Doug [he/him]

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 1st, 2023

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  • It began with the forging of the Great Rings.

    Three were given to the Elves; immortal, wisest and fairest of all beings.

    Seven to the Dwarf Lords, great miners and craftsmen of the mountain halls.

    And nine…Nine rings were gifted to the Race of Men, who above all else desire power.

    For within these rings was bound the strength and will to govern each race.

    But do you recall… The most famous one ring of all





  • I’ve never had the problem of not being understood.

    You are either a uniquely spectacular communicator or a liar. It’s not for me to say which. Regardless that’s not the point. If you use the soft g sound and are not understood then, by your own explanation you are saying it wrong. That’s something you need to contend with.

    And regardless of how long the time period was

    So no time requirement on archaic then?

    there was a time when one guy spoke aloud the word when he invented it.

    As is true of every word and yet I’m sure there are words you say differently than the first person. I’ll bet you don’t say the name of the element with the atomic number 13 the same way the man who discovered it does. Not to mention who knows how many words England took from France, mangled, and then got adjusted again in America. Who is the correct first person there, or does the first person only matter with this specific issue?

    You can use the new pronunciation

    I will as well many others.

    as I have for 30+ years,

    Me too! Still doesn’t make yours right and mine wrong no matter how hard you try to deride it as “new” when it’s barely newer than the format.

    and I will continue to do so

    I can’t stop you. I can think you ridiculous for doing so but my suspicion that this would be the only reason I would think that of you diminishes with each response you send.

    both are acceptable

    Perhaps, but one seems to be falling out of favor. Just like a double space after a period or writing out words greater than ten but less than one hundred.

    I could call it a moving picture and not be wrong, doesn’t mean people wouldn’t think me weird for doing so. I would have to deal with that the way you need to deal with what your choices cause people to think of you.

    If you don’t like it, that’s a you problem.

    Sure, but it won’t stop me from making my own conclusions just like any other thing. The same is true for all of humanity to varying degrees.


  • Doug [he/him]@midwest.socialtoComic Strips@lemmy.worldJPEG
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    1 year ago

    people only started using the new pronunciation in the last 10-15.

    As someone else pointed out already, this is untrue. While it may not have been popular in your circles, it definitely was in others. I’ve been saying it with a hard g as long as you have with a soft and I’m not the originator either.

    English linguistics doesn’t indicate anything at all.

    They absolutely do. That’s why you can sound out a word you’ve never seen before. You may not always be right when you do because they indicate, they don’t define.

    There are no rules about word construction or pronunciation.

    There are, there are just exceptions. For example, an e at the end of the word is silent. I’m certain you can give me a word where it’s not, but there are at least six in this paragraph alone where it is.

    if you are understood then you have pronounced them correctly

    In this logic if someone has been pronouncing a word all their life with a single pronunciation and travels to another location with a much different accent they can only now be pronouncing the word wrong.

    If understanding is also the only metric then a hard g would still be preferable. Not only does a written g tend to make people lean to a hard g in my experience, but there’s more words that could be mistaken for a soft g pronunciation.

    You could argue that the original pronunciation is archaic,

    Could I not argue that the original pronunciation has fallen out of favor?

    the word itself is like 35 years old

    Is there a time requirement for pronunciations to become archaic?

    since there was only one acceptable pronunciation

    Which isn’t a time that existed, as we’ve established

    who aren’t likely to change.

    Given your stance on language this is absolutely a you problem. If the rest of us collectively decided to understand it as only with a hard g, you would not be understood and therefore be pronouncing it wrong by your own logic.


  • Telling me not to is what makes English worse.

    In your opinion. “Jiggawatt” is not a common English pronunciation outside of back to the future references at this point. People mostly settled on one over the other because it makes sense to pronounce a word a similar way to be more easily understood. It’s not always the case, sure, but I think you’ll find multiple pronunciations are the exception, not the rule. That’s why you can come up with a good handful of such words, but you’ll be using words with single pronunciations to talk about them.


  • Become popular? It’s been popular roughly for the lifespan of the format. It’s hardly language’s fault the developer wanted to make an unfunny reference to a since forgotten peanut butter slogan.

    On the other hand linguistics indicate a hard g sound with the construction of the word, constituent words aside. Plenty of four letter words starting with the gi combo have a hard g, including but not limited to gift which you may notice is very similarly constructed.

    Whatever else the English language may throw at us, people appreciate consistency because we can make some sense of the world. A hard g is the consistent, predictable, sensible choice for the limited availability of those virtues English offers.





  • I think you and I have very different experiences. I rarely see that kind of correction if ever.

    When you’re in a public space you never know when your words are being consumed by an ESL speaker. I think the best approach is natural yet accurate. They’re going to encounter contractions when dealing with native speakers, but the difference between it’s and its, for example, can be tricky so try to use them as taught.

    Spelling mistakes can absolutely be an issue. It’s already hard enough to figure out English spelling without native speakers making it worse. Add on to that the difficulty in any added language of working out near homophones, let alone actual homophones.

    I knew someone who was pretty decent with English as their third language but had trouble keeping Texas and taxes straight. I know another guy who is American and uses no in place of know. That one threw me for a while before I figured out what he was trying to say.

    I will admit, I do like that “technically” the plural for octopus is “supposed to be” octopods (pronounced like oc-tip-o-dees) but that’s a fun “fact”, not a correction I’ve ever tried to make.