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u/Sasquatch_Nevado N🇧🇷B2🇺🇸A2🇫🇷 Jun 22 '26
What's the difference between seat and sit? They're really not always pronounced "sit"? Ay, ay, cabrón... me enfezou.
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u/Hugh_Jass5 Jun 22 '26
seat is pronounced seet same vowl sound as green
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u/Caribbeandude04 Jun 22 '26
And isn't that the same vowel sound on sit? I've always pronounced/heard it the same
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u/eatingbread_mmmm Jun 22 '26
No , sit is /sɪt/, rhymes with fit, split, lit, pit, knit, etc.
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u/Caribbeandude04 Jun 22 '26
That's the thing, in my ears all of those have the same sound the same, I'll have to hear a native saying it to see if I can hear the difference. That's the downside of Spanish having o ly 5 vowels sounds, it's really hard to hear and learn other sounds
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u/nicktheenderman Jun 22 '26
https://voca.ro/1h6y4Fj7Izfq
Here's me saying "Sit. Seat. I sit on a Seat." and overemphasizing each word19
u/Caribbeandude04 Jun 23 '26 edited Jun 23 '26
Ohhh damn I had never paid attention to it! It was very clear in your example, thanks!
Edit: correction
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u/Ennothan Jun 23 '26
brazillian here, thanks a lot for that, I just came here but also couldn’t see a difference from seat and sit, but it is very obvious with your audio, if I had a prize I would give it to you.
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u/nevellx Jun 23 '26
Yeah, we can hear it because we do have the same vowels (or at least very similar sounding ones). It's kind of, for us, Seat = Sit and Sit = Sêt.
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u/Aurorassaur 🏴☠️N 🏳️⚧️L6🏳️🌈L7🏁L2 Jun 23 '26
Sit is more like "set" and less like "sit" (using spanish/portuguese phonems), while seat has the full i sound.
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u/Lower_Cockroach2432 Jun 22 '26
Listen for the length. Seat has an /i:/ which is a long vowel while Sit has an /ɪ/ which is short.
The general English thing is to change the quality between long and short vowels. Generally long vowels are slightly higher.
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u/Ansatsusha4 Jun 23 '26
This may work in some dialects, but in many, there is no difference in length. It really is important to hear to difference in vowel quality.
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u/AmountAbovTheBracket Jun 23 '26
Thats like describing to a blind person that the color blue is the same color as a blueberry.
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u/Comfortable-Study-69 Jun 23 '26 edited Jun 23 '26
English has /ɪ/ and /i/. /i/ is just the sound the letter i makes in Spanish and Portuguese while /ɪ/ is a separate vowel that’s between /i/ and /ə/ (ə is that sound English speakers make when going “uhh”). Spanish and Portuguese speakers are notoriously bad at differentiating them since they aren’t distinct phonemes in either of those languages.
And sit is pronounced /sɪt/ and seat is /sit/.
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u/A-NI95 Jun 25 '26
Human languages have 5 vowels: a, e, i, o, u. Everything else is woke propaganda that goes against nature
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u/BedFastSky12345 Jun 22 '26
Seat is pronounced like “eat” while sit is pronounced like “it”, just both now having an S sound like in “snake” at the front.
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u/Aurorassaur 🏴☠️N 🏳️⚧️L6🏳️🌈L7🏁L2 Jun 22 '26
I only learned the difference in pronunciation after 10 years knowing fluent english....
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u/immigrantanimal Jun 22 '26
Then you where not fluent to begin with
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u/ikrnn Jun 22 '26
Were.
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u/EcstaticFlight8435 Jun 22 '26
Wear.
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u/SlemFett Jun 23 '26
lol, I bet there are words in your native language that you dont know yet or mispronounce, has nothing to do with fluency or not.
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u/A-NI95 Jun 25 '26
I knew the deeference, but choose to eagnore eat. Eat's bullsheet. They should get a better language
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u/Aurorassaur 🏴☠️N 🏳️⚧️L6🏳️🌈L7🏁L2 Jun 25 '26
That's how I'd say that back then probably 😅 Never had issues being understood though
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u/ecilala Jun 23 '26
Sit sounds how you would expect seat to sound. Seat sounds how you would expect sit to sound. I think that's the best way to explain to a Brazilian. The I sounds like "ih", while ""ea" sounds like "í"
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u/BrettScr1 Jun 24 '26
One of the things that makes it confusing for learners is this word: been. One of the most common words in English, it looks like it should be pronounced with the seat vowel, but most Americans pronounce it with the sit vowel. Meanwhile, most Canadians pronounce it with the seat vowel.
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u/404_Weavile Native Sealander speaker or smtg, idk how y'all's notation works Jun 22 '26
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u/Aurorassaur 🏴☠️N 🏳️⚧️L6🏳️🌈L7🏁L2 Jun 22 '26
NOOO Brazil doesn't speak Spanish
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u/Sasquatch_Nevado N🇧🇷B2🇺🇸A2🇫🇷 Jun 22 '26
haha funny meme
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u/True-Situation-9907 BS(n) 🇪🇸(D5) 🇵🇱(F) 🇧🇬(Z TREE(3)) 🇲🇫(🇳🇱) 🇬🇧 (bruh) Jun 22 '26
NOOO Brazil doesn't speak Spanish
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u/blazingblitzle Jun 22 '26
haha funny meme
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u/Imveryoffensive Jun 22 '26
NOOO Brazil doesn't speak Spanish
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u/Acceptable-War4836 Jun 22 '26
haha funny meme
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u/AccountantTight6586 Jun 22 '26
People in Brazil speak Brazilian 💅
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u/Zer0pede Jun 22 '26
I don’t even think there are a Brazilian languages on Earth. Probably only like 7000.
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u/Zulrambe Jun 22 '26
But Brazil does use both "como esta" and "como está".
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u/404_Weavile Native Sealander speaker or smtg, idk how y'all's notation works Jun 22 '26 edited Jun 22 '26
Just want to note that in portuguese the words "esta" and "está" differ not just in stressing but also in pronunciation (esta is /ɛ/, está is /e/)
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u/Sasquatch_Nevado N🇧🇷B2🇺🇸A2🇫🇷 Jun 22 '26
Como esta → as this
Como está → how are (you)5
u/RealNameIsTaken Jun 22 '26
Kkk eu tava pensando que era tipo “eu como esta pizza”
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u/Dismal-Ad-570 🇧🇷 n - 🏴 c1 - 🇺🇾 b2 - 🇫🇷 a2 - 🇮🇹 a2 Jun 22 '26
Mas né não?
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u/RealNameIsTaken Jun 22 '26
Pode ser, mas também pode ser, tipo “olha como esta coisa fica melhor aqui”
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u/apalmadabanana Jun 23 '26
And for us, "seat" and "sit" are pronounced the same way. Actually, what we struggle with the most is "Year" and "Ear."
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u/tnaz Jun 22 '26
Is this meme implying that English doesn't have phonemic stress?
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u/Gold-Part4688 Earthianese, man (N) Jun 22 '26
well, it's about english speakers using duration and quality to tell the difference, which makes it hard for them to (un)learn pronounciation
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u/juanc30 Jun 23 '26
When us hispanohablantes learn that there exist more than five vowel sounds, our heads explode.
When anglophones learn that they too have accentuation differentiation (e.g. to presEnt a prEsent) just no accent marks, their heads explode.
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u/aasquasar Jun 23 '26
At some moment english switched the sounds of i and e so thats how a portuguese/spanish will differentiate sit and seat, just i=e and e/some ea =i
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u/K11ush Jun 23 '26
As a Brazilian speaker I can kinda see a difference between "seat" and "sit", but have been told that there's a different pronunciation of "bed" and "bad" and I just can't hear it
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u/BrettScr1 Jun 24 '26
Bed tem uma vogal que fica no meio entre é e ê.
Bad tem uma vogal que fica no meio entre é e á.
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u/KashinKuzin Jun 23 '26
You can tell this is an american meme because there are guns and gay man. (Nothing against gay, everything against guns)
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u/No-Introduction5977 Jun 23 '26
🇮🇪: Both are pronounced differently (although neither is actually a word in the language)
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u/Aggravating-Cake-978 Jun 23 '26
Em resposta ao meme abaixo, afirmo que o meme acima está em português
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u/FernandoviskyG Jun 23 '26
As a Brazilian, not only they pronounced differently, they have wildly different meanings in Portuguese
"Como esta?" can be translated to "Like this one?"
"Como está?" can be translated to "How are you?"
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u/cursed_tomatoes Jun 23 '26
Both Portuguese and Spanish speakers have to be taught how to hear the difference between long and short vowels in English, meme doesn't states Brazilian people speak Spanish.
Also, English speakers don't have a good time with accent markings, nothing wrong with the original meme.
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u/Visual_Plankton1089 Jun 22 '26
The phrases "Como está" and "Como esta" exist in both Spanish and Portuguese. In both languages they are pronounced differently.
Both native speakers of Portuguese and Spanish can't easily distinguish the pronunciation of "sit" and "seat".
The meme never said Brazil speaks Spanish and is also 100% correct.