Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either [email protected] or [email protected].
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email [email protected]. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try [email protected] or [email protected]
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
view the rest of the comments
English spelling is weird but thats not really a hard word to spell compared to many others. Epitome is either an e or an i, and I would argue a native speaker would lean heavily towards e as a first guess. There is no way that it starts with a, o, or u for example. That's hardly "every vowel". It's at most 2 vowels and most people would have better than even odds if they heard epitome pronounced correctly.
English spelling is mostly consistent other than words from other languages, especially Welsh and Gaelic. There's the small hiccup with the aristocrats that latinized some words too.
The first time I heard it, was in a BBC documentary about old cars. The pronunciation was nowhere near /ɪˈpɪt.ə.mi/. I think it started with something like /ə/ instead, and that sound corresponds with way too many letters and I haven’t figured out how to make any sense of that.
Fortunately, modern tools will help you find the word you’re looking for, so knowing the correct spelling isn’t that critical any more. However, I was using a paper dictionary at the time, which explains why it took so long.