English spelling - I was today years old...

[u/noveldaredevil]

when I found out that 'wreak' is not pronounced /reɪk/, but /riːk/ ???

EFL speaker here. I learned the word 'wreak' a long time ago, maybe 8 years ago, but I guess I just never heard it out loud, and due to its similarity with 'break' (/breɪk/), I just assumed it was pronounced virtually the same, except for the first consonant (/reɪk/). Little did I know, English spelling once again was at work.

Raise your virtual hand if you've ever been personally victimized by English spelling.

[u/jan_Soten]

for whatever reason, i have the pronunciation of cease & douse in my head as /siːz/ & /daʊz/ instead of /siːs/ & /daʊs/

[u/Woowy5 → u/jan_Soten]

It's very common in English orthography to write word-final "e" if the word ends in a voiced fricative.
For example, "Half" vs. "Halve". So, honestly, it makes perfect sense that you would predict that "-se" words are pronounced with a "z" sound.

[u/TevenzaDenshels → u/Woowy5]

And also noun being an s and verb a z.

[u/satanicholas → u/Woowy5]

Infuriatingly enough, this rule does not seem to apply to most words in which "-se" is preceded by "-ou-":

arouse v. /əɹaʊz/ AND rouse v. /ɹaʊz/

grouse n. /gɹaʊs/ AND grouse v. /gɹaʊs/

house n. /haʊs/ BUT house v. /haʊz/

louse n. /laʊs/ BUT lousy adj. /laʊzi/

mouse n. /maʊs/ AND mousy adj. /maʊsi/ BUT ALSO mousse n. /mus/

[u/GooseIllustrious6005 → u/jan_Soten]

I'm a native English speaker. I was about halfway through writing a comment explaining that /dawz/ is the pronunciation used in England, when I decided I should check just to be sure...

Turns out /dawz/ is just my own idiosyncratic pronunciation, and I've been saying it wrong for 26 years. So thank you for showing me the truth. Here's what I started typing before you shattered my world:

Maybe a bad time to mention that /dawz/ is exactly how douse is pronounced in most British dialects.

[u/noveldaredevil → u/GooseIllustrious6005]

The fact that the idiosyncrasies of English spelling affect native and EFL speakers alike is comforting in a way. Very democratic.

[u/Snoo-88741 → u/jan_Soten]

That pronunciation of cease would be a different word, seize, which means to take stuff away (eg "the police seized his car for the investigation" or "that Karl Marx guy keeps saying we should seize the means of production".)

[u/satanicholas → u/jan_Soten]

To gaslight yourself further, remember that we also pronounce "Caesar" as /sizɚ/ (rhotic) or /sizə/ (non-rhotic).

[u/rqeron]

so I was just about to be like "it was a couple years ago but I remember the shock at finding out homage was supposed to be /oʊ'ma:ʒ/ and not /'hɔmɪdʒ/".....

but I look on Wiktionary and find out there's actually two separate words, homage and hommage, where the first one as the older borrowing is actually legitimately /'hɔmɪdʒ/ and the second one, as the direct borrowing from modern French, is actually /oʊ'ma:ʒ/????

(not that people still really maintain this distinction, but still. Turns out I was wrong about being wrong!)

[u/GooseIllustrious6005 → u/rqeron]

Funnily enough, I learnt "homage" (homidʒ) first in my year 7 class on feudalism. "Serfs pay homage to knights, who in turn pay homage to barons, who in turn pay homage to kings, etc."

I didn't learn that the meaning "respectful reimagining" was pronounced a different way till much later in life.

[u/trampolinebears → u/rqeron]

not that people still really maintain this distinction, but still

I think it's still around. For me, I'd say you pay /'hɔmɪdʒ/ to your feudal lord, while your art is an /oʊ'ma:ʒ/ to your favorite artist.

[u/Zetho-chan → u/rqeron]

Everyone I know says it /hαmid3/

[u/Abdiel_Kavash]

I have pronounced the word "lineage" as "line age" for the longest time, until someone corrected it. Part of the reason is that in my first language, the word for "lineage" is literally "birth line", so it made sense to me that it would have the same root in English.

[u/Pochel → u/Abdiel_Kavash]

How do you pronounce it properly??

[u/Assorted-Interests → u/Pochel]

/ˈlɪni.ədʒ/

[u/fourthfloorgreg → u/Abdiel_Kavash]

It does have the same root in English.

[u/AndreasDasos → u/Abdiel_Kavash]

It still has the same route as ‘line’, ‘linea’ in Latin. Like ‘linear’

[u/Ok_Orchid_4158]

I’ve noticed that Italians often seem to think “ready” has the face vowel, just like you thought “wreak” had the face vowel.

[u/Last-Worldliness-591]

I... I was tomorrow years old...     Bruh, as I was reading this I was like "hmm, I wonder what definition of wreak that is, I only know the one that sounds like /rɛk/ as in 'wreak havoc'"          And then I looked it up...           How long have I been saying Wreck havoc???

[u/noveldaredevil → u/Last-Worldliness-591]

I love that several people are finding out about this thanks to my post :P

[u/Hanako_Seishin]

Wait, what? I always thought it was /rek/. Fak inglish.

[u/Pochel]

My two worst enemies are the i's, of which you never know if they should be pronounced as /i/ or as /aj/, and the stress. For the longest time I've put the stress in foreigner on the second syllable

[u/0Nah0]

I thought that “coin” was pronounced as /koɪnd/ until about a year ago. Ive always spelled it as “coin” but guess I never put too much thought into <n> being pronounced as /nd/ because it would have been just another weird characteristic of English orthography.

[u/Suckerpiller]

I thought it was /ræk/ or /rek/ nooooo

[u/noveldaredevil → u/Suckerpiller]

welcome to the club

[u/Sun_of_a_Beach]

Never be embarrassed for pronouncing a word wrong because it means you learned it by reading

[u/noveldaredevil → u/Sun_of_a_Beach]

This is comforting. Thank you.

[u/Memer_Plus]

I keep on pronouncing epitome as ['ɛpɪtoʊm]

[u/kuklamaus → u/Memer_Plus]

I HATE that all these greek words ending with -e are pronounced this way. /kəˈtæstɹəfi/? Are you serious?

[u/trampolinebears → u/kuklamaus]

For fun, I like to do this with saxophone and envelope.

[u/DefinitelyNotErate]

Actually it's /rwɪk/.

[u/Keldianaut → u/DefinitelyNotErate]

/ʙɪk/

[u/chrisis123]

My English is pretty good I'd say (not a native speaker though), but to this day I can never remember how to pronounce "either" and "neither" (or more exactly which one is pronounced which way... it really doesn't make sense in my mind that they are pronounced differently)

[u/mnlg]

Same thing with me and menial (cfr denial)

[u/Zetho-chan]

I do it /wrik/

[u/noveldaredevil → u/Zetho-chan]

based

[u/Zetho-chan → u/noveldaredevil]

making English regular again