English Pronunciation - "The Chaos" by Dr. Gerard Nolst Trenité 

Oh i see what you did there

+BaumwolleB oh man. that was really nice :D

+BaumwolleB Well done, sir.

+BaumwolleB i swear that almost broke my brain

+TheJman0205 That should read - You missed a comma before though, though. Just a thought.

*Activation Code Received* *Colonising world* *For Queen and Country*

Activation Code Received Colonising world For Queen and Country

Activation Code Received Colonising world For Queen and Country

Activation Code Recieved. Colonising World. For Queen and Country.

Activation Code Received Colonising world For Queen and Country I hope I'm not too late.

If you go a hundred miles south east you might even end up with a completely different language. French in that case. But that is also almost perfectly the distance between London and Birmingham. And if you go 75 from there you're in Manchester. And to give it an example for our american friends: how different is the accent between Washington and Philadelphia? Or LA to San Diego? And Detroit - Chicago would be almost unintelligible!

True.. some just say 'poum' instead of 'po-erm' but some also say it as 'po-yerm' and there are some says as 'po-em'

@@HappyBeezerStudios American here; not nearly as variant as in the UK. You obviously have some distinctive dialects such as Southern, Midwestern, New York, and New England, but not quite as different as between, say, London, Dorset, Liverpool, and Edinburgh. Same with Canada and Australia; people came from all parts of Britain and had their speech homogenized by being smushed together and later by mass media, whereas especially in rural areas people in Britain (and elsewhere in Europe) tended to hang onto their local accents longer, though they also had trends toward standardization thanks to mass media (100 years ago you would've heard more regional variation, and 100 years before that even more, etc.)

@@andyjay729 indeed, and exactly that was my point. places in the UK (and with other languages in the rest of Europe) can have vastly different dialects and accents over surprisingly short distances.

English at university: remember all those rules? They're all right, and all wrong, depending on the speaker, audience, dialect, accent and location. Now write a 4000 word essay on Chaucer.

This is a handy excuse for all those native speakers who keep getting the basics wrong. I am often embarrassed by the atrocious standards shown by those who should know better. Even journalists make flagrant errors.

Such a simple, complicated, stupid language.

It starts with irregular verbs and ends with this.

+Tommaso Ragghianti Yep, to make them realize how shitty a language English is.

+Tommaso Ragghianti If they want to lose money from their students giving up.

+Tommaso Ragghianti I have two native languages and speak English well and fluently enough for my proficiency in English to be somewhere between those two and have the equivalent of a Cambridge Proficiency degree. I'm currently paused at 3:39 in the video and have seen/heard only one word (if you ignore rare greek ones like Terpsichore and Melpomene) pronounced in a way I didn't know already. Despite that, I'm rapidly loosing confidence in ever speaking English correctly, even though I apparently already do. I can only imagine the damage this would do to someone just starting to learn English. It's like some kind of psychological horror. I actually paused the video here in an effort of "dear God, make it stop, how long will this continue?" and to take a break before watching the rest.

+Simtu Particularily if they manage to hang on up to the last line.

+Tommaso Ragghianti ...and show them that they can't read it, either. I only had 1 good english teacher and she was british and not the main teacher, we only had lesson an hour a week with her. All the italian teachers I had could not even hide their italian accent.

+Wholee Dantès Don't worry, most people will understand you. Some people will claim not to understand you, but are really trying to make fun of your accent.

dont worry i seriously doubt i could do half that poem any good.

English is a language spoken by enough different people, that it's not really frowned upon or seen as strange when people have strong accents. Most people should be able to understand you anyway, and noone can fault you for saying things strangely in the first place. However, I've heard that spanish is really unforgiving when it comes to accents, meaning I'd probably have a harder time speaking spanish than you do english. Is this true?

Entraya Korsbakke Not really, or at least not in Latin America, where I'm from. We all have very, very different accents, which are also different from the accent from Spain, although we understand each other perfectly. And here in L.Am we are very kind and gentle to foreigners, and when they try to speak in Spanish we are very gentle and try to understand and help them. We do it even when they don't speak Spanish at all!

Wholee Dantès Maybe my friend from chile just had a different view of it all, i've heard that chiles spanish is rather different and less forgiving I hope that helpful attitude goes for portugal as well, i have to go there with my school and i have like zero practice speaking -_-

What discount did he give you?

Are you Gamperpoop commander Shepard or, just regular commander Shepard?

Tobias Hagström I have no idea what are you talking about. So, regular? Maybe?

Stormeris Nice.

Cernel Joson Actually, it was a discount for beige clothing.

+Gulliver the Gullible "English native speakers make fun" -------ONLY the stupid ones do - There's nothing to be proud of if you can speak your OWN language! It's like to be proud of that you were born on a Tuesday))

Unfortunately. I live in Australia, so there are lots of stupid English native speaker who have the opportunity make fun. I completely agree with you.

***** It doesn't just happen with English though - it's a general elitism thing the world over. The people will do anything to try and make themselves feel better are more than happy to gloat about their superior understanding of some fragment of grammatical rules.

Maybe not only with English, but English is especially subject to this problem because the orthography is just a sad joke.

Gulliver the Gullible That does help ;) I'd guess the prevalence of English online is also a major factor, especially with how many people are using it as a second (or third) language. Plus the general culture of superiority and dickishness in the UK and US :P

I laughed louder than I should have.

And turn a two minute video into a six minute one.

godofimagination And then Lindy will respond with a 20 minutes clarification video in which he pretty much agrees with Schola. ;p

Well if you have the most beautiful accents of all, the Geordie, then it all sounds the same.

***** followed by skall and thrand having a google hangout to sort the issue out once and for all

Can you say it by heart now? I just discovered it and I want to be able to say it perfectly.

I do. I read it to a class. (6th graders, American middle schoolers).

chasem007ify Do you honestly think it's just a matter of pronunciation and spelling? It is obvious that you have never actually taught English as a second language.

English IS easy

Actually it depends in part on the age of the learner; adults tend to have a harder time of it (speaking from experience in tutoring second-language adults). That's due to having more "indoctrination," if you will, in their native language.

@@TheThreatenedSwan no you can't that is exactly the point the pronunciation doesn't indicate the spelling at all in English it's the hole point of the poem

Non natives would appreciate the alternative, though

There are certain provisions available to us in our 'noggins' that allow us to make educated guesses when reading and comprehending written language, rather than adhere to a strict system of logic - For emalpxe, olny the fsrit and lsat lterets msut be in the ccroert pcale to be albe to be raed! A demonstration of the great ability of the human mind, to make deductions based on the perceived probability of a previously observed pattern or event reoccurring, with the final guess determined by intuition or 'gut-feeling'.

And then, there's "gunwale"

Yeah, isn't that pronounced "Gunnel", or the like? XD Well, there's the rule, and then there's the exception! :)

and then you have places like Worcester but yeah often you can recognize Greek/Latin roots without even realizing it

Generally yes, as someone who got their vocabulary from reading tons and tons of books, but also by listening. But still 'indict' caught me out.. it's not spoken very often.

Oooh. Yes. Chris Hemsworth, if possible.

Aloud^

true it's all fucked

The funny thing is the first time I read through that it sounded perfectly fine to me. Then I red through it phonetically and began to trip.

Gingrnut Love the English language cause i can do this.

I see what you did there.

LabashtheMighty Reminds me, I am content with the spellings of lead (as in leadership) and lead (the metal), because one is a verb and the other is a noun. You can easily keep them apart through context. But what moron made the decision to make the present and past tenses of "read" the same spelling? Sometimes there is literally no way to tell which is meant. Could someone ask whatever authority necessary to change the spellings to read and red? Thanks. And yes, red is already another word. But lead and lead get along well and they are not even pronounced the same. Let alone the thousands of homonyms, such as left (opposite of right) and left (past tense of leave), or tire (as in tired) and tire (like on a car).

+Madam Cello, but you still spell 'honour' without the r.

+Madam Cello This was in a book I read years ago (still a favorite) called "The Flying Sorcerers". A guy lands on another planet. He has a "translator" but this planets people don't use the same words or have no words for certain things. When he is trying to explain that "no, he isn't using magic, he's using science" what they hear is " no I'm not using magic, I'm using magic". He tells them his name...it comes out of the translator for them as " As a Shade of Purple Grey" so to make things easy, they just call him "Purple". All through the book he wonders why they call him purple...at the end he finally realizes why. Spoiler Alert!!!!!! The book is a kind of tribute. The pilots name is "Asimov".

'Murican here....WHAAAT?

Mauve comes french mauvais, which means bad state which was reduced to mauve to reflect the color of someone being purple coloured from the beatings.

Don't beat yourself up too much. I reckon most foreigners don't even know the word :)

Tbf, a few of the pronunciations have changed in modern times

***** No. I mean "your". "I appreciate your using" is correct, the same as how saying that I appreciate his using is correct. It's called a gerund. I'm not trying to say "I appreciate you are using", in this context that would be ungrammatical. If you're going to correct people's grammar then at least get it right, otherwise it's just embarrassing.

Why would it? There's no rule that requires "of" following the gerund. "I appreciate your using the good silver for our visit" vs "I appreciate your using of the good silver for our visit". The latter sounds clunky and wrong. Now, had I said "use", a standard noun instead of a gerund, then, yes, "of" would be required. "I appreciate your use of the good silver" is correct. Gerunds behave differently in English, which may be why many speakers avoid them unless necessitated by a preposition, the more ambiguous "I appreciate that he did that" (do you mean that you have taken the fact he did that into consideration? Or are you grateful to him for doing it?" typically being preferred over the more accurate and formal sounding "I appreciate his doing that". (which clearly indicates that you are appreciative of and grateful towards him for doing it).

you are wrong wont is like wohnt as opposed to woont as opposed to wahnt

kuriousitykat Are you American? "Wahnt" makes no sense in British English, "Warnt" would be pronounced this way. I'm simply going the pronunciation found in my dictionary, which say /wəʊnt/

"He is wont to do that" with "wont" rhyming with "don't" does not sound right to me at all. Eeeugh!

+Helena Roach You will receive your unsubscription notice in your mail forthwith. Should you reconsider, it will only be a quick eight to ten years of study, to reacquire the subscription.

+Jens Nilsson "Housewife" pronounced as "house-wife" is a noun. Pronounced "huzzif," it becomes a now-archaic verb, i.e. to housewife.

+Oskar Ekestorm Nice! But what about 'nephew' pronounced as 'neview'? Never heard that before.

It seems that nephew pronounced "nev-yoo" is more prevalent in British English as apposed to e.g. American English. Etymologically, the word is derived from the Latin word "nepōtem", accusative of "nepōs" (nephew), via French, in which it is "neveu". The French pronunciation stuck, but the spelling showed its connection to the original Latin word, thereof the 'ph'. This 'ph' begun to be pronounced with an 'f'-sound instead of a 'v'-sound, as every other 'ph' in English was pronounced as if written 'f'. So, technically, the British pronunciation is the 'etymologically correct' one, and the 'f'-version is just pronouncing the word as it is written.

+Oskar Ekestorm I do not think that there should be something called "British English" as the English language originally came from England, and so if you are going to say British English, then you should really say English English, because England is now part of Britain, and so Britain uses the proper English language, and should so the English language that is used in Britain should be called English English, which makes no sense, so just say English, not "British English", please. I myself am surprised that you can get "British" and "English" into a paragraph so many times, and have it still make sense.

james mccann So, essentially, you're saying that anybody who doesn't use English the way it's used in Britain is not using English at all?

I'd never seen it written, and always assumed it was "vittel".

Jed Clampett used to say "Hey Jethro, Granny's cooking up a mess of vittles for you" so now you know how that word Vittles was really spelled.

Even the French didn't completely embrace French until the 20th century! While it might have been the official language, most of the French people spoke Breton or Languedoc or Provencal or Occitan rather than "proper" French

Ben Kirkby I doubt that the language the Normans spoke would be recognizable as French by anyone. After all, the Normans were from Scandinavia and had only been in Normandy for a hundred odd years before the invasion of England.

Minute Man They were very quickly assimilated by the French (sure they settled in Normandy but were outnumbered by locals), after a few generations there was no difference between them. Also, William the Conqueror had troops coming from several provinces of western France, not only Normandy. So yes, Normans spoke french during their invasion of England and that's why English kings spoke french at court (and considered themselves king of France and England most of the time) until the War of the Roses.

Minute Man Take a text written in Norman, every single French-speaker could translate it.

Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz. Now tell me how to pronounce that.

Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz. :)

Gunnar Thiessen Not much of a big help.

/ˌʁɪnt.flaɪʃ.ʔeti.kɛ.ˌtiː.ʁʊŋs.ʔyˑbɐ.ˌva.xʊŋs.ˌʔaʊf.ɡaː.bn̩.ʔyˑbɐ.ˌtʁ̥aː.ɡʊŋs.ɡə.ˈzɛts/ You're welcome.

Keep your three genders

There is no such thing. You might be talking about phonemic spelling...

It's Germanic, not phonetic.

wigster600 It's both.

It's flibbity flobbity

ElizaberthUndEugen Slavic languages, Hungarian, etc.

yarpen800 There's no reason to be so upset. I don't know what country you live in, but I can tell that you must not like living there too much, just judging by how hard you are projecting in your comment. Your overly offensive response to a reasonable comment should make you reevaluate your obvious vast swath of brainpower.

"Hiccup" isn't an American spelling, "hiccough" is just a variation of "hiccup" that is derived from folk etymology. I don't know a single English person who spells it "hiccough", though I have seen it written on rare occasions.

Bilky Asko that poem is from the 19th century, so it's probably an old spelling.

***** Of course pronunciation varies by region. Pronunciation varies by region in the UK and the UK is a smaller area than 10 US states. Scottish people sound different from English people, people from New York sound different from people in Texas.

yarpen800 Or was it Babbage, also a Brit? Cars are usually attributed to the French and Germans although the Brits played their part. The first telly was British, there were people flying in Britain before the Wright Bros, although I don't think any got filmed doing it, and I don't know how much control they had. The telephone was invented by a Brit in America (and others independently, including an Italian). The Brits still patent more things than the Americans, and invented the science of genetics, and were of course responsible for the industrial revolution, so overall, not a bad showing. I am personally connected with none of this, however.

+Wilson D Polish is only scary to someone who doesn't know how to pronounce the letters or letter combinations. Z's are so rare in English that seeing them paired with r's c's and s's is intimidating. Accents aren't familiar to English speakers and the difference in how H's W's and the Ł are used can make any non speaker feel like an idiot. You don't even need to put in long words. The majority of you will mispronounce Gołąbki.

The whole thing with the 7 cases for each noun gender is a massive mind fu*k as well.. lol the weird letters arnt a big deal.. I tried learning polish grammar as a kid here in Canada..and I gave up after the first week.. when I say gołąbki. I pronounce it as gołompki :) even though I know its gołąbki...

Can't say much about the other languages, but german has basically no silent letters. Still a bit chaotic, but it isn't a mixture of old germanic, latin and medieval french.

+RogerWilco Ignoring the fact that children have been taught English in classrooms with phonics for decades now (in the UK at least), the problem you describe is quite a complex one. Firstly, there has been less of a push for native speakers of English to learn other languages, because it is less of a necessity to do so because of how (comparatively) widespread English is. The more languages you learn, the easier it is to learn more. Secondly, it is only recently that younger children have been taught second languages in schools as a matter of course. The younger you are, the easier it is to acquire another language. Thirdly, native English speakers were once taught whole words as opposed to phonics. This means that new words in any language are quite difficult for those taught such a system to pronounce. Interference in languages (as in French in particular) is hardly desirable.

Except English language has had spelling changes. 'The' used to be 'ye'. Pronunciation has also changed. Lastly, there are no official rules in the same sense as other languages have. English has very strong tradition instead of rules. But publishers are trying very hard to establish rules.

@@johnchestnut5340 More precisely is used to be 'þe' but the thorn isn't used on modern english. The middle english written form of 'þ' looks very similar to 'y' and is often substituted with it when one tries to invoke an old school feeling. Also a limit with printing.

Kaan Genç I wrote in the comment that I would like to check out Esperanto at some point.

problem is that if they would do that kind of language it would change over time every where in the world and after 100 years speakers of that language wouldn't understand each other , and people don't want to abandon their old languages

***** true that

***** What I meant by weaknesses is basically areas where the language fails, where it gets unnecessarily complicated, where it's vague, points where it's hard to properly convey a concept, where a simple message takes longer than it should, where the rules of the language are inconsistent, illogical, etc, etc. And I did clarify myself and point out that I talked mostly about languages I have some level of familiarity with, something like what I'm looking for might exist for all I know. Well, as I said, I realize most people wouldn't want this to happen, and it's not like I'd FORCE it on them even if I could. Personally I don't care for national cultures and such, we should understand and record them, but I see no real reason why they necessarily need to be kept alive. To me the idea of people finding their own culture is a lot more appealing than them being born into one, if for any reason they lack a culture they'll probably always find one if they want one. I suppose a downside could be that this would lead to frustrated, naive, insecure teens forming their own crazy cultures even more so than they do now,

I had to listen to the part twice because I couldn't believe that I've heard that right. I still don't think that it's not pronounced as "house"+"wife"

oh fuck, I guess we didn't watch the end of the video :DDDD

"Hussif" is correct. Check it out on Google's text-to-speech service.

why though?

***** Poppers are lewd

+Alexandru Moise he said ate. turn up your volume..

Et. Common form of the verb in England.

thank you

+Alexandru Moise /et/ (as he says in the video) is the correct pronunciation of "ate" in British English.

ok, thank you

I use the shipping forecast as my model of perfect English. I did actually get to read it once, although on a very minor radio station.

Learn, yes. Speak... not so much as demonstrated.

MrTrollaid I'm Russian, I know English, German and French, and English is by far the easiest in both :)

MrTrollaid Speak perfectly*.

MrTrollaid As a frenchmen who has learned both English and Russian, as well as a bit of Spanish, I can confirm that the English language is by far one of the most simple languages around. Even the words demonstrated in this video don't have shit on the accents in Russian that will transform a word's sense based on how you pronounce it, or our silent letters in french (I can only imagine how hard it must be to remember these).

This is Caboose Yes! That was my biggest issue with French. Half the letters in your words are silent.

It's because the English language is an amalgamation of various native tongues including Latin :)

***** French more than Latin, actually. Though French is a Romance Language so you could say Latin via French. ;-)

***** German mainly really

Jake Halford Well yes but that's the other side of the family. ;-)

***** Same as french german spanish etc. local language plus latin = romance language

King Of The Pipe i guess.

+Vendetta fifthofnovember Considering the poem is about the awkward differences in the English language, saying "Jobe" is probably correct since it's next to nob. The verse wouldn't make sense if it were "jawb" and nob next to each other when trying to point out the disparities.

+Vendetta fifthofnovember i will go with jowb as in gob (arrested development)

+Jake Azz first words in sentences are also capitalized.

+Skyler Atkinson First words in sentences are also capitalized.

Hey!

Well did you get through it?! :)

+SloveintzWend I never liked that bastard anyway..... :(

Al-Malik Al-Ashraf Khalil Yeah he did, but it was a comedic pun on some attributes and difficulties he experienced while learning German. So not really dead serious ;)

Al-Malik Al-Ashraf Khalil "Good thing I talk it from birth on" It's a useful joke when someone complains about how your mother tongue (in my case Icelandic) is difficult: "What do you mean, difficult? There are 5-year-olds speaking it, come on!" :P

Al-Malik Al-Ashraf Khalil børk børk børk!

thossi09 I am a German and currently trying to learn Icelandic. Time and time again I find great similarities between both. Unfortunately it is in those parts that make both difficult. I think: "What idiot came up with this idea?" and then have to realize that it's the same in German and I had no difficulties with it for the last 40 years. Still does not make it easier to memorize it in a different language. Plus there is a distinct lack in good dictionaries Icelandic-German (and the few there are often lack vital grammar info, e.g. with what case a preposition is used in what context or when which seemingly synonymous preposition is used: í vs. á, við vs. með etc.).Here's my first attempt to go Lovecraftian in Icelandic (not checked by any native, so errors are all mine):þađ er Cþul(h)uþursa drottnariSkrímsli stjörnurSkelfing hann er mannaDauður en dreymandiSinn dagur mun komaRikir brjálædiEn birta er ekki

Al-Malik Al-Ashraf Khalil Since it is a video about the evils of English, you speak a language rather than talk it. So it should be, "Good thing I've spoken it since birth". Which if you think about it isn't true, and I hope you appreciate just how Germanic that sentence is. Put "spoken" at the end and stick a superfluous "ge" at the front and it would practically be German.

I've managed to think of seven ways of writing the sh sound (the "voiceless palato-alveolar sibilant fricative") in English. Obviously there's "sh", but also "si" (mission), "ti" (application), "ci" (suspicion), "ch" (chef), "s" (sure), and "c" (ocean, possibly this should be "ce", I'm not certain). Sometimes I'm flabbergasted by my own language.

O - SH - AN

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghoti

Gh from night, o from people, t from gourmet and i from business. Ghoti is also complete silence.

the spelling is fine, it's the pronounciation lol

Of the Babel sort?

Lindybeige i understand the ghoti/fish reference but Babel?

+Soupy babel fish.

+Lttlemoi My favourite interpretation of "ghoti" is not "fish" but an EMPTY reading: gh as in night, o as in people, t as in gourmet and i as in business.

Alexander Stiefelmann That's actually pretty neat. Never heard if that one before.

+TheAlexanderUchiha well lol I need this for my clearance. Im filipino xD. Goodluck! ☺

Only, as Steven Pinker explains in The Language Instinct (great book), it doesn't. English spelling follows derivation.

Well, if the gh is pronounced like high, the O like jeopardy, the T like potpourri, and I as in receive? Try prounouncing Ghoti then. :P

Oddie Yang I am saying that word most of the time!

Aj Art He meant "...". They are all silent letters. ;D

Throw a couple Þ in somewhere and most non-english speakers would have as much trouble.