I feel (but have no hard evidence for) that as a non-native speaker who learnt English primarily through text, my brain stores English words twice, once for the pronunciation and separately for...
I feel (but have no hard evidence for) that as a non-native speaker who learnt English primarily through text, my brain stores English words twice, once for the pronunciation and separately for the spelling. As if they were two different (but perhaps related) lexical entries.
I don't pronounce the spelling in my head, it just exists there symbolically. It is similar to how my brain stores a language like Japanese, where I also feel like I have separate entries for spoken and written forms.
This is different from languages where spelling is a more direct representation of pronunciation, like Finnish, Swedish, German, Spanish or Hungarian, where I don't seem to store any kind of information about spelling at all, and instead actively transcribe words as I write them.
Then there are languages like French which seem to sit somewhere in between, and my brain just refuses to remember either the spelling or the pronunciation.
Because you said you don't pronounce the spelling in your head. I have an internal monologue and I completely can't read a word without also pronouncing in my head
Because you said you don't pronounce the spelling in your head. I have an internal monologue and I completely can't read a word without also pronouncing in my head
Right. When you see or think of a logo that has no text (Mercedes, Apple, the McDonald’s arches, etc.), do you pronounce those as well in your head in some way, or do you associate them silently...
Right. When you see or think of a logo that has no text (Mercedes, Apple, the McDonald’s arches, etc.), do you pronounce those as well in your head in some way, or do you associate them silently with their meaning?
What about if you think of a colour or hue for which you don’t have a specific word?
Or if you think of your childhood room, does your inner voice somehow narrate or pronounce that as well?
I’m just curious since for me those are all non-linguistic associations. Some sort of networked combinations of images, feelings, positions, associations, sounds, smells and so on. It is the same with a non-syllabic Japanese character or, it feels, the spelling of most English words. Although, like I wrote above, this is just my feeling and I don’t know what my brain is actually doing. These are the type of questions that, when I start to think about them, I quickly get very uncertain about what is actually going on.
No, I don't verbalise colors or visual images like my childhood room. I do pronounce logo names in my head though, because when I see a McDonald's logo I immediately recognize it and think "oh...
No, I don't verbalise colors or visual images like my childhood room. I do pronounce logo names in my head though, because when I see a McDonald's logo I immediately recognize it and think "oh that's McDonalds". Kinda hard to look at a logo of a company without thinking of that company's name.
Interesting, thanks! Perhaps my brain handles English spelling somewhat similarly to how yours does colours or your childhood room. If that makes sense? Mine doesn’t typically pronounce logos or...
Interesting, thanks! Perhaps my brain handles English spelling somewhat similarly to how yours does colours or your childhood room. If that makes sense?
Mine doesn’t typically pronounce logos or think of the name of the company when it sees a logo. The name is certainly accessible if needed, but it is not automatically activated by a logo. Again, I wonder if this is perhaps similar to how you can access the name of a colour if you need to, even if that’s not the sole or primary quality of a colour for you.
I don't internal monologue generally. I do pronounce words I have to think about spelling (or sometimes just almost as a stim.) so I'm not sure they're inherently connected.
I don't internal monologue generally. I do pronounce words I have to think about spelling (or sometimes just almost as a stim.) so I'm not sure they're inherently connected.
I assumed @vili doesn't have an internal monologue because they can read words without pronouncing them. Still pronouncing them sometimes, ie. when you need to spell them, doesn't contradict it
I assumed @vili doesn't have an internal monologue because they can read words without pronouncing them. Still pronouncing them sometimes, ie. when you need to spell them, doesn't contradict it
Gotcha, i understood that which is why I was confused; I was just saying that I don't know that the two always correlate if in the other direction it isn't consistent . Wasn't really contradicting...
Gotcha, i understood that which is why I was confused; I was just saying that I don't know that the two always correlate if in the other direction it isn't consistent . Wasn't really contradicting the individual guess/observation.
To be honest, I'm a little confused here as well. To clarify, I was referring to orthographic word recall in my first comment as that's what I took your top level comment also to refer to, i.e....
To be honest, I'm a little confused here as well.
To clarify, I was referring to orthographic word recall in my first comment as that's what I took your top level comment also to refer to, i.e. that you store an incorrect pronunciation of a word in order to be able to derive the correct spelling. (But perhaps I misunderstood?)
In my case, for English my brain seems to typically store the written form of a word detached from its pronunciation (as it does with Japanese). So, when I try to recall the (written English form) of TILDES, I literally "see" the individual letters. I don't have any sound attached to those letters. But it's still not exactly how @fxgn writes above: rather, when I need to spell something, while the spelling itself comes without pronunciation, I still typically "pronounce" what I write in my head to make sure that things actually make sense. Similarly, if I read any English text, I do pronounce the words in my head. But crucially, as far as I see, this pronunciation is a reaction to the spelling, and does not come together with the spelling when I write words, if that makes sense?
This is different from how I spell something like Finnish, where I actually do pronounce the word that I want to write in my head and then transcribe it. Finnish spelling rules are phonemically very consistent, so I guess my brain has made the decision that there is no need to store the spelling of words, as I can always just derive the spelling from the pronunciation. Also, as a native speaker, I learnt to speak Finnish before I learnt to write it.
I don't have any pronunciation or narrator or words at all when I'm thinking about or observing things that are not connected to language.
I follow what you're saying, and I think we're talking past each other a bit, and it's definitely not worth arguing over. Thanks for the clarification and effort!
I follow what you're saying, and I think we're talking past each other a bit, and it's definitely not worth arguing over. Thanks for the clarification and effort!
Just to avoid any misunderstandings: I’m not the person you have been exchanging comments with in this thread, I’m the person who replied to your top level comment. No arguing from my side, I’m...
Just to avoid any misunderstandings: I’m not the person you have been exchanging comments with in this thread, I’m the person who replied to your top level comment. No arguing from my side, I’m just very curious about the different ways people’s brains handle language and writing systems!
...i'm a native english speaker and experience a similar phenomenon with words i've learned through reading versus hearing: for example, photography/photography and awry/awry are each pairs of two...
...i'm a native english speaker and experience a similar phenomenon with words i've learned through reading versus hearing: for example, photography/photography and awry/awry are each pairs of two entirely different words which happen to share the same meaning and spelling...
(i don't have an internal monolog but i do pronounce words in my head while reading)
(FŌtō-GRĂFē and fəTŎ-grəfē, ŎW-rē and ə-RĪ) ...i first learned to read and picked up the formative bulk of my vocabulary abroad, contextually but without english-speaking peers nor broadcast...
(FŌtō-GRĂFē and fəTŎ-grəfē, ŎW-rē and ə-RĪ)
...i first learned to read and picked up the formative bulk of my vocabulary abroad, contextually but without english-speaking peers nor broadcast media, so there are a lot of words i tend to pronounce in fashion which makes perfect sense to a self-taught six-year-old...
For any who are familiar with IPA and not the notation sometimes used American dictionaries, that's /ˈfo͡ʊto͡ʊˌɡɹæfi/ vs /fəˈtɑɡɹəfi/ (assuming OP pronounces these words with a more or less North...
For any who are familiar with IPA and not the notation sometimes used American dictionaries, that's /ˈfo͡ʊto͡ʊˌɡɹæfi/ vs /fəˈtɑɡɹəfi/ (assuming OP pronounces these words with a more or less North American accent; the stressed vowel in the second version differs between dialects bc low back vowels in English dialects did a ton of weird shit). That said, I can't figure out which vowel ǑW is in the first syllable of the first version of awry, so I can't do those.
I have a similar experience, albeit with different words. Someone already mentioned "segue" which was one for me, but I also discovered "draught" shockingly recently.
...i was hoping someone might drop in with IPA; thanks!..i hadn't cracked-out those rusty pronounciation symbols since 1978... (awry rhymes with SAWree; fixed the breve diacritics i couldn't...
...i was hoping someone might drop in with IPA; thanks!..i hadn't cracked-out those rusty pronounciation symbols since 1978...
(awry rhymes with SAWree; fixed the breve diacritics i couldn't discern on my tiny desktop display)
Your substitute breves were fine, but I'm not super familiar with how all the vowels are written in that style, and with English vowels there were too many options! I think the IPA for what you...
Your substitute breves were fine, but I'm not super familiar with how all the vowels are written in that style, and with English vowels there were too many options! I think the IPA for what you describe is /ˈɔːɹi/ though (the normal pronunciation of "awry" being /əˈɹɑ͡ɪ/)
I understand! As a heavy reader there are definitely words I interacted with the same way. I'd never heard them spoken, so, "segue" and the spoken "segway" (before it was a self propelling scooter...
I understand! As a heavy reader there are definitely words I interacted with the same way. I'd never heard them spoken, so, "segue" and the spoken "segway" (before it was a self propelling scooter thing) were obviously different words.
16/20 Personnel, possessions, pronunciation and the French one (never heard it before) got me Pronunciation especially is a word that I'm shocked to learn the correct spelling of every time I see...
16/20
Personnel, possessions, pronunciation and the French one (never heard it before) got me
Pronunciation especially is a word that I'm shocked to learn the correct spelling of every time I see it, only to immediately forget it and continue spelling it as "pronounciation"
I got 16, I got thrown off by the ‘ vs ' in the last question and second guessed myself. Funnily enough, I’m pretty sure I got the other 3 words you missed correct, but got mischievous wrong...
I got 16, I got thrown off by the ‘ vs ' in the last question and second guessed myself.
Funnily enough, I’m pretty sure I got the other 3 words you missed correct, but got mischievous wrong (added the extra i)
English is defined by consensus, so if enough of us spell "pronounciation" that way, eventually it will be declared correct! (I'm aware of the "correct" spelling but I think it is dumb so I...
English is defined by consensus, so if enough of us spell "pronounciation" that way, eventually it will be declared correct!
(I'm aware of the "correct" spelling but I think it is dumb so I insistently "misspell" it on purpose)
I believe it's best to give up and assume that there is no connection between spelling and pronunciation in the English language. It's spelled "Luxury-Yacht", but it's pronounced...
I believe it's best to give up and assume that there is no connection between spelling and pronunciation in the English language.
13/20 which, honestly, was as best as I could expect. Even that was using a few tricks like knowing rite as in "playwright" is the same as "shipwright", not "write", or that "marshmallow" comes...
13/20 which, honestly, was as best as I could expect. Even that was using a few tricks like knowing rite as in "playwright" is the same as "shipwright", not "write", or that "marshmallow" comes from the "mallow" plant (pronounced as it's spelled).
I've come to view my weakness in memorization (and, by extension, spelling) as a blessing in disguise. There are plenty of ways it has frustrated me, but it also forced me to improve my skills of deduction and rederivation.
It does on occasion make me look like a fool, but most people would figure that out eventually anyways, so no harm getting that cleared up quick.
The last one is not really an English word... It's French. Hors d'oeuvre? I don't even know if I spelled it right. Who even uses this word?! Sounds like something to make fancy people feel classy...
The last one is not really an English word... It's French. Hors d'oeuvre? I don't even know if I spelled it right. Who even uses this word?! Sounds like something to make fancy people feel classy by avoiding the word "appetizers". If we use the French word, we can charge double the amount for the celery sticks with stale ranch dip!
I mean most English is French. There are more words of French origin than English origin in English. What having an entirely French aristocracy does, I suppose. But that is also why it’s “fancy” -...
I mean most English is French. There are more words of French origin than English origin in English.
What having an entirely French aristocracy does, I suppose. But that is also why it’s “fancy” - for almost anything in English, there’s a word of Germanic origin and a word of French origin, and the French one is fancier.
This is true, but I feel it more for some words than others. "Amicable" doesn't feel as "out there" as horse doovers (thank you, @balooga, for the improved and much easier spelling).
This is true, but I feel it more for some words than others. "Amicable" doesn't feel as "out there" as horse doovers (thank you, @balooga, for the improved and much easier spelling).
Is it more out there than coup d’état? Or à la carte? Cul de sac? Faux pas? At least to me, I read “coup” in, say, the NYT, I don’t bat an eye. If someone says “my son is riding his bike near the...
Is it more out there than coup d’état? Or à la carte? Cul de sac? Faux pas?
At least to me, I read “coup” in, say, the NYT, I don’t bat an eye. If someone says “my son is riding his bike near the cul de sac” I don’t start pulling out my baguette detector. But they’re all pretty non-Germanic in origin, and multi-worded.
Hors d'oeuvres is a less common word for sure, but that’s OK - it’s no less English, though.
I think it's A) the rarity of the word's usage compared to the other examples you listed, and B) the apostrophe, that really throw people off with hors d'oeuvre. Not many English words have...
I think it's A) the rarity of the word's usage compared to the other examples you listed, and B) the apostrophe, that really throw people off with hors d'oeuvre. Not many English words have apostrophes outside of contractions. Heck, I've read countless sci-fi stories that add apostrophes to make names or words sound more alien.
That, and the three consecutive vowels that comprise a single syllable. We have other words with that (beautiful), but the vowels in "d'oeuvres" are really weird even by English's weird and wildly inconsistent standards. I'm not sure there are any words that have "oe" outside of having "e" as part of another syllable like -ed or -ey, or have "eu" outside of other very clearly borrowed words or variations of "queue". And that's before getting into how "vres" is somehow pronounced "rv", directly swapping the two consonants. Pretty much the one letter where the pronunciation and spelling match is the "d" at the start.
It's the kind of spelling that English would typically simplify to be closer to the phonetic pronunciation because the spelling just does not match at all. At least we have other words with silent P's like coup even if in different places (psych and receipt), and a few silent s's because academics thought they seemed more "Latin" and sophisticated (island and aisle). And cul de sac actually matches the pronunciation.
But everything about "D'oeuvres" defies even our barely-existent rules, and we don't encounter it nearly often enough to really normalize it as part of the English language. It's pretty much used exclusively in relation to incredibly fancy, high-brow settings, or settings trying to appear that way. In fact, the context we use it is meant to emphasize its foreign origins to make the related event/setting seem more sophisticated. So of all the words we've borrowed and adopted from other languages, it's pretty much the one that remains the most distant.
You're right, I don't even think twice when I hear "coup" or "cul de sac". Definitely lots of French words in English like you said. That one just happens to be a less common one, so it sticks out...
You're right, I don't even think twice when I hear "coup" or "cul de sac". Definitely lots of French words in English like you said. That one just happens to be a less common one, so it sticks out for me, a lot more than the 4 you listed and especially as part of the 20 on the quiz.
That is true. The French is the only one I got wrong. I had heard of the term but never quite sure of it's exact spelling [and it's rather hard to be honest]. Also, now that we are into culinary...
That is true. The French is the only one I got wrong. I had heard of the term but never quite sure of it's exact spelling [and it's rather hard to be honest]. Also, now that we are into culinary inspired terms, look into amouse bouche.
I definitely encountered that word as a child and had a rough idea it meant something fancy and food related (though if I encountered it in both speech and in writing I doubt I connected the two...
I definitely encountered that word as a child and had a rough idea it meant something fancy and food related (though if I encountered it in both speech and in writing I doubt I connected the two until much later).
Same! I nailed the first 19; I've always been a good speller, easy enough. Then we get to #20, my personal demon. I don't think I've ever been able to spell that word correctly once in my life....
Same! I nailed the first 19; I've always been a good speller, easy enough. Then we get to #20, my personal demon. I don't think I've ever been able to spell that word correctly once in my life. (Fortunately I don't ever have the need to.)
Being given options made me second guess myself, For the ones I got wrong, I don't think I would've considered them had I been asked to write them down from memory. :P
Being given options made me second guess myself, For the ones I got wrong, I don't think I would've considered them had I been asked to write them down from memory. :P
20/20 and 7320. I realised halfway through that it was faster not to read the example sentence. It’s so much easier to spot what’s wrong than to spell things yourself, though. I would never spell...
20/20 and 7320. I realised halfway through that it was faster not to read the example sentence.
It’s so much easier to spot what’s wrong than to spell things yourself, though. I would never spell hors d’oeueurves correctly first time, but writing it out and then adjusting until it looks right is much easier.
Congratulations! You got 6460/8300—a high score! Typical score for my age group was 4506 I have been writing professionally since 2019, and am a non-native speaker. Turns out one learns a thing or...
Congratulations!
You got 6460/8300—a high score! Typical score for my age group was 4506
I have been writing professionally since 2019, and am a non-native speaker. Turns out one learns a thing or two from writing and reading pages upon pages daily.
18/20 for a 4960/8300 score. I messed up on "apparent." I know how it's spelled, but I think the pressure got to me, lol. The other was one Hors d'oeuvre. I have no clue how to spell that and I...
18/20 for a 4960/8300 score.
I messed up on "apparent." I know how it's spelled, but I think the pressure got to me, lol. The other was one Hors d'oeuvre. I have no clue how to spell that and I probably never will. Appetizer is a perfectly acceptable alternative!
The tough ones that that I did get right were: Sergeant, privilege, rhythm, and mischievous. The first three I messed up enough in the past, that I took the time to really memorize. Mischievous was more of an educated guess. I know that one trips me up, and I don't really know how to spell it still. But I remember how it "should" sound versus how we tend to actually say it (ie it's not spelled "miss-chee-vee-us" or "mis-che-vus").
I messed up restaurant under similar conditions. I know how it's spelled, somehow I picked the wrong one. The other one I messed up was rhythm, and to be honest, that's one word that I often find...
I messed up on "apparent." I know how it's spelled, but I think the pressure got to me, lo
I messed up restaurant under similar conditions. I know how it's spelled, somehow I picked the wrong one. The other one I messed up was rhythm, and to be honest, that's one word that I often find that spell correction keeps having to correct for me as I keep forgetting how to spell it.
Most of them I could just visually recognize, on the latter stretch I stopped even reading the sentence and just looked at the word choices which surely boosted my score. I got somewhere in the 5400s but I closed it and retaking it now would feel like cheating.
Wow, I got correct answers even on words I genuinely don't know how to spell, like hors d'oeuvre (which I had to look up just to spell it correctly in this comment). On the words I didn't know, I...
Wow, I got correct answers even on words I genuinely don't know how to spell, like hors d'oeuvre (which I had to look up just to spell it correctly in this comment). On the words I didn't know, I just ignored the spelling altogether, squinted my eyes, and picked the option that looked the most familiar.
I'm a speed reader, so I wonder if that has something to do with it. When I was a kid, my mother (also a speed reader) taught me a spelling trick after I kept getting wrong answers on spelling tests: instead of trying to remember how words are spelled, imagine what the word looks like and then read off the letters. After she gave me this advice, I immediately started getting perfect scores on tests I'd previously struggled to pass. The brain is weird.
Visual. I was going by the general shape of the word and what felt familiar to me. I'm more of a visual thinker than an auditory thinker (I don't have an internal monologue, for example), so...
Visual. I was going by the general shape of the word and what felt familiar to me.
I'm more of a visual thinker than an auditory thinker (I don't have an internal monologue, for example), so that's probably why.
...sergeant tripped me fairly; the others were all fine although i personally disagree on pronounciation and will continue to spell it as i see fit, convention be damned...
...sergeant tripped me fairly; the others were all fine although i personally disagree on pronounciation and will continue to spell it as i see fit, convention be damned...
I think this test is a lot easier than actually spelling the words, as I can easily recognise correct spellings even if I can’t conjure them up. Although some of the words surprised me such as...
I think this test is a lot easier than actually spelling the words, as I can easily recognise correct spellings even if I can’t conjure them up.
Although some of the words surprised me such as awful, I just can’t see how you can misspell that
17/20(5220/8300 score?) The words that tripped me up were ones with multiple double letters (picked neccessary and posessions) and “playwrite”. I got the French one based on guessing and “This...
17/20(5220/8300 score?)
The words that tripped me up were ones with multiple double letters (picked neccessary and posessions) and “playwrite”.
I got the French one based on guessing and “This looks fairly French”
20/20 - 7160/8300 Most of these have their root in French (and therefore Latin), which is easy to parse when your native language has a large amount of French loanwords. Hors d'oeuvres is not...
20/20 - 7160/8300
Most of these have their root in French (and therefore Latin), which is easy to parse when your native language has a large amount of French loanwords. Hors d'oeuvres is not difficult when you have "un oeuf" and "Aeneas Trojanus est" stamped into you in high school.
There was some time lost because the game randomly highlighted answers that weren't necessarily the right ones and that was incredibly distracting.
18/20 correct, 5820/8000 score I far-fingered "relevant" and clicked the option next to it, but I'm too lazy to re-do the test to see what my proper score would be, and the french appetizer word...
18/20 correct, 5820/8000 score
I far-fingered "relevant" and clicked the option next to it, but I'm too lazy to re-do the test to see what my proper score would be, and the french appetizer word tripped me up with the extra e.
i got mischievous wrong, which is funny bc i had a pet named mischief and am perfectly capable of spelling "mischief" correctly. i also got restaurant wrong. this word is my nemesis. i have never...
i got mischievous wrong, which is funny bc i had a pet named mischief and am perfectly capable of spelling "mischief" correctly.
i also got restaurant wrong.
this word is my nemesis.
i have never in my life been able to spell this word correctly without autocorrect or looking it up. when i was a kid, my dad literally quizzed me every day for weeks on how to spell this word, and threatened to take away my snacks if i failed, and i still got it wrong lmao
idk why my brain refuses to remember this one super common word, but maybe i could trade it for hors d'ouevres, a word i will never use in conversation but which i was able to correctly identify and spell without a problem bc i once said it "hores de vores" after having read it in a book, and the experience haunts me to this day.
14/20 but in my defense I’ll use spell checkers and dictionaries in my own writing, and avoid words that are tough to spell and replace them with other words.
14/20 but in my defense I’ll use spell checkers and dictionaries in my own writing, and avoid words that are tough to spell and replace them with other words.
20/20 and 7220/8300. I'm pretty decent at spelling but I know there's a few that will always trip me up. Privilege always seems wrong without the ledge, but I know it's right.
20/20 and 7220/8300. I'm pretty decent at spelling but I know there's a few that will always trip me up. Privilege always seems wrong without the ledge, but I know it's right.
Pronunciation got me because I pronounce it "pronoun-ciation" and I just realized the verb is spelled how I pronounce it but the noun is not because English is a good language. 19/20, 6520/8300
Pronunciation got me because I pronounce it "pronoun-ciation" and I just realized the verb is spelled how I pronounce it but the noun is not because English is a good language.
Got 18/20. Actually it should have been 19, but I missed the extra "i" on the spelling I clicked for "mischievous" (the one I picked was was "mischievious"). On that note, this test's format has...
Got 18/20. Actually it should have been 19, but I missed the extra "i" on the spelling I clicked for "mischievous" (the one I picked was was "mischievious"). On that note, this test's format has GOT to mess with dyslexic people. I second-guessed myself once or twice since some of them looked so similar. I would've had an easier time just writing out the words rather than going for multiple choice.
The other one I missed was hors d'oeuvres, which I have honestly only ever seen written out in for Harvest Moon: A(nother) Wonderful Life and... Actually, I don't think I've ever been to a restaurant or event fancy enough to use that instead of "appetizer" (and I'm not sure why Harvest Moon didn't go with that for the cooking menu; it's a rural farming game, we're not 5-star chefs). I'm not sure I've even heard it used outside of TV shows or movies, and those usually use it in the context to emphasize how fancy and upscale a restaurant or event is. That one feels like a trick question.
So, who else pronounces many of these words "wrong" in their head so their spelling is "right"?
I feel (but have no hard evidence for) that as a non-native speaker who learnt English primarily through text, my brain stores English words twice, once for the pronunciation and separately for the spelling. As if they were two different (but perhaps related) lexical entries.
I don't pronounce the spelling in my head, it just exists there symbolically. It is similar to how my brain stores a language like Japanese, where I also feel like I have separate entries for spoken and written forms.
This is different from languages where spelling is a more direct representation of pronunciation, like Finnish, Swedish, German, Spanish or Hungarian, where I don't seem to store any kind of information about spelling at all, and instead actively transcribe words as I write them.
Then there are languages like French which seem to sit somewhere in between, and my brain just refuses to remember either the spelling or the pronunciation.
Are you one of those people who doesn't have an internal monologue?
Absolutely. The idea of an internal monologue is entirely alien to me. How did you know?
Because you said you don't pronounce the spelling in your head. I have an internal monologue and I completely can't read a word without also pronouncing in my head
Right. When you see or think of a logo that has no text (Mercedes, Apple, the McDonald’s arches, etc.), do you pronounce those as well in your head in some way, or do you associate them silently with their meaning?
What about if you think of a colour or hue for which you don’t have a specific word?
Or if you think of your childhood room, does your inner voice somehow narrate or pronounce that as well?
I’m just curious since for me those are all non-linguistic associations. Some sort of networked combinations of images, feelings, positions, associations, sounds, smells and so on. It is the same with a non-syllabic Japanese character or, it feels, the spelling of most English words. Although, like I wrote above, this is just my feeling and I don’t know what my brain is actually doing. These are the type of questions that, when I start to think about them, I quickly get very uncertain about what is actually going on.
No, I don't verbalise colors or visual images like my childhood room. I do pronounce logo names in my head though, because when I see a McDonald's logo I immediately recognize it and think "oh that's McDonalds". Kinda hard to look at a logo of a company without thinking of that company's name.
Interesting, thanks! Perhaps my brain handles English spelling somewhat similarly to how yours does colours or your childhood room. If that makes sense?
Mine doesn’t typically pronounce logos or think of the name of the company when it sees a logo. The name is certainly accessible if needed, but it is not automatically activated by a logo. Again, I wonder if this is perhaps similar to how you can access the name of a colour if you need to, even if that’s not the sole or primary quality of a colour for you.
I don't internal monologue generally. I do pronounce words I have to think about spelling (or sometimes just almost as a stim.) so I'm not sure they're inherently connected.
Pronouncing words you have to think about spelling is not the same as automatically pronouncing every word you read
I don't understand the point you're making?
I assumed @vili doesn't have an internal monologue because they can read words without pronouncing them. Still pronouncing them sometimes, ie. when you need to spell them, doesn't contradict it
Gotcha, i understood that which is why I was confused; I was just saying that I don't know that the two always correlate if in the other direction it isn't consistent . Wasn't really contradicting the individual guess/observation.
To be honest, I'm a little confused here as well.
To clarify, I was referring to orthographic word recall in my first comment as that's what I took your top level comment also to refer to, i.e. that you store an incorrect pronunciation of a word in order to be able to derive the correct spelling. (But perhaps I misunderstood?)
In my case, for English my brain seems to typically store the written form of a word detached from its pronunciation (as it does with Japanese). So, when I try to recall the (written English form) of TILDES, I literally "see" the individual letters. I don't have any sound attached to those letters. But it's still not exactly how @fxgn writes above: rather, when I need to spell something, while the spelling itself comes without pronunciation, I still typically "pronounce" what I write in my head to make sure that things actually make sense. Similarly, if I read any English text, I do pronounce the words in my head. But crucially, as far as I see, this pronunciation is a reaction to the spelling, and does not come together with the spelling when I write words, if that makes sense?
This is different from how I spell something like Finnish, where I actually do pronounce the word that I want to write in my head and then transcribe it. Finnish spelling rules are phonemically very consistent, so I guess my brain has made the decision that there is no need to store the spelling of words, as I can always just derive the spelling from the pronunciation. Also, as a native speaker, I learnt to speak Finnish before I learnt to write it.
I don't have any pronunciation or narrator or words at all when I'm thinking about or observing things that are not connected to language.
I follow what you're saying, and I think we're talking past each other a bit, and it's definitely not worth arguing over. Thanks for the clarification and effort!
Just to avoid any misunderstandings: I’m not the person you have been exchanging comments with in this thread, I’m the person who replied to your top level comment. No arguing from my side, I’m just very curious about the different ways people’s brains handle language and writing systems!
Ah sorry, I did get turned around there. Ty for clarifying (•‿•;)
...i'm a native english speaker and experience a similar phenomenon with words i've learned through reading versus hearing: for example, photography/photography and awry/awry are each pairs of two entirely different words which happen to share the same meaning and spelling...
(i don't have an internal monolog but i do pronounce words in my head while reading)
PHOto graph-ee and phoTOGrafee?
(FŌtō-GRĂFē and fəTŎ-grəfē, ŎW-rē and ə-RĪ)
...i first learned to read and picked up the formative bulk of my vocabulary abroad, contextually but without english-speaking peers nor broadcast media, so there are a lot of words i tend to pronounce in fashion which makes perfect sense to a self-taught six-year-old...
For any who are familiar with IPA and not the notation sometimes used American dictionaries, that's /ˈfo͡ʊto͡ʊˌɡɹæfi/ vs /fəˈtɑɡɹəfi/ (assuming OP pronounces these words with a more or less North American accent; the stressed vowel in the second version differs between dialects bc low back vowels in English dialects did a ton of weird shit). That said, I can't figure out which vowel ǑW is in the first syllable of the first version of awry, so I can't do those.
I have a similar experience, albeit with different words. Someone already mentioned "segue" which was one for me, but I also discovered "draught" shockingly recently.
...i was hoping someone might drop in with IPA; thanks!..i hadn't cracked-out those rusty pronounciation symbols since 1978...
(awry rhymes with SAWree; fixed the breve diacritics i couldn't discern on my tiny desktop display)
Your substitute breves were fine, but I'm not super familiar with how all the vowels are written in that style, and with English vowels there were too many options! I think the IPA for what you describe is /ˈɔːɹi/ though (the normal pronunciation of "awry" being /əˈɹɑ͡ɪ/)
I definitely pronounce draught and draft differently in my head. I still come across these.
Yeah same tbh
I understand! As a heavy reader there are definitely words I interacted with the same way. I'd never heard them spoken, so, "segue" and the spoken "segway" (before it was a self propelling scooter thing) were obviously different words.
Chi-hoo-ah-hoo-ah checking in. Absolutely do this!
“Horz DÜV-rez”
20/20! There's a few of these that I might spell incorrectly at first if I was writing them myself, but very easy when I can see all variations.
16/20
Personnel, possessions, pronunciation and the French one (never heard it before) got me
Pronunciation especially is a word that I'm shocked to learn the correct spelling of every time I see it, only to immediately forget it and continue spelling it as "pronounciation"
I got 16, I got thrown off by the ‘ vs ' in the last question and second guessed myself.
Funnily enough, I’m pretty sure I got the other 3 words you missed correct, but got mischievous wrong (added the extra i)
English is defined by consensus, so if enough of us spell "pronounciation" that way, eventually it will be declared correct!
(I'm aware of the "correct" spelling but I think it is dumb so I insistently "misspell" it on purpose)
Pronunciation is a tricky one because pronounced is a thing too!
I believe it's best to give up and assume that there is no connection between spelling and pronunciation in the English language.
It's spelled "Luxury-Yacht", but it's pronounced "Throatwobbler-Mangrove".
That sketch reminds me of the classic "Ghoti is Fish" problem.
Every day I find a new MP sketch I haven't seen before is glorious. Thank you!
13/20 which, honestly, was as best as I could expect. Even that was using a few tricks like knowing rite as in "playwright" is the same as "shipwright", not "write", or that "marshmallow" comes from the "mallow" plant (pronounced as it's spelled).
I've come to view my weakness in memorization (and, by extension, spelling) as a blessing in disguise. There are plenty of ways it has frustrated me, but it also forced me to improve my skills of deduction and rederivation.
It does on occasion make me look like a fool, but most people would figure that out eventually anyways, so no harm getting that cleared up quick.
No capuccinno and missisipipipi? :(
The last one is not really an English word... It's French. Hors d'oeuvre? I don't even know if I spelled it right. Who even uses this word?! Sounds like something to make fancy people feel classy by avoiding the word "appetizers". If we use the French word, we can charge double the amount for the celery sticks with stale ranch dip!
Horse doovers, lol.
As a kid I pronounced it whores devores.
I mean most English is French. There are more words of French origin than English origin in English.
What having an entirely French aristocracy does, I suppose. But that is also why it’s “fancy” - for almost anything in English, there’s a word of Germanic origin and a word of French origin, and the French one is fancier.
Deer - English, Venison - French
Friendly - English, Amicable - French
Old - English, Ancient - French
This is true, but I feel it more for some words than others. "Amicable" doesn't feel as "out there" as horse doovers (thank you, @balooga, for the improved and much easier spelling).
Is it more out there than coup d’état? Or à la carte? Cul de sac? Faux pas?
At least to me, I read “coup” in, say, the NYT, I don’t bat an eye. If someone says “my son is riding his bike near the cul de sac” I don’t start pulling out my baguette detector. But they’re all pretty non-Germanic in origin, and multi-worded.
Hors d'oeuvres is a less common word for sure, but that’s OK - it’s no less English, though.
I think it's A) the rarity of the word's usage compared to the other examples you listed, and B) the apostrophe, that really throw people off with hors d'oeuvre. Not many English words have apostrophes outside of contractions. Heck, I've read countless sci-fi stories that add apostrophes to make names or words sound more alien.
That, and the three consecutive vowels that comprise a single syllable. We have other words with that (beautiful), but the vowels in "d'oeuvres" are really weird even by English's weird and wildly inconsistent standards. I'm not sure there are any words that have "oe" outside of having "e" as part of another syllable like -ed or -ey, or have "eu" outside of other very clearly borrowed words or variations of "queue". And that's before getting into how "vres" is somehow pronounced "rv", directly swapping the two consonants. Pretty much the one letter where the pronunciation and spelling match is the "d" at the start.
It's the kind of spelling that English would typically simplify to be closer to the phonetic pronunciation because the spelling just does not match at all. At least we have other words with silent P's like coup even if in different places (psych and receipt), and a few silent s's because academics thought they seemed more "Latin" and sophisticated (island and aisle). And cul de sac actually matches the pronunciation.
But everything about "D'oeuvres" defies even our barely-existent rules, and we don't encounter it nearly often enough to really normalize it as part of the English language. It's pretty much used exclusively in relation to incredibly fancy, high-brow settings, or settings trying to appear that way. In fact, the context we use it is meant to emphasize its foreign origins to make the related event/setting seem more sophisticated. So of all the words we've borrowed and adopted from other languages, it's pretty much the one that remains the most distant.
You're right, I don't even think twice when I hear "coup" or "cul de sac". Definitely lots of French words in English like you said. That one just happens to be a less common one, so it sticks out for me, a lot more than the 4 you listed and especially as part of the 20 on the quiz.
and the fact the the word "appetizer" it's right there to use it
That is true. The French is the only one I got wrong. I had heard of the term but never quite sure of it's exact spelling [and it's rather hard to be honest]. Also, now that we are into culinary inspired terms, look into amouse bouche.
I definitely encountered that word as a child and had a rough idea it meant something fancy and food related (though if I encountered it in both speech and in writing I doubt I connected the two until much later).
That was fun :)
19/20, I can spell fine in English, not so much in French!
Same! I nailed the first 19; I've always been a good speller, easy enough. Then we get to #20, my personal demon. I don't think I've ever been able to spell that word correctly once in my life. (Fortunately I don't ever have the need to.)
Yay for the appetizer crew!
Aww man rookie mistake on "possessions" and disappointed I messed up "mischievous". Unacceptable! I went in thinking I'll get 20/20 for sure.
Being given options made me second guess myself, For the ones I got wrong, I don't think I would've considered them had I been asked to write them down from memory. :P
20/20 and 7320. I realised halfway through that it was faster not to read the example sentence.
It’s so much easier to spot what’s wrong than to spell things yourself, though. I would never spell hors d’oeueurves correctly first time, but writing it out and then adjusting until it looks right is much easier.
Congratulations!
You got 6460/8300—a high score! Typical score for my age group was 4506
I have been writing professionally since 2019, and am a non-native speaker. Turns out one learns a thing or two from writing and reading pages upon pages daily.
Another writing professional here, I got 6800 :) high five
18/20 for a 4960/8300 score.
I messed up on "apparent." I know how it's spelled, but I think the pressure got to me, lol. The other was one Hors d'oeuvre. I have no clue how to spell that and I probably never will. Appetizer is a perfectly acceptable alternative!
The tough ones that that I did get right were: Sergeant, privilege, rhythm, and mischievous. The first three I messed up enough in the past, that I took the time to really memorize. Mischievous was more of an educated guess. I know that one trips me up, and I don't really know how to spell it still. But I remember how it "should" sound versus how we tend to actually say it (ie it's not spelled "miss-chee-vee-us" or "mis-che-vus").
I messed up restaurant under similar conditions. I know how it's spelled, somehow I picked the wrong one. The other one I messed up was rhythm, and to be honest, that's one word that I often find that spell correction keeps having to correct for me as I keep forgetting how to spell it.
Most of them I could just visually recognize, on the latter stretch I stopped even reading the sentence and just looked at the word choices which surely boosted my score. I got somewhere in the 5400s but I closed it and retaking it now would feel like cheating.
I find starting from "mischief" and just swapping the "-f" for "-vous" helps.
Wow, I got correct answers even on words I genuinely don't know how to spell, like hors d'oeuvre (which I had to look up just to spell it correctly in this comment). On the words I didn't know, I just ignored the spelling altogether, squinted my eyes, and picked the option that looked the most familiar.
I'm a speed reader, so I wonder if that has something to do with it. When I was a kid, my mother (also a speed reader) taught me a spelling trick after I kept getting wrong answers on spelling tests: instead of trying to remember how words are spelled, imagine what the word looks like and then read off the letters. After she gave me this advice, I immediately started getting perfect scores on tests I'd previously struggled to pass. The brain is weird.
I'm curious. Do you mean that you were imagining the spelling based off of phonetic pronunciation, or subconscious visual recall?
Visual. I was going by the general shape of the word and what felt familiar to me.
I'm more of a visual thinker than an auditory thinker (I don't have an internal monologue, for example), so that's probably why.
...sergeant tripped me fairly; the others were all fine although i personally disagree on pronounciation and will continue to spell it as i see fit, convention be damned...
I'm willing to bet it's the short form "sarge" that got you!
Yes, same I was too confident up until then. Fun quiz
I think this test is a lot easier than actually spelling the words, as I can easily recognise correct spellings even if I can’t conjure them up.
Although some of the words surprised me such as awful, I just can’t see how you can misspell that
17/20(5220/8300 score?)
The words that tripped me up were ones with multiple double letters (picked neccessary and posessions) and “playwrite”.
I got the French one based on guessing and “This looks fairly French”
20/20 - 7160/8300
Most of these have their root in French (and therefore Latin), which is easy to parse when your native language has a large amount of French loanwords. Hors d'oeuvres is not difficult when you have "un oeuf" and "Aeneas Trojanus est" stamped into you in high school.
There was some time lost because the game randomly highlighted answers that weren't necessarily the right ones and that was incredibly distracting.
18/20 correct, 5820/8000 score
I far-fingered "relevant" and clicked the option next to it, but I'm too lazy to re-do the test to see what my proper score would be, and the french appetizer word tripped me up with the extra e.
This is my new go-to term for onscreen keyboard-related typos. Thank you.
... That was totally intentional. Yep. Not just another "far" finger typo.
i got mischievous wrong, which is funny bc i had a pet named mischief and am perfectly capable of spelling "mischief" correctly.
i also got restaurant wrong.
this word is my nemesis.
i have never in my life been able to spell this word correctly without autocorrect or looking it up. when i was a kid, my dad literally quizzed me every day for weeks on how to spell this word, and threatened to take away my snacks if i failed, and i still got it wrong lmao
idk why my brain refuses to remember this one super common word, but maybe i could trade it for hors d'ouevres, a word i will never use in conversation but which i was able to correctly identify and spell without a problem bc i once said it "hores de vores" after having read it in a book, and the experience haunts me to this day.
14/20 but in my defense I’ll use spell checkers and dictionaries in my own writing, and avoid words that are tough to spell and replace them with other words.
20/20 and 7220/8300. I'm pretty decent at spelling but I know there's a few that will always trip me up. Privilege always seems wrong without the ledge, but I know it's right.
Pronunciation got me because I pronounce it "pronoun-ciation" and I just realized the verb is spelled how I pronounce it but the noun is not because English is a good language.
19/20, 6520/8300
Got 18/20. Actually it should have been 19, but I missed the extra "i" on the spelling I clicked for "mischievous" (the one I picked was was "mischievious"). On that note, this test's format has GOT to mess with dyslexic people. I second-guessed myself once or twice since some of them looked so similar. I would've had an easier time just writing out the words rather than going for multiple choice.
The other one I missed was hors d'oeuvres, which I have honestly only ever seen written out in for Harvest Moon: A(nother) Wonderful Life and... Actually, I don't think I've ever been to a restaurant or event fancy enough to use that instead of "appetizer" (and I'm not sure why Harvest Moon didn't go with that for the cooking menu; it's a rural farming game, we're not 5-star chefs). I'm not sure I've even heard it used outside of TV shows or movies, and those usually use it in the context to emphasize how fancy and upscale a restaurant or event is. That one feels like a trick question.
19/20! Somehow got personnel wrong, which in hindsight seems like one of the easier words.