Frazz by Jef Mallett for July 26, 2016
July 25, 2016
July 27, 2016
Transcript:
Boy: You'd think "July" would rhyme with "duly" and "unruly". Frazz: Truly. Man: Forgive my puli. She's a little drooly. Boy: Something smells newly like patchouli. Frazz: That wrapped up coolly...Julie.
Yeah, and you’d think “rely” might rhyme with “really,” “mealy” and “wheelie” …but some “y” endings inexplicably fall into the “my, try, fly” mold.
I mean “why” do we automatically know not to use the pronunciation of “try” in the words “pantry” or “country” …or “fry” in “belfry?”
Because English is a patchwork language… borrowed and bent, amalgamated and glued…with Germanic roots and Romance borrowings and no clear lineage…
We learn it by hearing it at a very impressionable age..eventually picking up the separate pronunciations of “cough” and “through” and “though”…We somehow know by osmosis that a “sewer” sews and a “sewer” flows…through the “slough” …. we can “slough” off the confusion….even if it IS “abnormal and unexplained.”
But English as a second language…wow, it’s hard.
Trying to explain it to an adult Spanish speaker, whose native language has simple rules and few exceptions…. is an uphill battle.
So I try to be understanding of those who have trouble with it…and I even try not to laugh at the American tourists in San Francisco, when they make a cockeyed stab at asking for directions to Gough street.