> Back to tsunami. Whenever I hear the word mispronounced by those who ought to know better it just grates badly, the mangled mispronunciation distracts my attention from what's actually being said. So often one hears TV newsreaders including those on the BBC slur the word as 'sooonami' when clearly its English spelling indicates the correct pronunciation. Tsu, つ, sounds like a hissing snake—say it to yourself. Is that not obvious?
It's because English has no (or very few - I can't think of any) words that begin with the same phoneme.
That's just what happens with loan words. Japanese loaned "Arbeit" (アルバイト) from German and they also pronounce it "wrong".
"It's because English has no (or very few - I can't think of any) words that begin with the same phoneme."
True, but I reckon it's more than that—read my reply to numpad0.
"Japanese loaned "Arbeit" (アルバイト) from German and they also pronounce it "wrong"."
Question: is that because of structural diffences between the languages (as I mentioned above) that make some foreign phonemes difficult to pronounce? If so, that's different to English speakers who can pronounce Tsu.
>It's because English has no (or very few - I can't think of any) words that begin with the same phoneme.
Loan words, but: Tsar (zar or sar), Tswana (50/50), and Tsetse fly (usually /ts/) from the Tswana language. I don't think /ts/ ever refers to something specific in native English, it's usually plurals like it-s or from suffixes like bet-sy, gats-by, wat-son.
I mean I see this attitude the same as "Microsoft has taken over the world, no other software will ever succeed" back in the past. Turns out Microsoft didn't take over the world and it was just part of a cycle.
I like LLM stuff sometimes. But it's too obnoxious, over-eager, loud and incorrect by default. I wish it were modal and I could have an entirely AI-free "normal" mode for when I know what I'm doing, and then enable all the AI crap when I actually want it.
Sizes tend to be a lot smaller. One poster above said a large soda in the USA is almost one litre! In the UK it's roughly half that size at 500ml.
As the sugar level is directly proportionate to the overall volume, it can be quite surprising how much sugar there is when you aren't used to such massive servings.
> One poster above said a large soda in the USA is almost one litre!
There are two sizes of single-serving sodas sold commercially in the US.
A small one, a can, is 12 oz, 355 mL.
A large one is 20 oz, 591 mL.
To buy a 32-ounce soda, you'd have to do something very strange.
(There is another common commercial size, the two liter bottle of exactly 2000 mL. Those aren't intended to be bought and drunk; they're intended to be bought, taken home, and stored in your refrigerator over time.)
A gas station? No, they'd be selling prepackaged sodas in the 20-oz size.
You might be able to do it at a 7-11, since they sell empty cups that you're meant to fill with a slurpee. I don't know if they also have soda fountains to fill those cups.
It's because English has no (or very few - I can't think of any) words that begin with the same phoneme.
That's just what happens with loan words. Japanese loaned "Arbeit" (アルバイト) from German and they also pronounce it "wrong".