• FiniteLooper@lemm.eedeleted by creator
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    3 years ago

    Every “e” in “Mercedes” is pronounced differently.

    • protist@mander.xyz
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      3 years ago

      An Austrian dude named the Mercedes line of cars after his daughter Mercédès Adrienne Ramona Manuela Jellinek. He got the name from Spanish, and in Spanish all the "e"s are pronounced the same

        • MudMan@kbin.social
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          3 years ago

          Well, in Spanish none of the "e"s in “Mercedes” have an accent mark in them, and in Spanish the accent mark only flags the tonic syllable, it doesn’t change the pronunciation.

          So no.

          That’s how you spell that name in French, though. And yes, you do say all those the same there, too.

          • Obi@sopuli.xyz
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            3 years ago

            I’d say they sound slightly different in French, the middle e is a bit lower than the other two.

        • Unimperfect
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          3 years ago

          Except that the name written in Spanish does not have any accent markings, and even if it did, it would not change the pronunciation of the letter. Accent markings over vowels in Spanish simply denote syllable stress.

    • Matriks404
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      3 years ago

      Then I guess I don’t pronounce it correctly at all.

    • Provoked Gamer@lemmy.ca
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      3 years ago

      True, but the full saying is, “I before E, except after C or when sounded as A as in neighbour and weigh. And weird is just weird.” There are still some exceptions to this rule though but most of the time, it’ll work.

      There’s also a version that was taught to some people that goes like, “I before E, except after C, for words sounding like E” which worked most of the time too back when that saying was made (since we use more words of Greek origin now that break this rule).

      • ummthatguy
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        3 years ago

        Not mine, but gets the point across:

        And yes, English is an endlessly exhaustive exercise in eloquence and execution.

      • iAmTheTot@kbin.social
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        3 years ago

        Actually, that “full version” is still more wrong than it is right. For example: fancier, species, their, heist, foreign, vein, seize, science, Raleigh, Keith, Neil, either and neither, leisure, deity, atheism (ironic), reignite, albeit.

  • dragonflyteaparty
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    3 years ago

    Currently going through this with my six year old. It’s really hard to help her learn to read without just doing it for her over and over because pronunciation is shit. She can’t just sound it out when the same letter sounds three different ways.

    • Dass93@lemm.ee
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      3 years ago

      I learned English by watching shows first in Danish(my tongue) then in English, and was forced to use English in games, this was the way I learned it.

      They tried in school but the way teacher’s used to teach English just didn’t made sense fore many of us.

  • x4740N
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    3 years ago

    That’s because we’re not sounding out the c on its own