John Scalzi: The curse of the precocious reader: Knowing what words mean, but not how to pronounce them. This is why I pronounced "hyperbole" as "hyper-BOWL" until I was almost 20.

The curse of the precocious reader: Knowing what words mean, but not how to pronounce them. This is why I pronounced "hyperbole" as "hyper-BOWL" until I was almost 20.

I 100% say words as I had read them/learned them. It's not always accurate.

Pretty sure that one got me, too. I did not know that the "epitome" that Calvin used in a satirical poem about Hobbes was the word that Bugs Bunny also used in sarcastic mockery of his opponents that sounded something like "epidammy"

Internally i still read “socrates” like bill and ted

I wouldn't know anything about this! [Says the person who thought it was "mizzled" until he randomly came across "mis-led" hyphenated across the end of a line, and it was like a heaven-projected spotlight of realization.]

I had that one too! But I thought it was a long I: "MY-zled." Assumed there was a verb "I misle, you misle, we shall have been misling..." It was hearing a high school teacher refer to a passage in a text that set off my klaxon.

How does it stack if you've learned a language (from books too) but do not interact with native speakers much verbally? I am actually curious to know if there is a difference or not.

I honestly have no idea but it's an excellent question

That is the entire history of the study of Middle Egyptian. It was written without vowels, and we’re not even sure how some of the consonants were pronounced. An ad hoc pronunciation has been developed by academics just to allow reading out loud.

I majored in French and Spanish in college, and one summer I worked as a teacher's aide in the migrant school. My Spanish was functional enough for the Guatemalan and Honduran kids, but we had a few little Haitian kids who found my classroom French accent hilarious.

(Former language teacher): it would be very difficult to learn to speak a language without practicing conversation with *someone* (teacher, classmate, native speaker...) If you don´t have access to those, watching films or listening to music in the language can help.

I did not mean without interaction at all. However, at some point you start reading fiction, cinema videogames, and that - at least in my case - gives you way, way more. Does it affect my speech patterns in the same way? Or does being a nerd on one language translate to another (and in between)?

There´s such a thing as ´reading knowledge´ (which is common in academia) where you can read a language but not speakit . If trying to speak based on ´reading knowledge´, i´d guess the biggest challenge would be getting the sounds right when they vary from English (eg Japanese ´r´, French ´i´, etc.)

I think that one is easier to understand and study. What got me interested more was the part about "nerdspeak". Can you be non-neurodivergent but have speech patterns learned from books that sound like you are? Or vice versa?

I don´t know. That's an interesting question. A linguist might be able to answer that, or at least point you in the right direction.

Consider a language like French, where there are like 12 different ways to spell the end of words, and they are all pronounced /eɪ/ ‘ay’

It's not like English is that much better in that regard. On the other hand, I've tried learning both, and I had no success whatsoever with French...

there was YEARS where i didn't realize that "fa-see-shush" (my mom said it a lot) was the same "facetious" word i kept reading

This is mine too!

Something @charliejane.bsky.social said once has always stuck with me. "Never make fun of someone for mispronouncing a word because it probably means they learned it from reading."

Don't remember saying that, but I'll take it!

It was back in the io9 days

It’s a beaut!

"Albeit" as "all-bite" is my signature.

That’s one I only recently realized I had wrong

I've seen native speakers realize it after my comment in one such thread XD

My favorite was a professor explaining the story of when he found out how "oligopoly" was pronounced. I've definitely stopped mid sentence in a conversation and asked how to pronounce a word I've only read before.

I kept saying "schedule" two different ways every time I had to say it and then asking the people I was talking to which way was the correct one.... turns out both versions work. 🤦‍♀️ it can be shedule or skedule.... wtf english....

American English favors the k, British English favors the h. It's funny listening to John Barrowman, who spent a lot of his youth in the US, have an American accent and say shedule as Jack Harkness.

Or "estrogen" as "eestrogen" in an early episode of Torchwood. He can and does switch accents all the time, often in the same sentence - must drive his husband crazy.

My younger brother corrected me on epitome once. And I still have to make an effort to remember to say it correctly

This, and also Penelope & Hermione. Peh-neh-lope, Hermy-own

Nayve. It was obviously nayve. I was naive back then.

I can never spell naive without first writing Evian

Epitome. Epi-tome, obviously.

Anxiety, as ang’shitty. It’s root being anxious, which is not pronounced ang-sigh-ouse, thus my detour.

I had tons of these. I pronounced the G in Gnasher as if I were an Old English kernight. Psyche was sike. I too thought it was a hyper-bowl. Mind you, anyone else think we should bring back Greek pronunciation for words from Greek? Doesn't ark-e-o-p-TEAR-ix sound better than ark-e-OPT-uh-rix?

Nobody tells you about the stealth g in "paradigm"

I learned how to pronounce paradigm because of a Magic card in high school.

Paradigm Shift (Weatherlight) - Gatherer - Magic: The Gathering gatherer.wizards.com Gatherer is the Magic Card Database. Search for the perfect addition to your deck. Browse through cards from Magic's entire history. See cards from the most recent sets and discover what players just ...

chaos - chowoss was mine

Aloysius is not uh-LOY-shuss, it’s owl-uh-WISH-us. Took several viewings of It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World to grok that one.

al-oy-see-us

I pronounced ennui wrong for years.

I just panicked looking at it.

Yes! En-you-i for me. Didn’t remember that till my recent watching of Inside Out 2.

When I first heard someone say "hy-PER-bully" I thought they were yankin' my chain.

I thought "segue" was the editorial shortened form of ..."segueway". Why did I never put 2 and 2 together after never once seeing it spelled out that way? WHO KNOWS.

Magic-can here.

“In-dicked”.

Me too!

Ditto.

Post