this post was submitted on 06 Dec 2024
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Ask them to pronounce the name of this ferry route.
Just the way it's spelled, of course: Hurtigruten.
But American tourists call it hurdy gurden.
They will also hear it that way no matter how clearly it is pronounced.
Americans have some kind of shared language learning dissbility that would be very interesting to properly untangle and define.
It's surprising how consistently they ignore spelling and add random letters. Instead of reading and pronouncing what's written. They seem to always just mimic poorly. If they have to read it they seem to outright ignore some of the letters, sometime most of them. Like they apply the practice of occasional silent letters and mismatched spelling and pronunciation randomly.
It might have most to do with purpose and maybe a cultural attitude towards language learning. Practically all the Americans I've seen "trying" to learn new words are doing it just for fun, often just to superficially and briefly placate the foreigner's attempt. Non-American foreigners often actually have a use for the language, often they have more respect for local languages. There's also a sense that, unlike Americans, they're not really keen to travel around referring to things by invented nicknames as if locals will understand complete nonsense.
Is there another rut that isn't hurtig?