There have been proposals to simplify the English language that involve letter substitution for similar sounds. As it progresses, you wind up with something that’s completely unrecognizable. Mostly done for humor, I guess.
Then you’ve got the guy that wants to eliminate the word “hello” because it has “hell” in it. If that were to succeed, it sets the precident for getting rid of other words like “shell”, and gives ammunition to the ones who want to do away with “female”, “woman” and “women” because of the link to male/man/men. But you’d then also have to get rid of “succeed” because that sounds like “suck seed” and we can’t be saying a bad word like “suck”. Also have to rename the shih tzu dog because a lot of people move the T onto the end of the first word when they say the name of the breed.
And so on.
One thing that would really help is consistency with how words are pronounced. For example, the “oo” sound. That’s pretty standard, so when you have boo, coo, foo, goo, moo, poo, too, woo and zoo, they all sound the same.
But when you add letters onto the end of those, you don’t pronounce them the same. You have a mix of “oo” and “uh” sounds.
Boob, book, boom, boon, boor, boos, boot
Cool, coon, coop, coos, coot
Doof, doom, door, doot
Food, fool, foot
Good, goof, goon, goop
Mood, moon, moor, moos, moot
Poof, pool, poop, poor
Roof, rook, room, root
Took, tool
Wood, woof, wool, woos, woot
Zoom, zoos
English inherited words from other languages. Every language does. But consistency in pronunciation would make it easier to learn. It would simplify the approach from “you do it this way except in these cases which are completely arbitrary and don’t make any sense why they are that way”.
But I suppose that even proposing this idea would cause a lot of controversy because it makes sense, just like deciding how to pronounce “controversy”: “con-tro-verse-see” or “con-trov-er-see”.
Also, success. All the people called Ces want that one gone.
On a slightly related note, there is a zoo entirely dedicated to a single dog.
It’s a shih tzu.
There are several words that have more than one correct pronunciation, and I know it drives some people nuts.
Skedule / shedule
eether / eyether
neether / neyether
So, it’s 79 degrees right now. I let the dog out and started to sweat while she was peeing. Humidity is 81%, and the dew point is at 70, which all apparently leads to what feels like 105 temps when it hits the high of 92 today.
Awesome.
Went to a demo derby last night and the best part was just sitting in the dead evening air in the sun sweating.
Why do some people constantly either accelerate or decelerate?
Is it that they don’t know that there are multiple points between full throttle and no throttle and they can pick one of those points that will maintain their current speed?
Is it that they are so incompetent that they are unable to pick the sweet spot?
Maybe it’s because they have too much nervous energy and they need to be doing something with their foot?
You have to think that they are unaware they are doing it, but being oblivious isn’t a good thing when you are driving.
I’ve seen this phenomenon several times in the past, but I’m bringing it up now because I have a bus driver that does it - and it’s really tiring being in his bus (yep, worse than normal).
My friend does this and it drives me absolutely nuts. Especially because he’s fully aware he’s doing it and thinks it’s a good way to drive. I was trying to demonstrate it for my wife one time and I couldn’t even reproduce it because it’s so counter to the way I learned.
What? How on earth could he have worked that out?
It’d be the absolute worst way to drive for fuel economy. It’s uncomfortable for your passengers. I’m really struggling to see any positives at all. What is he thinking?
The one reason I didn’t include in my list of possible reasons was that they were doing it deliberately because they thought it was a good way to drive. That’s because it’s such a stupid way to drive I dismissed it.
I’m very sad to know I was wrong.
I don’t know. But it annoys me whenever I ride with him. And aside from ass fuel economy it probably also puts unnecessary wear and tear on the vehicle. He’s otherwise a pretty smart guy so I don’t know what his deal is here.
Is it possible they think they are actually always speeding up until traffic forces them to slow down, therefore maintaining the highest average speed?
I tell you a real sign of the improving jobs market are the number of people on neighborhood Facebook sites looking for employees. I’ve seen a couple dozen different people posting desperate sounding requests for people to work. Between that and the Now Hiring billboards and every Speedway and McDonalds having job fairs every month it looks like things are looking up.
Tractor Supply is hiring at $15 an hour, McDonald’s at like $10, and the local carwash promises like $12 after six months… I’m not sure anyone makes it to 6 months though. Most the Facebook requests are from small business owners and office managers for semi skilled labor and office help.
Decided to have brussel sprouts for dinner tonight. Recommended time in the microwave was 7 to 7.5 minutes. So, I entered 6 minutes and 66 seconds, just for fun.
I’ve got a really good recipe for brussel sprouts.
You put a brick into a large casserole dish and surround it with your brussel sprouts.
Put the dish in a hot oven for 30 minutes.
Then you throw away the sprouts and eat the brick*.
* I’m not a fan of brussel sprouts in case you hadn’t worked that out
