this post was submitted on 15 Mar 2025
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I mean:

English

Russian

French? (how did this happen? France --> French?!?)

Chinese

And someone from Afghanistan is an Afghan? How did the word get shorter not longer? πŸ€”

Also, why is a person from India called an Indian, but the language is called Hindi? This breaks my brain...

Philippines --> Filipino? They just saw the "Ph" and decided to use an "F"? πŸ€”

Okay idk how language even works anymore...

[This is an open discusssion thread on languages and their quirks...]

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (3 children)

English is a trash fire. It's a trash fire in pronunciation, in orthography, in grammar, in pretty much ever respect.

But my favourite thing remains 'ough': tough, trough, though, thought, through. All pronounced differently.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

I remember years ago seeing someone online saying English beats up other languages in an alley and goes through their pockets for spare grammar.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

That was probably spare vocabulary. :)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

cough, hiccough (pronounced hiccup), plough

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Bough, dough, slough, slough (yes, two different pronunciations!), rough ...

It's a mess, isn't it?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

These are not additional pronunciations though.

Bough rhymes with plough, slough rhymes with tough, dough rhymes with though, and slough rhymes with plough or through.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

Comb

Tomb

Bomb

Womb