What If English Were Phonetically Consistent?

[Music] consider the following sentence the same letter combination Oh ugh appears repeatedly throughout the sentence but the sounds are different every time though I coughed roughly and hiccups throughout the lecture I still thought I could plow through the rest of it this incredible inconsistency can make English really hard to master from non-native speakers but what if English were phonetically consistent let's consider the letter A the letter A can represent a number of different sounds even ignoring its combined sounds like AR or aw you can get such diverse sounds as father ape and Apple let's take the first of these ah as in father now ah is not alone in having different options for how it can be pronounced let's consider the vowel e neglecting combination sounds like ER we can still produce some strands different pronunciations such as rewrite elk unde 1 let's talk the first two these AG on e as in rewrite of course he this means that silent e's at the end of words will now also be vocalize eden moving on let's consider the vowel i ignoring combination sounds like e ir or ing this vowel can produce ebz sounds like e igloo on DVR t agon talking the first it easy will pronounce C I as in like E let's now turn our attention to the vowel own without combine a Cheyenne sounds we can style get a few options Pony on unworn leet seek the fires to warning of these e o as i'm pony having no muddy dizzy selections we are left white only only volume you leave a will you come sound lucky dice rule e run or put wiley-ieee while a guy in remind Eliza near the die size Sami Watts arbitrary we well select the fire stove DZ ooh as I'm ruling boot I'm dizzy all togheter we can hear how English was owned by fide wery consistent I'm the pronunciation all the wheels lead consider a passage from a shock experience Alleluia Toby or not Toby lot I stick we stay on with your ties nobly Riley mind toe so fear this lines and arrows or wood Rogers for tuning or tataki arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing ending to die to Sleep No More and by a sleep to say we end the year talking on the toes and natural shocks that flesh is heir to tis a consummation devoutly to be wished to die to sleep to sleep perchance Ito trien I fear is the rub for in that sleep of death what dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil must give us pause e the year is day respect that mark is calamity of so long life E thank you for listening if you enjoy this video please even in beer toh subscribing [Music]

Channel: Aaron Alon

Views: 8,427,739

Keywords:

Id: A8zWWp0akUU

Length: 4min 5sec (245 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 01 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/big_american_tts]

kinda sounds like something headed towards middle english

[u/acejohn]

TIL hiccough

[u/Bosb2113]

I was very impressed with his ability to do this.

[u/Spita13]

So half Jamaican half Irish.

[u/talesfromyourserver]

I thought this was going to be the joke where English slowly turns into German by making it more "logical" gradually. I just found it after some googling:

The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was the other possibility. As part of the negotiations,

the British Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5- year phase-in plan that would become known as "Euro-English".

In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c". Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard "c" will be dropped in favour of "k". This should klear up konfusion, and keyboards kan have one less letter.

There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced with "f". This will make words like fotograf 20% shorter.

In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible.

Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling.

Also, al wil agre that the horibl mes of the silent "e" in the languag is disgrasful and it should go away.

By the 4th yer peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" with "z" and "w" with "v".

During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou" and after ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reil sensi bl riten styl.

Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi TU understand ech oza. Ze drem of a united urop vil finali kum tru.

Und efter ze fifz yer, ve vil al be speking German like zey vunted in ze forst plas.

[u/[deleted]]

Sounds like Dennis’ British accent from IASIP

[u/RedSquirrelFtw]

I'm French so I get screwed up by this so often. People often make fun of me for how I pronounce something, and even when I get corrected next time I may not remember the right way, because there's so many different ways of pronouncing something but only one way is right. English is kinda weird in that sense.

Like a recent one I got caught with in a conversation, I always thought "vegan" was pronounced the same way as the start of "vegetarian". I mean, it makes sense right? But apparently it's not, you have to put more essence on the E part and pronounce it more like "tea".

[u/[deleted]]

Reminds me of King Double Ceramic Knives

[u/toothepastehombre]

So a Spaniard learning to speak Italian from a drunk Scotsman