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Flabbergasted
Isthmus. I don’t claim to know if it’s the weirdest, but it’s gotta be one of the most difficult to pronounce!
- Funny weird: gobbledygook
- Longest weird: antidisestablishmentarianism
- Shortest weird: A
- Literally weird: weird
- Dangerously weird: Conservative
- Unexpectedly weird: vanilla
- Properly weird: FNORD
Eye.
We take it for granted now, but I’m sure we all questioned the word at one point in our lives, the shortest word guaranteed to fool any child who is an intuitive spelling pro if they don’t already know the word’s spelling.
Fun anecdote, in DC the east/west streets are named A St, B St, C St, and so on. But not i street. Capital i could be confused with L Street, so all the signs are written “Eye St”
You’d think at that point they’d just name all the streets like would be appreciated.
Eye Street does live up to its name, it is the most interesting street.
And as soon as the young spelling pro gets “eye”, throw “ewe” at them.
Ewe, though it’s spelled weird, does at least fit its context. When looking into specific gendered terms for species, someone could expect a few weird ones.
On a side note, I find it funny how the word ewe is banned from several places because all it’s ever used for is to replace the “you” in things like an F-bomb. It’s like an accidental/indirect swear word.
“Hey bro, what’s a female sheep called?”
“Oh that’s easy, it’s ew–” ban hammer crashes down out of nowhere
I was just thinking this, but with the word “one”. And also “two”
By all accounts, “one” should rhyme with “stone”, but bear in mind that we also have “done” which is pretty close, as well as “gone” which is pretty out-there by comparison. (This suggests the compromise pronunciation of “scone” should be “scun”, but on the other hand…)
There’s also that in some accents / dialects, the word “own” fills that particular pronunciation niche, necessitating an alternative pronunciation for the number.
The theory is that a non-standard regional pronunciation is the, uh, one that caught on everywhere else.
Fun fact about “two”: It’s the “w” making the vowel sound, and the “o” is silent (compare Latin “duo”). Even more strangely, it’s “w” that makes the vowel sound in “who” as well! It was originally spelled “hwo” until all “hw” words were forced to conform to all the other modifiers where the h goes second. It’s also hwy / why the h sounds out first in old-fashioned pronunciations of words like whip / hwip.
And eight.
Miscellaneous, no one that isn’t a native English speaker knows how to pronounce that word
Acknowledge, no one that isn’t a native English speaker knows how to write that word
How about segue?
You give too much credit to natives on writing proficiency. Neither of those are particularly hard words.
Non-native English speaker here. Disagree.
I’m one myself and have been tested as being fully bilingual, so it doesn’t come from a bad place (just to be clear that I’m not laughing at the expense of non native speakers).
Oh I didn’t take it as such 🙂 I just disagree.
I sometimes think that native speakers are worse at spelling.
Glossolalia
I think “once” is spelled strangely. In Spanish it’s 11 and pronounced as you would expect.
In English the same string of letters is pronounced wonss. Plus the whole once twice thrice for one time two times three times is odd, though at least consistent but then no fourse or anything it just stops.
Especially when you get to the fource, fivce, or sixce time trying to teach someone how the system is flawless.
I suppose technically it’s Latin, but I’ve always been fascinated with “syzygy”.
That looks like something Snoop Dogg would say.
I really only know of this word because of Scott Manley
Myrrh
I think thats just the sound a cat makes when it wakes up.
Here Baby Jesus, we brought you some nice smelling stuff, pretty shiny metal, and a kitten.
Damn. I wish someone got ME a kitten for my birthday. I would be like “Hey! Kitten! Why you so cute???” and she would just look at me, because she’s a kitten and doesn’t speak english. She might meow though.
Moist
Vainglorious.
I can’t say for certain, but it’s probably one of these.
pork
From French porc from Latin.
Same as beef from boeuf.
queue
Most “Q” words are weird to start with, then just adding a bunch of silent vowels at the end doesn’t make it any less so.
It’s a Q: a bunch of vowels are lined up behind it!
God damn it. That’s good.
Thanks, stole it myself!
I knew an English speaking American born well off white dude that pronounced this as “kway”. It was the most annoying thing that came out of his mouth besides all of the bragging and “I’m smarter than everyone” attitude.
Thank the French for this one
oiseau – for when consonants are overrated. (it means bird).
Eau - for when consonants are unnecessary
How is that pronounced?
wazo
You can toss it into google translate and listen to audio. It would probably be better than any attempted typing I can do here.
Wiktionary has a lot of audio transcriptions too: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/oiseau
Ah the french…alwaysbeencelebrated for it’s…excellence!
Be, is, are, was, am, were, being, been… are all the same word.
Languages that conjugate every verb for every person:
Same with “go” and “went”.
I god.
I came
“be” is an irregular verb in all languages, so it’s not unique to English. Bonus fun fact: Russian doesn’t have the verb “to be”.
Not in Turkish. It is “olmak” but the actual “to be” as it is used in “I am, they were, etc.” is, now unused “imek”. it has become a suffix and it is completely regular. Just i + person suffix.
Yes, and I feel like it’s even more irregular in Russian than just not existing. It’s not used in present tense as a copula, so in most cases where you would expect it in English. However it absolutely exists – быть – and is used like normal verbs in both past and future tense.
For example: «я здесь» – “I am here” (same word order, but this sentence has no verb), but «я был здесь» – “I was here”
And in the cases where it is used in present tense, there is a single conjugation regardless of subject: есть (in contrast to all other verbs, I assume at least, which all have distinct conjugations for 1/2/3rd person singular/plural).
A simple example for this would probably be sentences with “there is”, affirming the existence of something, as in “there is a bathroom” – «ванная есть». Contrived example for sure but I can’t think of something better right now.
Was going to reply that, it’s not that Russian doesn’t have it, it just gets omitted in the most common form.
But also one interesting thing is that from the examples you gave I can know your gender, because the verb to be is gendered in the past in Russian, which is very unique, I don’t know of any other language where verbs are gendered.
And it has multiple meanings. “you are sick” can mean that you’re currently sick but can also mean that you’re a sick person. Other languages usually differentiate the verb in those two cases
“To be” being highly irregular il a common feature of a lot of Indo-European languages. But there’s worse. In Spanish, “ser” and “estar” both mean “to be”, but have wildly different meanings and cannot be substituted for one another.
“To be” averbs, at least in romance languages usually have a bunch of different forms. “To have” usually too but English is a bit of an exception there.
Or not to be…
Or not to have…
