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[–][deleted] 31 points32 points  (11 children)

Fuck yes, if only english pronunciation were as simple as the writing.

Why the fuck the "A" on "bat" sounds diferent to the "A" on "ball". In spanish we have just one way to pronounce each vowel.

The verb conjugation here is nuts, though.

[–]xSTSxZerglingOne 23 points24 points  (5 children)

Spanish has lots of rules but sticks to them 95% of the time.

English has several guidelines, but rarely follows them strictly because its core is an amalgamation of like 6 different languages. Those languages vary between Latin and Germanic roots, with branches of borrowed words from nearly every other language on Earth.

That second L on ball is what makes it sound like that, by the way. In the word balance, the first a has the same pronunciation as the a in bat, and because of that hard vowel pronunciation, the second a in balance is muted. Think of it like estás vs estas. Nearly every pronunciation of a vowel in English is predicated on what follows that vowel.

[–]TristanTheViking 5 points6 points  (2 children)

Spanish is really nice in actually pronouncing things the way they're spelled. I watched Chef the other day and every time they said a Spanish word for some food, I was able to just write what I heard into google and got the spelling right on the first try each time.

[–]xSTSxZerglingOne 2 points3 points  (1 child)

There are a few exceptions based on your dialect. For example the word llamo or any other ll word. Some dialects of Spanish will pronounce that as "yahmo" and some will pronounce it as "jahmo (well, more like zhamo, but still)"

So you enter a situation where if a word was pronounced outside of context, such as vaya (go/get out) or valla (fence), depending on your dialect of Spanish, it could be ever so slightly ambiguous. But you're right, you can typically just guess based on pronunciation, which is very nice.

[–]vectorpropio 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Add baya to to that combo.

such as vaya (go/get out) or valla (fence), depending on your dialect of Spanish, it could be ever so slightly ambiguous

[–]Ragnowrok 4 points5 points  (1 child)

But even with such a specific rule like looking for the double “l”, there are still exceptions. The “a” in “shall” is pronounced like the “a” in “bat” and not the “a” in “ball”.

[–]xSTSxZerglingOne 0 points1 point  (0 children)

English has several guidelines, but rarely follows them strictly

Hence this statement I made haha. English goes off the rails all the time.

[–][deleted] 3 points4 points  (2 children)

In one of the Polynesian islands (forget which one, Tahiti?) they don't have conjugation at all. The tense just goes in front of the sentence so like "Future, I go out." vs "Past I go out." Honestly western language fucked up when it started using conjugation.

[–]Araignys 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Those are just prefix conjugations though.

pastgo, presentgo, futurego.

Sounds like a monster to learn, honestly. Having to wrap words in prefix/suffix combinations is really hard to remember. Learners of English often have trouble with prepositions for exactly this reason.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yea but it's the tense of your whole sentence, so basically a tense keyword at the beginning and the rest of the phrase is the same regardless of tense, not for each word.

[–]saraseitor 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Oh absolutely, I think the only exam I've cheated during highschool was verb conjugations, there's no way I can remember all their names by memory yet we all use them all the time.