On 10/04/2014 10:32 AM, James Knott wrote:
On 10/04/2014 10:23 AM, Anton Aylward wrote:
I don't know about you but I pronounce the word I mean with a long "O" rather than a short one like in "flosing". I go with the dictionary meaning of words.
That's fine but doesn't make a lot of sense in the real world. When I moved from Manchester to London many people couldn't understand what I was saying. English, like many other languages, might have the same spelling but differing pronunciation of words according to regions. The extreme case of this is Chinese where the dialects differ but the written form is the same. Other Brits tell me that the "Parisian" French they learnt in England and used satisfactorily in Paris was unintelligible and no use in Quebec City; and even within Quebec the province the French I used that acceptable in the Maritime provinces was met with incomprehension by some shopkeepers outside Montreal. (And I couldn't understand them either!) I'm sure that people in the USA are well aware that different regions handle vowels, long and short, differently, words like "grass" and "grasp". Doing a network install in Kentucky once I was told that I sounded like someone from New York by one person, from Vermont or Maine by another. Both were surprised to hear I was from Canada. "How do you think Canadians sound?" "well, not you you." At a conference in Baltimore one time I thought the receptionist sounded like she was from Kent, England. No, she said she was from New Mexico. Going from the sound to the dictionary often doesn't help. English has too many homonyms and homophones even before you start dealing with accents. Dictionaries are great when you know the spelling up front. -- Life is change. Growth is optional. Choose wisely. - Karen Kaiser Clark -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org