Kiddo #1 speaks 4 languages in addition to English, says all the time how confusing English is. Chinese was easier. Go figure.

My answer is “do you know how fuckin’ hard is it is to learn English”?

That’s my mom. 99% of Spanish is pronouncing every letter (except “J” and that “ll” situation). As a child it suddenly dawned on me she had an accent when she butchered the hell out of “Vehicle.” She’s the best!

English is a trash language, moreso in that it takes junk from every other language, incorporates it, and then pretends it was always there. ( “I got a glance at the lieutenant’s chevrons before he whacked me with his shillelagh.”) People that scream “speak english” at other Americans or emmigrees to the US just make…

Is it the sitting around or the eye strain? I had lots of issues with eye strain until I got reading glasses, and have since burned through about 900 pages in three different books (over two months, unfortunately I still don’t get as much reading time as I’d like)

Apparently this is a thing for people who read much more than they speak. I’m terrible about mispronouncing words that I know very well, but only rarely use in colloquial speaking. When it comes up, I typically get called to the mat for it by my co-workers, which, of course, makes me want to talk even less. 

Dictionary apps that feature audio pronunciation. Life changing.

As terrible as it might sound, you probably need to watch more tv/movies.

Saw an interview as in watched it on video or read it on one of those sites? Are you sure it was real? I don’t doubt craziness like that is possible, but I also wouldn’t put it past white supremacists on the internet to fabricate obedient black characters.

Yes, absolutely. The only recreational reading I do is to consume news. I no longer read fiction, etc.

I am screaming at the visual of you mumble butchering words on stage. My mom does this all the damn time. The only difference is she’s loud and obnoxious like Ruby on Black-ish. If you dare correct her she’ll just yell “you know what the HELL I meant.” Lol gotta love mom.

My fiancee learned Spanish first, then went to school and had to basically unlearn Spanish and learn English. She took ESOL for years. You wouldn’t know it now, but it does pop up every now and again.

I honestly can’t imagine this because the escape books provide me with allows me to tolerate people.

For maximum pretension, pronounce the “z” in “zeitgeist” with the original German “ts” sound.

Did the writing make you hate the reading?

I mispronounce some words on purpose, like “paradigm” and “gluten” as a joke. But then it backfires when I mispronounce words that I should know how to say.

My husband for the longest time didn’t realise that albeit was “all be it.” Bless him he thought one was a word, the other a phrase, even though he understood both. This is not as embarrassing for him as when he first moved from Nigeria to a British boarding school where everybody was too rich and lazy to participate.…

I write for a living but I don’t read for recreation anymore. People tend to think that because I am a technical writer that I consumer books by the hundreds. No. I hate reading with a passion.

This is why I’m glad my teachers made me look up all those etymologies back in junior high school and high school. Once you see a few thousand of them over the course of years, you get a feel for pronunciation. I’m grateful for that.