A rant about English

The reason I love Sinhala so much is because the letters cannot be pronounced in fifty different ways. If English worked like Sinhala, corn, born, torn and worn would rhyme. The English language doesn't allow us the privilege of never or rarely mispronouncing words. I mean, even words like ball, bowl, sauce, source and call, coal. God! and gourd :D

isn't bitter. But
 

is.



Then there are the silent letters. My question is, if we aren't going to say them, why have them in a word's spelling at all? What purpose does the b in debt serve?

And don't use the whole, "most English words have other-language origins." Well, when a word is stolen from say Latin, make sure the Latin pronunciation rules don't matter. I already can't handle the rules of English, so you can't expect me to learn the rules of another language.

So you get why English is so exasperating. Especially to someone whose mother-tongue isn't English.

This isn't such a problem. Even the British and Americans can't pronounce words correctly or in the traditional way. So why are we Sri Lankans so bothered when someone is a n-oh-t b-oh-t person?

Because Sri Lankans have the weirdest standards on earth! Trust me when I say this. If I bring a man home, my grandmother being a typical Sri Lankan will already start looking into if he could someday take me as his wife, through happiness and sorrow... And she'll snoop around about him. And say he mispronounces one word, she'll take note of it. And after he leaves she will say, "Ah nice boy. Good Family but a n-oh-t b-oh-t fellow." As if his pronunciation says so much about his Good Family-ness.

Although, it does in a way. Now good English used to mean the individual came from a wealthy family, went to a Good school (more often than not a missionary school) and knows people in high places. Today people are so corrupt that a drug lord's son could study in a Colombo Seven school. Which means the son of someone who grew up in the slums would live in a mansion right next to a Good Family.

Whether or not you come from a family that has been been wealthy for generations or if they went from rags to riches, you have no right to ridicule others for their mispronunciations. Many people use their knowledge to laugh at others, or insult them. So what if someone says oh-range instead of or-range? And ask your self, why do you pronounce it or-range? What makes one pronunciation wrong from another?

In the end, why do we pronounce words in certain ways? When gifs were introduced to the world, people pronounced it jif and gif. They argued with each other. It was gif because of goat, god, gorilla, game. It was jif because giraffe, gigantic, gym. And then... He spoke. The Man, the Great Guy. And He said jif! *

So words are pronounced the way their creators wanted them. Or how popular or famous people pronounce them. We say, "Oh its d-or-g and not d-oh-g because President Obama pronounced the word that way." Maybe a word is pronounced a certain way because  the majority said it that way.

And then there are accents. People pronounce words in various ways because of the area they come from. They vary from country to country, and even from province to province. An American and Sri Lankan will pronounce the same word differently, while a man from Matara and one from Colombo will pronounce it differently too. What are accents? Accents are the way and speed and tone we use to pronounce words.

So don't laugh at someone because they pronounce a word in a different way than you usually do. Especially in Sri Lanka where English isn't our mother-tongue, where not all schools offer spoken English classes, where not many get that training needed to pronounce words.



*the Man, the Great Guy isn't God. I'm talking about Steve Wilhite who created GIF