-DA" instad of "see-oo-DAD"). I think that in a few years we will drop the "d" of the written form.




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