I learned English reading so many books that I just pronounced how it’s spelled in my head. Combine that with general non-social tendencies I didn’t really heard or had to say a lot of those words.
I had to spell out words to people because of that. Then I came to US, and now I can’t even spell the words because the alphabets are pronounced differently lol.
I immigrated to the US at like 8 years old, I speak on a native level, in contrast, my older brother stuggles like a lot, I noticed an accent. I asked my classmated if I have an accent, and they don’t seem to notice any foreign accents.
Even then, there are still weird words that feels very weird to me. Like wtf is colonel = kernel , lmfao
Colonel is like that because English and French have a messy history and we refuse to change either the spelling or pronunciation to fix it. French took the word “colonello” from Italian and adapted it as “coronel”, English took that version and pronounced it poorly. Scholars tried to re-align to the Italian origin by spelling it “colonel” but nobody changed the way they said it and it’s been that way for over 400 years.
In British English they pronounce “lieutenant” as “lefftenant” for a harder to trace, and presumably stupider, reason. When an English word doesn’t make sense it’s probably because it came from at least one other language and was adapted just enough to fit the phonemes.
I learned English reading so many books that I just pronounced how it’s spelled in my head. Combine that with general non-social tendencies I didn’t really heard or had to say a lot of those words.
I had to spell out words to people because of that. Then I came to US, and now I can’t even spell the words because the alphabets are pronounced differently lol.
I immigrated to the US at like 8 years old, I speak on a native level, in contrast, my older brother stuggles like a lot, I noticed an accent. I asked my classmated if I have an accent, and they don’t seem to notice any foreign accents.
Even then, there are still weird words that feels very weird to me. Like wtf is colonel = kernel , lmfao
You do have an accent. It’s the same accent as everyone around you. There is no speech without accent.
Colonel is like that because English and French have a messy history and we refuse to change either the spelling or pronunciation to fix it. French took the word “colonello” from Italian and adapted it as “coronel”, English took that version and pronounced it poorly. Scholars tried to re-align to the Italian origin by spelling it “colonel” but nobody changed the way they said it and it’s been that way for over 400 years.
In British English they pronounce “lieutenant” as “lefftenant” for a harder to trace, and presumably stupider, reason. When an English word doesn’t make sense it’s probably because it came from at least one other language and was adapted just enough to fit the phonemes.