It's pretty cruel, particularly for non-native English speakers, that 'lose' and 'loose' seemingly switched spellings, meanings and pronunciations with each other when no one was looking
'Choose' rhymes with 'lose'? I mean c'mon, someone did that shit on purpose đź‘€
I'm not sure where you're from, but the th is indeed silent in my area regarding the word 'clothes'. I've never heard it pronounced any different than 'close'.
Now if it's said as 'clothing', the th is indeed pronounced. But not for 'clothes'. And I've worked at a clothing store before.
You might be thinking of the word 'cloths', which indeed does pronounce the th.
I'm not sure where you're from, but the th is indeed silent in my area regarding the word 'clothes'. I've never heard it pronounced any different than 'close'.
I'm not sure where you're from, the th in is always pronounced in my area regarding the word 'clothes'. I've never heard it pronounced the same as 'close'
I will say that people got called out for pronouncing it the same as the spice 'cloves'.
Oh well that's easy then, it's because you guys speak British, not English!
Kidding aside, I lived in East Anglia for a few years as a kid and I don't remember the British kids saying it that way either, but that was a really long time ago and my memory ain't what it used to be! I think. I can't remember how it used to be actually.
I'm in the US and I pronounce it, I think a lot of people do? Maybe I just know a lot of snobs and "regular" Americans mush the word together but I don't think so
Huh? I have lived in every corner and the middle of the United States and I have never heard anyone pronounce the TH in clothes no matter the accent. It always sounds like close as in to close the door.
Unless you are thinking of cloths, as in a pile of wash cloths.
I’m American and I’ve never heard a single person ever pronounce it “close”. Listen closely and you’ll hear that the word sounds longer. That’s the pronunciation. It’s not a hard “thuh”. It’s a soft “ths”. Say the word “cloths” but use a long “o” sound rather than “awh”.
This is just wrong. Im canadian but think about how you would pronounce the word 'clothe' as in 'he can barely clothe himself" and then add an s sound. Although it is more of a 'z' sound abd can blend with the 'th' a little bit, the 'th' is definitely pronounced clo-th-z.
I've had to train my ear because I learned to speak spanish so I notice these things with my friends who are learning english.
The one that broke my mind the other day is that the D in drink is pronounced like a J. My friend was practicing his D sounds and came up with that out of the blue.
I don't know shit about fuck when it comes to the differences between accents/dialects but it's at least enough of a thing to be there in dictionaries.
Hey we may have our language rules pulled from 30 different other languages and applied seemingly at random, but at least we don't have to memorize the gender of every inanimate object in the world!
I've taken 5 years of German and self studied some Russian and Spanish, and goddamn that gendered noun shit is really, really hard for native English speakers.
Okay you got me there. Also for what it's worth, gendered nouns are hard even when you natively speak a language with gendered nouns. Source: Am an Arabic speaker and will Jihad anyone who says a chair is female.
At least in my dialect (US northeast) clothes and close don't quite share a pronunciation. They're similar enough that you could probably fully elide the th sound, and I'm not sure anyone would notice.
When I pronounce clothes I can still feel my tongue move into the th position, and hear a small difference.
I don't know that they sound that different, but I definitely "pronounce" them differently in that my tongue is in a different party of my mouth for both of them. When I say clothes, my tongue is near touching my front teeth, where as close is more just below that ridge behind my teeth, so farther back.
I mean yeah 'loose' could probably be pronounced like 'choose' and it would still make sense, but it absolutely wouldnt make sense for 'lose' to be pronounced like 'moose' or 'goose'. Im not sure what you even mean when you say they switched meanings either because thats just false.
No worries, it was just used to point out the premise of the post. Lose and close were the closest in spelling while also having the dumb pun included if you will. Bad jokes get downvoted or overlooked sometimes 🤷
It's a miracle I know it, and having to teach someone how to read and spell was an eye opener for me trying to explain "this is like this except for this one word because... Reasons and sometimes there's a variation like this because...reasons" so many times.
Having to explain to my spanish speaking friends why an english word is spelled one way but pronounced another entirely different way gave me the same experience. So many times i have to tell them: “i don’t know english is just weird.”
Usually the reason is either because some jerks intentionally changed certain spellings to look more French/Latin ("receipt" didn't have a "p" originally, for example), or just because English is such a mongrel language with words taken from various other languages with different spelling and pronunciation rules.
I once had a roommate from Chile and he asked what the difference in pronunciation was for "juice" versus "Jews". I'm still not sure I properly got the difference across...
Also the difference between "to rob" and "to steal" was an interesting thing to think through and then explain.
I can see why he'd have trouble with those two, because Spanish doesn't have the English "z" sound. They'll both sound the same using Spanish pronunciation .
Those three sound completely different to me, as far as how I’ve been pronouncing them goes. “Their” doesn’t have the extra lagging e sound (as in the e in err) in “there” where I curl my tongue upward at the end. “They’re” preserves the ey sound in “they”, just concatenated with an r as in err sound.
When I say, “They’re there,” people can make out what I’m saying, though as more people seem to tell me that these are just homophones, maybe they’ve just been relying on context.
I think he was Dutch - but they do tend to speak “better” English than the English.
The difference in UK/US (amongst other first language English nations) pronunciation is something I know effects hip-hop lyricism (i.e. rapping) as different pronunciations mean some words only rhyme in your own dialect.
119 Comments
themeatbridge@lemmy.world · 45 pts · 1y
The bigger problem is that lose should rhyme with pose or close. Loose is fine.
spankmonkey@lemmy.world · 25 pts · 1y
Don't get me started on ough and ead.
The lead soldier kneaded dough in the bough brush while they read the book that they previously read while taking a furlough in the rough.
xigoi@lemmy.sdf.org · 10 pts · 1y
http://ncf.idallen.com/english.html
tyler@programming.dev · 4 pts · 1y
Didn’t even have to click. Great poem
NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io · 3 pts · 1y
I barely started reading and i hate this already.
CarbonatedPastaSauce@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 1y
I read this and all I could think of was "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo"
Silentiea@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 4 pts · 1y
How can the soldier knead anything if they're made of lead?
moistclump@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1y
https://youtu.be/0hGaSQyygRQ?si=chuCUpT-xXMXA18F
over_clox@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 1y
Hoes drop their clothes.
Who the hell decided that close is pronounced the same as clothes?
darkdemize@sh.itjust.works · 10 pts · 1y
No one? They aren't pronounced the same in any accent that I'm aware of.
Edit: I'm dumb. I was reading that as the "nearby" close and not the "shut " close.
over_clox@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 1y
You're probably thinking of the pronunciation of close as in 'close to you'
I was thinking of the pronunciation of close as in 'close the door'
Which is pronounced the same as clothes.
corvi@lemm.ee · 9 pts · 1y
Those still aren’t pronounced the same. The th in clothes isn’t silent.
over_clox@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 1y
I'm not sure where you're from, but the th is indeed silent in my area regarding the word 'clothes'. I've never heard it pronounced any different than 'close'.
Now if it's said as 'clothing', the th is indeed pronounced. But not for 'clothes'. And I've worked at a clothing store before.
You might be thinking of the word 'cloths', which indeed does pronounce the th.
English is weird like that.
BenM2023@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 1y
I'm not sure where you're from, the th in is always pronounced in my area regarding the word 'clothes'. I've never heard it pronounced the same as 'close'
I will say that people got called out for pronouncing it the same as the spice 'cloves'.
FWIW My area = rural southern UK.
ODuffer@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 1y
Yeah absolutely not silent. Unless perhaps you're a cockney. Source: I'm in northern England. Perhaps it is a British thing.
CarbonatedPastaSauce@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1y
Oh well that's easy then, it's because you guys speak British, not English!
Kidding aside, I lived in East Anglia for a few years as a kid and I don't remember the British kids saying it that way either, but that was a really long time ago and my memory ain't what it used to be! I think. I can't remember how it used to be actually.
Asidonhopo@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1y
I'm in the US and I pronounce it, I think a lot of people do? Maybe I just know a lot of snobs and "regular" Americans mush the word together but I don't think so
over_clox@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1y
You seem like the sort of person that would pronounce the word often with a hard T, yet still pronounce the letter A as if it was an O.
db2@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1y
So on laundry day you put away your clo_s_ing? The rest of us have clo_th_ing.
I can edit also.
CarbonatedPastaSauce@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 1y
Huh? I have lived in every corner and the middle of the United States and I have never heard anyone pronounce the TH in clothes no matter the accent. It always sounds like close as in to close the door.
Unless you are thinking of cloths, as in a pile of wash cloths.
English kinda sucks sometimes.
tyler@programming.dev · 4 pts · 1y
I’m American and I’ve never heard a single person ever pronounce it “close”. Listen closely and you’ll hear that the word sounds longer. That’s the pronunciation. It’s not a hard “thuh”. It’s a soft “ths”. Say the word “cloths” but use a long “o” sound rather than “awh”.
emeralddawn45@discuss.tchncs.de · 1 pts · 1y
This is just wrong. Im canadian but think about how you would pronounce the word 'clothe' as in 'he can barely clothe himself" and then add an s sound. Although it is more of a 'z' sound abd can blend with the 'th' a little bit, the 'th' is definitely pronounced clo-th-z.
0ops@lemm.ee · 2 pts · 1y
I pronounce the th sometimes, but not always, depends how fast I'm talking
Eiri@lemmy.ca · 4 pts · 1y
Close isn't always pronounced the same?!
teft@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1y
Sit close to me vs close the door
Eiri@lemmy.ca · 3 pts · 1y
Ooh wow you're right.
Close to me is "closs"
Close the door is "cloz"
I never noticed
teft@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1y
I've had to train my ear because I learned to speak spanish so I notice these things with my friends who are learning english.
The one that broke my mind the other day is that the D in drink is pronounced like a J. My friend was practicing his D sounds and came up with that out of the blue.
over_clox@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1y
Your wright!
And I'm rong.
Why is English so weird?
darkdemize@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 1y
Bingo.
NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io · 3 pts · 1y
I don't know shit about fuck when it comes to the differences between accents/dialects but it's at least enough of a thing to be there in dictionaries.
teft@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1y
Even the second one isn’t pronounced the same. Some accents drop the th sound in clothes which is why they can sound similar.
NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io · 6 pts · 1y
Okay as a non-native speaker who struggles with consonant clusters this is both the best and worst thing I learned today.
CarbonatedPastaSauce@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 1y
Hey we may have our language rules pulled from 30 different other languages and applied seemingly at random, but at least we don't have to memorize the gender of every inanimate object in the world!
I've taken 5 years of German and self studied some Russian and Spanish, and goddamn that gendered noun shit is really, really hard for native English speakers.
NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io · 3 pts · 1y
Okay you got me there. Also for what it's worth, gendered nouns are hard even when you natively speak a language with gendered nouns. Source: Am an Arabic speaker and will Jihad anyone who says a chair is female.
ThisIsNotHim@sopuli.xyz · 2 pts · 1y
At least in my dialect (US northeast) clothes and close don't quite share a pronunciation. They're similar enough that you could probably fully elide the th sound, and I'm not sure anyone would notice.
When I pronounce clothes I can still feel my tongue move into the th position, and hear a small difference.
over_clox@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1y
As a native English speaker, English is freaking weird like that.
CarbonatedPastaSauce@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 1y
They sound pretty close to me. We can close this issue.
SandLight@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 1y
I don't know that they sound that different, but I definitely "pronounce" them differently in that my tongue is in a different party of my mouth for both of them. When I say clothes, my tongue is near touching my front teeth, where as close is more just below that ridge behind my teeth, so farther back.
I'm from the center of the U.S. for reference.
over_clox@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1y
I had half my jaw ripped open when I was 16 or so. So I guess I'm lucky to pronounce or enunciate anything correctly these days.
Southern Mississippi, if that means squat.
CarbonatedPastaSauce@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 1y
Yeah Mississippi will do that to you.
samus12345@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1y
They aren't universally, just in certain dialects. I pronounce the "th" just like with "clothing."
NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io · 1 pts · 1y
scarabic@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1y
I would lohz my shit if we had to pronounce it that way.
Diddlydee@feddit.uk · 26 pts · 1y
They never did. Their spelling, meaning, and pronunciation are the same as they have always been.
ohwhatfollyisman@lemmy.world · 20 pts · 1y
they are very different in my mind. perhaps because i first came across them in their respective contexts through reading.
even when speaking, to me, lose rhymes with booze and loose rhymes with goose.
this has never been a problem for me, personally.
NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io · 8 pts · 1y
And here's me, another non-native speaker, just learning that booze doesn't rhyme with goose.
ohwhatfollyisman@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 1y
oh, no, no, no! booze and a goose should never go together!
samus12345@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1y
So did you think "goose" was pronounced like "choose?" Understandable.
emeralddawn45@discuss.tchncs.de · 18 pts · 1y
I mean yeah 'loose' could probably be pronounced like 'choose' and it would still make sense, but it absolutely wouldnt make sense for 'lose' to be pronounced like 'moose' or 'goose'. Im not sure what you even mean when you say they switched meanings either because thats just false.
NorthWestWind@lemmy.world · 16 pts · 1y
May as well combine words with the same pronunciation into one word and call it Simplified English (/s)
Honestly tho, this is one of the features of Simplified Chinese, which created the infamous "fuck vegetables" (干菜类).
It's meant to say "dried vegetables" (乾菜類 in TC), but 乾→干. Meanwhile, there exists 幹→干 as well, which means "fuck".
Silentiea@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 3 pts · 1y
So this is where I find cucumber?
Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 2 pts · 1y
Fuck as in curse or as an action?
NorthWestWind@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1y
Used in this context? Action. But it can mean both.
Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 1y
Even better :D
jimmy90@lemmy.world · 16 pts · 1y
english is a very silly language that's evolved so you can do almost anything with it
it's a risky strat but it seems to have worked
vaper@lemmy.world · 13 pts · 1y
Loose rhymes with noose. I can't think of a word that's spelled and pronounced like lose so you have me there.
choose lose cruise booze
all rhyme lol
LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world · -4 pts · 1y
Words pronounced like lose? That's easy. Close
Silentiea@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 7 pts · 1y
Close is way closer to clothes than it is to lose. And close is more like gross.
LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 1y
I was joking, close would only be pronounced similar to lose if it were spelled clues.
thelasttoot@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1y
Lose rhymes with clues, not close.
Edit: I just noticed your reply
LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1y
No worries, it was just used to point out the premise of the post. Lose and close were the closest in spelling while also having the dumb pun included if you will. Bad jokes get downvoted or overlooked sometimes 🤷
db2@lemmy.world · 13 pts · 1y
They didn't, except among the ignorant and autocorrect.
cyberpunk007@lemmy.ca · 10 pts · 1y
It's a miracle I know it, and having to teach someone how to read and spell was an eye opener for me trying to explain "this is like this except for this one word because... Reasons and sometimes there's a variation like this because...reasons" so many times.
absGeekNZ@lemmy.nz · 8 pts · 1y
Agreed, I am teaching my second son to read.
I am having the same conversations as when I taught my first to read.
"ok, this word is a 'sight word' because it doesn't make the sounds you expect. It says won, but it looks like it says on-e"
Silentiea@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 4 pts · 1y
Mostly the "reasons" just boil down to etymology. We spell things the way the languages we stole them from spelled them.
teft@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 1y
Having to explain to my spanish speaking friends why an english word is spelled one way but pronounced another entirely different way gave me the same experience. So many times i have to tell them: “i don’t know english is just weird.”
samus12345@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1y
Usually the reason is either because some jerks intentionally changed certain spellings to look more French/Latin ("receipt" didn't have a "p" originally, for example), or just because English is such a mongrel language with words taken from various other languages with different spelling and pronunciation rules.
Kidra@sopuli.xyz · 1 pts · 1y
I once had a roommate from Chile and he asked what the difference in pronunciation was for "juice" versus "Jews". I'm still not sure I properly got the difference across...
Also the difference between "to rob" and "to steal" was an interesting thing to think through and then explain.
samus12345@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1y
I can see why he'd have trouble with those two, because Spanish doesn't have the English "z" sound. They'll both sound the same using Spanish pronunciation .
can@sh.itjust.works · 9 pts · 1y
What about the words that are only different in tone.
Content and content
spankmonkey@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 1y
It is read like lead, not read like lead.
tyler@programming.dev · 3 pts · 1y
Or lede for that matter
Jerb322@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 1y
Trust me, it is equally frustrating for most Americans...or almost, anyway.
Aeao@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 1y
Read rhymes with lead, and read rhymes with lead, but lead doesn't rhyme with read and lead doesn't rhyme with read.
corvett@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 1y
Loose rhymes with Goose
Okami_No_Rei@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 1y
There's a moose loose in the hoose.
over_clox@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 1y
There's
toototwo different ways to pronounce and spell many words.Fuck, that's three!
AnAustralianPhotographer@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 1y
over_clox@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 1y
Don't phuck with my head, I'm two drunk!
Badland9085@lemm.ee · 2 pts · 1y
Those three sound completely different to me, as far as how I’ve been pronouncing them goes. “Their” doesn’t have the extra lagging e sound (as in the e in err) in “there” where I curl my tongue upward at the end. “They’re” preserves the ey sound in “they”, just concatenated with an r as in err sound.
When I say, “They’re there,” people can make out what I’m saying, though as more people seem to tell me that these are just homophones, maybe they’ve just been relying on context.
finitebanjo@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 1y
Wait, if they swapped meanings and then swapped spellings then doesn't that mean they're the same as before?
ShepherdPie@midwest.social · 3 pts · 1y
Grrr! English strikes again!
Noel_Skum@sh.itjust.works · 6 pts · 1y
Are you familiar with “The Chaos” by Gerard Nolst Trenité?
Deep breath:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chaos
Coelacanth@feddit.nu · 6 pts · 1y
I believe the generally accepted scientific term for the English language is "clusterfuck".
Noel_Skum@sh.itjust.works · 6 pts · 1y
*kloostaphux
Drusas@fedia.io · 1 pts · 1y
*clussturphuck
corvett@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1y
This guy was British, rhyming "via" with "choir"
Previous, precious; fuchsia, via; Pipe, snipe, recipe and choir
samus12345@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1y
"Made" and "bade" supposedly not rhyming confused me, how is "bade" supposed to be pronounced?
Dasus@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1y
It's sounds like "bad", but with a shorter "a", so like "had"
Although I guess "bade" is used nowadays as well don't know how erroneous it's considered to be.
You can here people use it here
https://www.playphrase.me/#/search?q=I+bade&pos=4
https://www.playphrase.me/#/search?q=bade&pos=4
Seemingly Americans in those clips say "bade" (rhyming with "made") but Brits say "bade" (rhymes with "had")
Drusas@fedia.io · 1 pts · 1y
But they do rhyme....
samus12345@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1y
Right, and the poem is written in such a way that implies they do not.
Noel_Skum@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 1y
I think he was Dutch - but they do tend to speak “better” English than the English.
The difference in UK/US (amongst other first language English nations) pronunciation is something I know effects hip-hop lyricism (i.e. rapping) as different pronunciations mean some words only rhyme in your own dialect.
Revan343@lemmy.ca · 5 pts · 1y
If we start now, we can probably switch the pronunciations of Aristotle and chipotle within a generation.
Chip-ot-el
samus12345@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1y
No, go the other way, it's closer to Aristotle's name in the original Greek. Ah-ree-stoh-teh-leese.
NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io · 5 pts · 1y
Okay TIL that these aren't pronounced the same.
scarabic@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 1y
English is idiosyncratic as hell. Didn’t someone famous call it “not a language but 3 languages in an overcoat.”
Adding to this specific instance is that even native speakers spell things wrong. They loose their keys, etc.
Here4CatPics@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 1y
It's a lose/loose situation
deadbeef79000@lemmy.nz · 3 pts · 1y
Obviously the plural of foot is feet, so the plural of book should be beek.
Or one sheep should be a shoop.
There's also the English Vowel Shift. Which means words either side of it are inconsistent.
cholesterol@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 1y
*purpoose
Drusas@fedia.io · 1 pts · 1y
*perpus
2030TimeTraveler@sh.itjust.works · 3 pts · 1y
Eggyhead@fedia.io · 1 pts · 1y
TimewornTraveler@lemm.ee · 3 pts · 1y
both come from the same root
whotookkarl@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1y
Lowe's loose lows lose loss.
spankmonkey@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1y
Only online and since I hear the words I read it is really fucking annoying.
sepi@piefed.social · 1 pts · 1y
Lose lips think chips
Kolanaki@yiffit.net · 1 pts · 1y
It's been years since I've seen people misspelling lose as loose, but I do remember when it was pretty common to see.
Default_Defect@midwest.social · 2 pts · 1y
I see it multiple times daily. Whats your secret?
Drusas@fedia.io · 1 pts · 1y
Probably that the mistake is so common that OP doesn't even notice it anymore.
y0kai@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 1y
Yeah it should be looz / loose
corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca · 0 pts · 1y
The audience can't seem to differentiate commas from; well, every other punctuating mark. What are you hoping to achieve, here?
mrunicornman@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 1y
Why did you punctuate like this?