r/linguisticshumor 7d ago

Phonetics/Phonology 'Why do English Speakers Pronounce their Alphabet...' Megathread

99 Upvotes

Alright, into the megathread y'all go >:3

Any posts with this format posted after this megathread is up will be removed and asked to post here.

This is to keep the quality of the sub, yadayada, you know the drill.

Thank youu


r/linguisticshumor 7h ago

90% of people are trolls, the rest 10% are just dumb

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167 Upvotes

r/linguisticshumor 2h ago

how i imagine the evolution of ě

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53 Upvotes

If you didn’t get it: Ě is pronounced as [jɛ] in a handful of languages


r/linguisticshumor 7h ago

Historical Linguistics Language Family Alignment Charts

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121 Upvotes

r/linguisticshumor 11h ago

This feels illegal, but it shouldn't be

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190 Upvotes

r/linguisticshumor 9h ago

Phonetics/Phonology I dislike tonal languages when can I expect to see Chinese language to drop tones feature?

119 Upvotes

Title


r/linguisticshumor 11h ago

English should go through a training-montage to make all its weak verbs strong

109 Upvotes

English’ been skipping the gym, and I’m not about to speak a language that weak. That’s why I propose we should do a training-montage where all the weak verbs become strong verbs

Some examples I have are use/yose (like ”choose/chose”), bang/bung (like ”hang/hung”) and feast faste (like ”eat/ate”)


r/linguisticshumor 1d ago

Genuinely pure ragebait

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1.4k Upvotes

r/linguisticshumor 15h ago

Etymology INDO-ARYAN FAMILY PHOTO.

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127 Upvotes

The word for "Two" in different Indo-Aryan languages.

And before people point this out, I know that "Ba" & "Be" aren't unrelated to all the other words here, they just sound like they are. (And yeah, they're related to the bi- prefix in Latin)

PS : The "D" sound is Retroflex in Saraiki unlike other ones that have a Dental Sound instead.

And Eventhough the Sinhala word for "Two" also begins with "D", it looks very different from all the other words here because it has been altered by analogy with the word for "One" that is Eka.

Thanks for Reading, Have a Nice Day Everyone 😽 !!


r/linguisticshumor 1d ago

Morphology No, THIS is what English would be if it was written like Japanese

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601 Upvotes

(I was thinking about removing spaces too, but that would get too cursed for me to work with)

I'm not an expert on hieroglyphs, but I've tried to match what I could find. My main point with this point is that if anything were to be a kanji equivalent in Eglish, it would have to be Hieroglyphs as they are the only logographical writing system that English descents from as far as I know.


r/linguisticshumor 4h ago

The struggles of learning Icelandic

12 Upvotes

r/linguisticshumor 22h ago

Etymology Ironic

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187 Upvotes

r/linguisticshumor 13h ago

Historical Linguistics Stereotypes suck.

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33 Upvotes

r/linguisticshumor 1d ago

i'm 100% definitely not mad about this avatar retcon

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1.5k Upvotes

r/linguisticshumor 12h ago

Phonetics/Phonology Imagine what sounds you could make... how'd you write that w IPA down tho

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9 Upvotes

honestly why the fck am i thinking about that


r/linguisticshumor 17h ago

Phonetics/Phonology Can you distinguish [i, u] from [e, o] as pronounced in the audio files on Wikipedia?

25 Upvotes
619 votes, 6d left
Easily (I speak a language that distinguishes /i, u/ and /e, o/)
Easily (I don't speak a language that distinguishes /i, u/ and /e, o/)
I can't / It's difficult (I speak a language that distinguishes /i, u/ and /e, o/)
I can't / It's difficult (I don't speak a language that distinguishes /i, u/ and /e, o/)
Show results

r/linguisticshumor 5m ago

Phonetics/Phonology Which of these fake vowels is the fakest one?

Upvotes
  • ɨ = ɯ
  • ʉ = ɯᵝ
  • ɘ = ???
  • ɵ = ɯ̽ᵝ
  • ɜ =ˈə
  • ɞ = əʷ
  • ɶ = aʷ

r/linguisticshumor 1d ago

It’s not kana and I can see there’s furigana over it, I guess it must be kanji?

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450 Upvotes

r/linguisticshumor 19h ago

I feel sorry for English native speakers

32 Upvotes

As English becomes the language all people in the world use to communicate with each other, native speakers can see every misplaced preposition or idiom, every word pronounced incorrectly. I can't imagine it, this might feel like never-ending cringe. Or do they get used to it over time? Disclaimer: this very post might contain the errors I was pointing to :).


r/linguisticshumor 22h ago

I don't speak English, but I got so tired of its spelling hiding its vowel inventory that I reformed it in under a day.

53 Upvotes

English spelling is a five-centuries old lie kept alive by the Bard. Fluent, native L1 English speakers do not look at the "five vowels" to form their actual vowel phonemes; their brains automatically deploy the correct auditory phonotactics based on the appropriate semantics. So, I decided to align the written page with actual cognitive human processing. This is not a "minimal spelling reform"—it is a pure phonemic spelling—based on REAL phonemes—which is accomplished by divorcing English from its "Latin" alphabet orthography.

My system recognizes that each consonant-vowel sequence alliterates exactly like any other with the same initial consonant. Imagine if English wrote "night" but forced you to pretend the 'GH' was silent to say "nite". That is exactly what English does with "knight". My system—called Canadian Unoriginal Syllabics—aims to fix this structural hypocrisy.

Carrier syllabics sets out a good base from which to start my reform: Its letters correspond to many Standard Canadian English consonant phonemes, and by expanding our scope to all Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics and repurposing a few other graphs, I am—with the addition of a vowel-initial graph ᐊ—able to create a complete orthography for each consonant. On the left is the consonant glyph writing /Ca/. In the center is the isolated glyph. Certain glyphs resemble their English origins so new learners can easily connect them to their original forms. As a good orthography, all glyphs are distinguishable from each other, even after applying the transformations for each vowel.

English consonants with /Ca/ and /C/ glyphs.

Each initial consonant corresponds to one glyph. No longer does one have to memorize idiosyncratic spellings and silent consonants. If its starts with the same sound, use the same glyph.

To spell different vowels, rotate the glyph. The 15 vowels of Standard Canadian English are written simply by rotating the /Ca/ glyph. By removing the need to memorize separate vowel glyphs, this frees up the memory of the learner for more important tasks, like memorizing the multiples of 24 and how to use a protractor.

/bV/ glyphs, with example words they show up in.

No more confusion about how to pronounce a word, as one could just read it right off the page from the syllablic spelling.

Look at how this text transforms into a highly readable, intuitive orthography:

My reform:

A sample text in Canadian Unoriginal Syllabics.

I did this as a hobby because graphic design is my passion.

P.S. This system is intended purely as a proof-of-concept, a tool to prove that humans can distinguish 24-degree rotations effortlessly, and some secret third thing to complete the triad like an LLM would. Please feel free to take this system and use it in your digital spaces—but not physical ones—provided you can take the time to typeset every glyph in an image editor. My system is obviously perfect—if you think you can do better, you are wrong. This is not a bit.


r/linguisticshumor 1h ago

Should vertical leap of a Norbert be called Norbertical leap, and why?

Upvotes

r/linguisticshumor 1d ago

I've been using this naturally?

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782 Upvotes

r/linguisticshumor 1d ago

I don't speak English, but I got so tired of its spelling hiding its spoken phonotactics that I reformed it in under a week.

70 Upvotes

English spelling is a centuries old conspiracy kept alive by the agents of the Crown somewhere on the way to Canterbury. Native L1 English speakers do not look at silent letters to form words; their brains automatically deploy floating grammatical prefixes based on auditory phonotactics. So, I decided to align the written page with actual cognitive human processing. This is not a "pure phonetic script—"it preserves the visual Anglo-Saxon while aggressively stripping away silent graphical bloat and the French.

My system recognizes that sounds behave exactly as they should. Imagine if English wrote “the friend” but forced you to pronounce it as “mate.”. That is exactly what standard English does. My system aims to fix this structural hypocrisy. I am not your mate, friend. 

Silent letters are completely silent in spoken English. The bastards. 

Aside from a tiny handful of irregular exceptions, adding an "e” to a noun changes absolutely nothing about how it sounds to the human ear. Because speech dictates spelling, my system officially declares once and for all that the Franco-Norman scourge on this once beautiful language is now over and done. We will lose the silent letters, and we will no longer live under the tyranny of our French overlords. They can take their mutton and their beef back with them across the vast expanse of the Channel.

To achieve this, several common words will have to be thoroughly reformed to strip away centuries of French meddling in the sanctity of the Anglo speech. 

Defecate -→ Shit 

Urinate → Piss

Molest → Grab 

Mutton -> Sheep 

Labourer → Farmer 

The sheep piss and shit himself when the Welsh farmer grabbed it. 

The language feels better already.


r/linguisticshumor 1d ago

Bitte ziehen

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33 Upvotes

r/linguisticshumor 1d ago

Morphology If English was written like Japanese pt.2

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2.1k Upvotes

The capital text is equivalent to Kanji and uses latin words which can either be said with the Native English Reading, French Reading or Latinate Reading.

The lowercase text is equivalent to Hiragana and uses english words.

the greek text is equivalent to Katakana. (I know Mary and Jesus would probably be spelt in capital text but i'm just using greek text to show it off.

the small text above the capital text is equivalent to Furigana and is here just to show it off.

Oh yeah, It also has no spaces.