this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2024
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Showerthoughts

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'Choose' rhymes with 'lose'? I mean c'mon, someone did that shit on purpose πŸ‘€

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[–] [email protected] 45 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (4 children)

The bigger problem is that lose should rhyme with pose or close. Loose is fine.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 month ago (4 children)

Don't get me started on ough and ead.

The lead soldier kneaded dough in the bough brush while they read the book that they previously read while taking a furlough in the rough.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

Didn’t even have to click. Great poem

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

I barely started reading and i hate this already.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago

I read this and all I could think of was "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo"

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

How can the soldier knead anything if they're made of lead?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (5 children)

Hoes drop their clothes.

Who the hell decided that close is pronounced the same as clothes?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (3 children)

No one? They aren't pronounced the same in any accent that I'm aware of.

Edit: I'm dumb. I was reading that as the "nearby" close and not the "shut " close.

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

You're probably thinking of the pronunciation of close as in 'close to you'

I was thinking of the pronunciation of close as in 'close the door'

Which is pronounced the same as clothes.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Those still aren’t pronounced the same. The th in clothes isn’t silent.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

I'm not sure where you're from, but the th is indeed silent in my area regarding the word 'clothes'. I've never heard it pronounced any different than 'close'.

Now if it's said as 'clothing', the th is indeed pronounced. But not for 'clothes'. And I've worked at a clothing store before.

You might be thinking of the word 'cloths', which indeed does pronounce the th.

English is weird like that.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago (4 children)

I'm not sure where you're from, but the th is indeed silent in my area regarding the word 'clothes'. I've never heard it pronounced any different than 'close'.

I'm not sure where you're from, the th in is always pronounced in my area regarding the word 'clothes'. I've never heard it pronounced the same as 'close'

I will say that people got called out for pronouncing it the same as the spice 'cloves'.

FWIW My area = rural southern UK.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Yeah absolutely not silent. Unless perhaps you're a cockney. Source: I'm in northern England. Perhaps it is a British thing.

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

Oh well that's easy then, it's because you guys speak British, not English!

Kidding aside, I lived in East Anglia for a few years as a kid and I don't remember the British kids saying it that way either, but that was a really long time ago and my memory ain't what it used to be! I think. I can't remember how it used to be actually.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

it's because you guys speak British, not English!

Fighting talk, sirrah! Fighting talk.... But yes, I guess.

British English has been described as three languages dressed up in a trenchcoat that go around mugging other languages in dark alleys and stealing the best bits...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

I'm in the US and I pronounce it, I think a lot of people do? Maybe I just know a lot of snobs and "regular" Americans mush the word together but I don't think so

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

You seem like the sort of person that would pronounce the word often with a hard T, yet still pronounce the letter A as if it was an O.

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

You seem like the sort of person that would pronounce the word often with a hard T,

Not at all. Used to make fun of people who did.

yet still pronounce the letter A as if it was an O.

No - there are two sounds for A, bath (short, as in cat) for tub of usually hot water and Bath (long, as in car) for the city famous for its hot water. Never heard it like O - no, wait... RP has an O sounding A doesn't it? Lloyd Grossman was famous for his mangling of vowel sounds.

ETA that distinction for the A sound is probably familial rather than regional; grew up with Geordie mam and Home counties dad.

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

Yeh cheese as cheeze is an odd one - especially considering the z is "zed" not "zee"... I guess cheese is where the idea of "zee" came from?

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

Additional question..

Who decided to include the letter D in the pronunciation of the letter Z?

Zed?

Where did that come from? We don't say it that way over here in the states, we just say zee..

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

I would ask "why did you left ponders choose to change the pronunciation to zee?" - though given many USAian pronunciations are, apparently, closer to Elizabethan English than the current UK sounds I wouldn't like to guess which came first the zed or the zee....

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

Probably because D has absolutely nothing to do with Z.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

So on laundry day you put away your clo_s_ing? The rest of us have clo_th_ing.

I can edit also.

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

Huh? I have lived in every corner and the middle of the United States and I have never heard anyone pronounce the TH in clothes no matter the accent. It always sounds like close as in to close the door.

Unless you are thinking of cloths, as in a pile of wash cloths.

English kinda sucks sometimes.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

I’m American and I’ve never heard a single person ever pronounce it β€œclose”. Listen closely and you’ll hear that the word sounds longer. That’s the pronunciation. It’s not a hard β€œthuh”. It’s a soft β€œths”. Say the word β€œcloths” but use a long β€œo” sound rather than β€œawh”.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

This is just wrong. Im canadian but think about how you would pronounce the word 'clothe' as in 'he can barely clothe himself" and then add an s sound. Although it is more of a 'z' sound abd can blend with the 'th' a little bit, the 'th' is definitely pronounced clo-th-z.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

I pronounce the th sometimes, but not always, depends how fast I'm talking

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (8 children)

Close isn't always pronounced the same?!

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

I don't know shit about fuck when it comes to the differences between accents/dialects but it's at least enough of a thing to be there in dictionaries.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

Even the second one isn’t pronounced the same. Some accents drop the th sound in clothes which is why they can sound similar.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

They sound pretty close to me. We can close this issue.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Okay as a non-native speaker who struggles with consonant clusters this is both the best and worst thing I learned today.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Hey we may have our language rules pulled from 30 different other languages and applied seemingly at random, but at least we don't have to memorize the gender of every inanimate object in the world!

I've taken 5 years of German and self studied some Russian and Spanish, and goddamn that gendered noun shit is really, really hard for native English speakers.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

Okay you got me there. Also for what it's worth, gendered nouns are hard even when you natively speak a language with gendered nouns. Source: Am an Arabic speaker and will Jihad anyone who says a chair is female.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

At least in my dialect (US northeast) clothes and close don't quite share a pronunciation. They're similar enough that you could probably fully elide the th sound, and I'm not sure anyone would notice.

When I pronounce clothes I can still feel my tongue move into the th position, and hear a small difference.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

As a native English speaker, English is freaking weird like that.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

I don't know that they sound that different, but I definitely "pronounce" them differently in that my tongue is in a different party of my mouth for both of them. When I say clothes, my tongue is near touching my front teeth, where as close is more just below that ridge behind my teeth, so farther back.

I'm from the center of the U.S. for reference.

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

I had half my jaw ripped open when I was 16 or so. So I guess I'm lucky to pronounce or enunciate anything correctly these days.

Southern Mississippi, if that means squat.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

Yeah Mississippi will do that to you.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

They aren't universally, just in certain dialects. I pronounce the "th" just like with "clothing."

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