"LED's" or "Lead's" boxes or -/\/\/\-

[Richard Crowley]

Sodder and solder.

Or perhaps more correctly:

sodder  (AmEnglish)
soulder (BrEnglish)

same as  aluminum vs. aluminuminiminum

[Halcyon]

Sodder and solder.

Or perhaps more correctly:

sodder  (AmEnglish)
soulder (BrEnglish)

same as  aluminum vs. aluminuminiminum

Or color and colour. Why have extra letters when near enough is good enough? Spelling is hard. 

[IanB]

Yup. Near enuf is certainly good enuf 

[AlxDroidDev]

Or color and colour. Why have extra letters when near enough is good enough? Spelling is hard. 

It's so hard they have spelling competitions!!! IDK if it is a US-only event or if spelling bees are held in every English speaking country.



Being someone who doesn't have English as my first language, there are a few annoyances in it, specially when (A) 2 words with identical spelling can different sounds, or (B) words with different spellings can have the same sound (aka "homophones"). Examples:

(A) Lead (verb) and Lead (the metal Pb)

(B) Stationary (as in "not moving") and Stationery (like office supplies)
      Brake and Break

the list goes on. Two words, however, that are a killer for anyone learning English, are "beach" and "bitch". For most non-English it is pretty hard to tell the difference, let alone say them so people can tell the difference! It took me quite some time to be able to do both!

[IanB]

I have heard that beach and bitch might be especially hard for speakers of Latin languages like Spanish and Portuguese. I assume those languages do not have a separate vowels for "ee" (keep, seep, weep, deep) and "i" (bit, hit, lit, fit)?

[CJay]

Sodder and solder.

Or perhaps more correctly:

sodder  (AmEnglish)
soulder (BrEnglish)

same as  aluminum vs. aluminuminiminum

Nope, it's definitely Solder here up in the frozen north of the UK  

[Zero999]

Or color and colour. Why have extra letters when near enough is good enough? Spelling is hard. 

Yes, y hav xtra leters wen ner enuf is gud enuf?

[AlxDroidDev]

I have heard that beach and bitch might be especially hard for speakers of Latin languages like Spanish and Portuguese. I assume those languages do not have a separate vowels for "ee" (keep, seep, weep, deep) and "i" (bit, hit, lit, fit)?

It's different. In Portuguese we use accents to change how the vowel sounds, so just by reading the word one knows its correct pronunciation. One spelling corresponds to one pronunciation. There are no 1-to-2 or 2-to-1 correspondence in spelling to pronunciation.

E and I, however, sound entirely different from English.

E sounds like the vowel in "say", "hey". Always!
É sounds like the vowel in "hat", "mat", "sad". Always!

I sounds like "keep", "sheet". Always!
Í sounds like "hit", fit, lit. Always!

That makes it a little easier for learners, because the pronunciation doesn't change according to context (like example "A" in my previous post). However, I find English a lot easier to learn than Portuguese, but mostly because of the verbs. Latin languages are quite complicated when it comes to verbal tenses.

[mtdoc]

Two words, however, that are a killer for anyone learning English, are "beach" and "bitch". For most non-English it is pretty hard to tell the difference, let alone say them so people can tell the difference!

I think this example, like many others across different languages has a lot to do with exposure - or hearing - the language spoken regularly during the "critical period" of  language development in the brain during early childhood.  The brain is basically developmentally programmed to learn language during a few key years in early childhood.  Even if one never has reason to speak another language (other than their native language) during those key years, by hearing it spoken regularly during that time period they will have an easier time later in life learning that language and in particularly distinguishing between subtle phoneme differences that are not used in their native language.  I think this also makes it easier for someone to learn to speak the language without much accent later in life.

I know for me - as hard as I may try, I cannot distinguish between certain Asian language phonemes.  No matter how hard I try, I cannot "hear" the differences

I found it interesting that years ago when I spent quite a bit of time in Spain and Portugal that their was a key difference in how much of an accent those fluent in English had.  Because most television programming came from English speaking countries, most TV in Spain was dubbed into Spanish while most in Portugal was left in English but with Portuguese subtitles.   The result was the Portuguese often has less of an accent than the Spaniards when speaking English - since they had grown up listening to TV in English.

[NottheDan]

NASA: "nassa" (never heard anything else)

Longer first "A" please, because with NASSA I always have to think of The Old Negro Space Program.

[Artlav]

Why use an acronym at all?
Just call it lightodiode/light diode/diode light/diolight/something, the same way you do vacuum cleaners, spaceships, railroads, microwavers, websites and so on.

[eugenenine]

Why use an acronym at all?
Just call it lightodiode/light diode/diode light/diolight/something, the same way you do vacuum cleaners, spaceships, railroads, microwavers, websites and so on.

because then you can't make jokes like

M. N. O. L. E. Ds

M. R. 2 L.E.D's

L. I'll B, M. R. L.E.D's

[IanB]

It's different. In Portuguese we use accents to change how the vowel sounds, so just by reading the word one knows its correct pronunciation. One spelling corresponds to one pronunciation. There are no 1-to-2 or 2-to-1 correspondence in spelling to pronunciation.

E and I, however, sound entirely different from English.

E sounds like the vowel in "say", "hey". Always!
É sounds like the vowel in "hat", "mat", "sad". Always!

I sounds like "keep", "sheet". Always!
Í sounds like "hit", fit, lit. Always!

That makes it a little easier for learners, because the pronunciation doesn't change according to context (like example "A" in my previous post). However, I find English a lot easier to learn than Portuguese, but mostly because of the verbs. Latin languages are quite complicated when it comes to verbal tenses.

Ah, I did a quick check. According to Wikipedia, Portuguese phonology is quite rich, and there are also significant differences between European Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese. So probably most English vowel sounds are found somewhere in Portuguese.

One thing to mention is that in English a long "i" sound is different from an "ee" sound. If you say "bitch" with a long i it sounds like "biich", not like "beach". (But I don't know of any English words that actually have a long "i" sound in them. If you say bitch with a long i it would be for emphasis, as in "Biitch, please!").

[darrellg]

Gif (not Jif)

Not according to the creators of the format.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIF#Pronunciation_of_GIF

[mtdoc]

It's different. In Portuguese we use accents to change how the vowel sounds, so just by reading the word one knows its correct pronunciation.

I know some Spanish speakers who would disagree with that.   

Written Spanish and Portuguese are very similar on paper but sound very different.  At least in Portugal it's the case that native Portuguese can understand spoken and written Spanish without much difficulty while the reverse is not true - that is, Spaniards can understand Portuguese when written but have difficultly when listening to it spoken. 

My Portuguese girlfriend of many years ago commented that because it was a common occurrence that when a Spaniard and Portuguese tried to communicate the Spaniard could not understand what the Portuguese was saying while the Portuguese had no trouble understanding the Spaniard - the result was that many Portuguese just thought Spaniards were not very smart....

[rolycat]

Gif (not Jif)

Not according to the creators of the format.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIF#Pronunciation_of_GIF

Tough. President Obama and I prefer Gif 

The creators of the PNG format wanted it to be pronounced 'ping', but many people prefer to spell it out as pee-en-gee, which avoids confusion with the networking utility.

As the Stones famously observed, you can't always get what you want.

[Synthetase]

I've seen a few people getting angry at mikeselectricstuff for pronouncing it 'lead' instead of L.E.D. (which I personally use). However, these people don't bat an eyelid when he says 'laser' instead of L.A.S.E.R.

I mean, if you're going to die on that hill, at least be consistent...

[Brumby]

Gif (not Jif)

Not according to the creators of the format.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIF#Pronunciation_of_GIF

I'm not a fan of peanut butter - so I'll go with the hard 'G' ... which is consistent with the mnemonic derivation from "Graphics Interchange Format", where the 'G' of 'Graphics' is a hard 'G'.


Back on topic, I like the zig-zag resistor symbol because it is more suggestive of the component's function.  You also don't have to lift the pen when drawing one by hand.


Getting back off topic - but consistent with some of the tangents already thrown in here....... How many different pronunciations of the letters 'ough' can you identify in the English language?

[AlfBaz]

With regards to the zigzag resistor symbol, I distinctly remember being told at Tech. (many, many years ago) here in Oz, that the new way of drawing them was as boxes.
It seems at the time, the push towards CAD and the limitations in graphics back then lead to simplification of symbols such as the IEEE box symbols for logic gates instead of the more classic curvy ones.

Any old school people here would remember that a diagonal line on a computer screen would be chunky and pixelated as opposed to a horizontal or vertical line

[NiHaoMike]

SCSI = "scuzzy"

Can also be pronounced "sexy", but then "i sexy" sounds even more Apple than it is already.

[AlxDroidDev]

I know some Spanish speakers who would disagree with that.   

I don't know Spanish well enough to enter a linguistics discussion about it, so my comment was about Portuguese only.

Although I can understand Spanishfairly well (like your gf said we do), I can speak it just enough to get by, but I never had any formal education or schooling in Spanish (like I did in English, but I've forgotten more than I know now).

the result was that many Portuguese just thought Spaniards were not very smart....

Well, that doesn't begin to describe what we think of the Portuguese! Back when I lived in the US, Americans used to make jokes about the Polish (do they still do it?!). Well, we make those jokes (and worse) about the Portuguese, because compared to them, our mules are Nobel nominees! 

[Halcyon]

Or color and colour. Why have extra letters when near enough is good enough? Spelling is hard. 

Yes, y hav xtra leters wen ner enuf is gud enuf?

[SteveyG]

SATA: to rhyme with NASA

SATA: Serial Aye Tee Aye

[madires]

    SCSI = "scuzzy"

    on the other hand, IDE = "eye dee ee"

"scuzzy" is also common over here. And we pronounce PATA (IDE) and SATA often "peh ahtah" and "ess ahtah".

[jonovid]

i expect SATA claus 2 climb down my broadband this xmus 
did i mention routers or rootrs as some of the UK may say