MadEngineer: I'd like to know why the Americans have made the l in solder silent as in "sodder".

La-bruh-TOry ... ??

MadEngineer: I'd like to know why the Americans have made the l in solder silent as in "sodder".

I heard that on How Its Made. I rewound it about 4 times to re hear it. Yep, weird.

English is dumb. Many rules, which is fine, but many exceptions. Americans say rowt. Rowter. Makes sense. Why do we say root for route, yet we say rowter.

Americans say poe tay toe like we do, why do we say toe mah toe? Doesnt make sense.  

tdgeek:

 

MadEngineer: I'd like to know why the Americans have made the l in solder silent as in "sodder".

 

I heard that on How Its Made. I rewound it about 4 times to re hear it. Yep, weird.

 

English is dumb. Many rules, which is fine, but many exceptions. Americans say rowt. Rowter. Makes sense. Why do we say root for route, yet we say rowter.

 

Americans say poe tay toe like we do, why do we say toe mah toe? Doesnt make sense.  

 

I perennially feel sorry for my son who is learning to spell. Every time he spells a word the way it sounds and I tell him how it really is spelt, his little face gets an outraged look like 

"What the ACTUAL F***!??!"

networkn:

 

tdgeek:

 

MadEngineer: I'd like to know why the Americans have made the l in solder silent as in "sodder".

 

I heard that on How Its Made. I rewound it about 4 times to re hear it. Yep, weird.

 

English is dumb. Many rules, which is fine, but many exceptions. Americans say rowt. Rowter. Makes sense. Why do we say root for route, yet we say rowter.

 

Americans say poe tay toe like we do, why do we say toe mah toe? Doesnt make sense.  

 

 

 

 

I perennially feel sorry for my son who is learning to spell. Every time he spells a word the way it sounds and I tell him how it really is spelt, his little face gets an outraged look like 

 

"What the ACTUAL F***!??!"

 

 

 

Priceless.  

 

Priceless.  

 

He is SUCH a chilled little fella normally as well. I am what is known as a VERY sarcastic person, and the other day he mimicked me perfectly when I was correcting his spelling of a word (Which I can't recall but I recall thinking it was absurd), and he cocks his head to the left a little, and says "Seriously!?, You're Kidding RIGHT?!" I just about choked to death laughing.

TwoSeven:

 

Back in the days when I used to write standards documents,  the convention was to use American spelling in code.  An acronym is always pronounced letter by letter and is written in capitals (I was taught to imagine full-stops between each letter).  FBI, JPG, GIF, SQL, WHO are examples.  These are technically called Initialisms.

 

If the acronym forms a word like NASA, SCUBA, it is pronounced as a word, but still written in capitals.  If it is a short form of a word (like caps for capitals) then it is written in lower case and pronounced as a word.

 

They're initialisms until people start saying them as words. Most of those examples you gave are no different to the last two. What makes NASA and SCUBA special?

networkn:

Priceless.  

He is SUCH a chilled little fella normally as well. I am what is known as a VERY sarcastic person, and the other day he mimicked me perfectly when I was correcting his spelling of a word (Which I can't recall but I recall thinking it was absurd), and he cocks his head to the left a little, and says "Seriously!?, You're Kidding RIGHT?!" I just about choked to death laughing.

bazzer:

 

TwoSeven:

 

Back in the days when I used to write standards documents,  the convention was to use American spelling in code.  An acronym is always pronounced letter by letter and is written in capitals (I was taught to imagine full-stops between each letter).  FBI, JPG, GIF, SQL, WHO are examples.  These are technically called Initialisms.

 

If the acronym forms a word like NASA, SCUBA, it is pronounced as a word, but still written in capitals.  If it is a short form of a word (like caps for capitals) then it is written in lower case and pronounced as a word.

 

 

They're initialisms until people start saying them as words. Most of those examples you gave are no different to the last two. What makes NASA and SCUBA special?

 

Vowels. Enough vowels to make them actual cromulent English words. (I know, Gif and Who have vowels and one is an actual word already)

I'm English, so it's root.

Don't get me started on the whole day-ta vs dar-ta thing.

martyyn:

I'm English, so it's root.

Don't get me started on the whole day-ta vs dar-ta thing.

 

Actually I think you'll find in the US they spell it aluminum, whereas here we spell it aluminium :-)

ETA: Hence the reason it's not pronounced the same way.

I think there's two main reasons for the way the Yanks spell and talk the English language.

One: after the War of Independence they wanted to impose their own influence on the English language and spell words differently

Two: Much of the US population has ties to non English speaking countries of Europe and other places so their accents have influenced how the words are spoken.

A bit off topic; As for the way they write the date, (MM/DD/YY) that's one really weird way of doing it.

I say :  The quickest 'root' home is via Riccarton Rd

Rowter as for the instrument used in woodworking and also when I refer to my wireless 'rowter'

qwertee:

 

I say :  The quickest 'root' home is via Riccarton Rd

 

Rowter as for the instrument used in woodworking and also when I refer to my wireless 'rowter'

 

 

 

Except at rush hour :P