• ripcord@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    It was embarrassingly recently that I realized segue and “segway” were the same word which I apparently didn’t know how to spell.

    Edit: BTW - the weird way that English words are spelled or pronounced - and why - is one of my favorrite nerd subjects. I love this thread so freaking much. And how RIGHT nearly everyone here SHOULD have been.

    • Elevator7009@kbin.run
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      3 months ago

      In your defense, “Segway” is a real brand of some kind of transport thingy, which might be where you picked it up.

      • Tlaloc_Temporal@lemmy.ca
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        3 months ago

        And they’re named that because they make devices that move smoothly from one place to another, just like the literary device.

    • Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz
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      3 months ago

      Yeah, that’s very much an English thing. Many other languages use reasonably consistent spelling and pronunciation, so memorizing the handful of exceptions isn’t really a problem.

      However, with English it’s the other way around. You need to memorize the handful of words that are actually pronounced the way they are written. Everything else is just pure chaos. If you read a word, you can’t pronounce it. If you hear a word, you can’t find it in a dictionary.