-mouth pronounciation

Roberto said:
from outside the UK, English is often shown as an easy to learn language
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A linguist I once met was of the opinion that English is relatively easy to learn well enough to communicate - if you say "I runned" then people will know what you mean even though it's not correct. But because it has a lot of irregular words, a completely chaotic orthography, and a large vocabulary in which apparently synonymous words carry different connotations to native speakers, it's a hard language to really master.

Pete
 
Roberto said:
from outside the UK, English is often shown as an easy to learn language, grammar is rather straightforward, one does not have to learn the spelling of fifteen different tenses ...
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And you can pronounce things just about any way you please, confident that your version will be right somewhere in the UK.
 
prv said:
A linguist I once met was of the opinion that English is relatively easy to learn well enough to communicate - if you say "I runned" then people will know what you mean even though it's not correct. But because it has a lot of irregular words, a completely chaotic orthography, and a large vocabulary in which apparently synonymous words carry different connotations to native speakers, it's a hard language to really master.
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I'm learning Japanese at the moment. It's great fun. There are about ten ways of saying anything, with different degrees of politeness, they have different words for numbers of different types of object and the adjectives have past tenses. Plus they have four different writing systems, three of which are used together.
 
JumbleDuck said:
I'm learning Japanese at the moment. It's great fun. There are about ten ways of saying anything, with different degrees of politeness, they have different words for numbers of different types of object and the adjectives have past tenses. Plus they have four different writing systems, three of which are used together.
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A bi-lingual family (mother Japanese, father French) I knew said their male child had some funny looks in Japan, as he had learnt Japanese through his mother he spoke Japanese "the lady way", with great amazement from other Japanese people
 
moodyNick said:
If pronounced badly, muth becomes muff ...... so a 'mouthfull' could actually result in a 'muff-full' but that's a different discussion altogether !!
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Quite incorrect.
Here in Essex, mouth is pronounced mowf, as in "shut yer mowf" but place names generally end in .. muff e.g. Plymuff, etc.
Edit
That can't be right, I've just remembered Leamowf Creek in Bow!
 
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prv said:
if you say "I runned" then people will know what you mean even though it's not correct.

Pete
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As opposed to French where even a slightly incorrect pronunciation will have people screwing their eyes up and shaking their heads.

Of course when you move on to a bough (bow) on a tree and ploughing (plow) a field, but the placename, Brough and rough (bruff/ruff) and a cough (coff), though (tho) and through (throo) it all starts to get a bit tricky ;)
 
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Lakesailor said:
Of course when you move on to a bough (bow) on a tree and ploughing (plow) a field, but the placename, Brough and rough (bruff/ruff) and a cough (coff), though (tho) and through (throo) it all starts to get a bit tricky ;)
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Years ago I wrote a teaser based on the verb "to draw" which doesn't have the pronunciation problems of the above but does have boating relevance. The question is whether the occurrences of the word denoted by "~" are all spelled the same way (UK or USA?)...

A shallow-~ barge was pulled down the canal by a ~-horse on the tow-path. Seated just inside the open door of the cabin, in a ~, were several out of work ~smen, every one of them with an over~ at the bank. They were drinking ~ beer and playing ~s.

Mike.
 
As an uncouth uncultured colonial (but still a UK citizen) i am surprised that none of the previous discussion has mentioned class and the impact of class on pronunciation.
For the benefit of people from outside the UK, English pronunciation in the UK is a mechanism for determining two things:
1 Social class.
2 Region. If you pronounce local place names correctly you are one of us. If not you are a "furriner" and a figure of fun and probably a bad person. A "furriner' is not someone from outside the UK, its someone from outside the village!
These things are not unique to the UK but do seem more prevalent there....
example for the 1st; anyone who pronounces house to rhyme with arse is probable both an arse and an upper class twit.
example for the 2nd from Australia: Visitors pronounce "Wagga Wagga" phonetically. Aussies pronounce it "woga mate" and point and laugh at visitors...
My only other language familiarity is German and they don't make judgements based on regional accent at all. ;)
 
Roberto said:
A bi-lingual family (mother Japanese, father French) I knew said their male child had some funny looks in Japan, as he had learnt Japanese through his mother he spoke Japanese "the lady way", with great amazement from other Japanese people
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Portuguese can get you in trouble that way too. Thank you is 'obrigado' if the speaker is male, 'obrigada' if female.
 
prv said:
Nope, no reason, it's just the way it is.

If you're looking for logic in English pronunciation, especially of place names, then you're out of luck.

Even as a British native, there are a lot of places whose pronunciation I'd only be guessing at if I hadn't heard them before.

Pete
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Not half. In central county Durham a visitor could spend days driving around fruitlessly asking for directions to West Cornforth. But if he instead asked for directions to 'Doggy' he'd be there in minutes.

As to Roberto's original question, where I come from 'mouth' is typically pronounced 'gob'.
 
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