this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2023
712 points (93.5% liked)

Memes

45132 readers
3258 users here now

Rules:

  1. Be civil and nice.
  2. Try not to excessively repost, as a rule of thumb, wait at least 2 months to do it if you have to.

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 
top 40 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 32 points 11 months ago (3 children)

And yet they still use king George's foot as a unit of measurement, curious.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago

And then became a bloodsoaked colonial power to surpass the previous bloodsoaked colonial power. freedom-and-democracy

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago

A foot is defined as 0,3048 meter. They use the metric system, but with a conversion.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Miles, feet, and inches are all base 12 - just saying.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

It would be awesome to have a base-12 number system paired with a base-12 measurement system. It's just so much nicer to deal with than metric or imperial. So many measurements would become much easier. Take length. You could have the base measurement be equal to a meter, then use 1/3 meter sticks as roughly equivalent to a 1 foot ruler.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 11 months ago (2 children)

I always want to pronounce the American versions of these words phonetically when I see them.

And what the heck is going on with the US pronunciation of “buoy”? None of those syllables are in that word.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Buo-y

Apparently we have the Dutch to blame for that one, as the verb form is apparently descended from Spanish.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago (3 children)

I still don't understand the English insistence on borrowing words from other languages, yet refusal to standardize spelling into ways that actually make sense within the language.

So I still blame English for being silly with their transliteration.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago

Blame the great vowel shift.

But also, English spelling can't standardize because English pronunciation isn't standard. West Coast vs Midwest vs South vs East Coast have vastly different accents. Any spelling reform that makes English phonetic for one would be wrong for the others.

And it keeps changing! People keep moving and interacting with other languages, adding and dropping words and accents over time.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Blame the French actually, they invaded and screwed everything up beyond repair.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Funny thing about those "French" people.

William the Bastard of Normandy was the grandson of a fellow named Rollo the Viking.

Rollo had conquered the French northern coast and wrecked so much shit the French king just offered to make him a vassal, and give him more land in the process, if he protected the land he'd taken from other Viking raiders. This area would develop a hybrid culture from the mixing of the Germanic invaders and French population.

English, already a bastardized Germanic language, combined from the spoken languages of Germanic invaders who would come to be known as Anglo-Saxons and the native population, got further hybridized by a French Viking who actually spoke a French-Germanic dialect known as Norman.

Tl;Dr

Sea Germans hate linguistic purity, and English's problems are all their fault.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

ʤəst stɑːt ˈjuːzɪŋ aɪ-piː-eɪ

[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago

Do it backwards, pronounce the British versions

  • Cull our
  • Hume our
  • Flave our
[–] [email protected] 20 points 11 months ago (3 children)

I mean we already got rid of T.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago

You mean we the Bri'ish?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

I see what you did there

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

The good ol' glottal stop.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Simplified English vs Traditional English

[–] [email protected] 18 points 11 months ago

It's not even that. At the time they split, English wasn't as standardized. You can see it looking back in the Lewis and Clark expedition journals written by Meriwether Lewis. He doesn't even have consistency in his own writing, and he was no country bumpkin.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Check the Declaration of Independence. You'll find the 'u'. Noah Webster was a dick.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago

The Declaration was pre standard. It sure was a political decision to land on another standard than the Bri*ish