this post was submitted on 29 Jan 2024
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Showerthoughts

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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted, clever little truths, hidden in daily life.

Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts: 1

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Just based on how often I notice someone mispronounce a word without realizing it (or have done so myself and realized it later). Statistically I'm probably still doing it with some word.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I would say you're actually witnessing the very real phenomenon of language-drift. Languages evolve for a billion reasons, but there's no right or wrong state of language.

That's why we distinguish between language, dialect, idiolect, sociolect. Each bearer of language is also a producer of language. Their version is just theirs, in whatever many ways that makes that version unique.

(Check linguistics to better understand this process of language-drifting )

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

My wife pronounces ‘foliage’ like ‘foil-adj’.

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[–] captnanonymous 4 points 1 year ago

My favorite example of this happened during a D&D game years ago in which the DM kept pronouncing the word portcullis as PORK-YOO-LISS.

To this day, the word causes the image of some sort of ancient Roman pig gladiator to appear unbidden in my mind.

[–] Malfeasant 4 points 1 year ago

My wife says "wheelbarrel" and I giggle every time.

[–] betterdeadthanreddit 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The channel this video is from can be a useful resource.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Thanks for reminding me of these. A while back I met someone named Chateauneuf, and I tried to look up how to pronounce his name and found this very helpful answer.

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[–] Buddahriffic 4 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Though I want to know why Wednesday is pronounced "wendsday" or "wensday". The n is after the d!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

The d before n is inherited from the original name Wodans dag (like Tiu's dag, Thor's dag and Frey's dag inherited through the Saxons and Danes from pagan germanic gods)

The rest is just linguistic shift through the centuries of changing language. Like Dag -> Day while for example in German Dag -> Tag.

But the root of the word is still Wodan then old english Weoden then Wedn.

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[–] TheGiantKorean 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Panacea. I pronounced it incorrectly for a long time. Never knew because no one corrected me. Fortunately it didn't come up too often.

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[–] tinwhiskers 3 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I said automaton wrong for years. I said auto-maton instead of au-tomoton. I still cringe a bit thinking about it :-/

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[–] Seudo 3 points 1 year ago

We've probably all said a sentence that no other person in history has ever said.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

You can just look up words in the dictionary and look up the phonetic pronunciation key to refresh your memory. It pays to do this every once in a while.

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