this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2026
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[–] Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 3 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

Something I noticed recently about languages is that there's three main sets of "settings": the alphabet (or how letters map to sounds), the vocabulary (how to string letters together to form words that map to meanings), and grammar (how to legally combine words to express thoughts).

An interesting part about the alphabet is that there's two angles to it: the writing part and the spoken part. Many languages share most of the writing part with english (eg french, spanish, german) but sharing the spoken part is rarer. In fact, different regions that speak the same language can use different letter sounds. That's what an accent is, or at least a big part of it (cadence and emphasis can also make the same language sound different).

Anyways, this felt profound to me when I realized it but now I'm curious if this was obvious to people more inclined to the language side of learning for why people have accents.

[–] majster@lemmy.zip 5 points 9 hours ago

Keep on Buddha

[–] BCsven@lemmy.ca 3 points 13 hours ago

English is a mess because the characters don't match the sounds used in many words. Like tough vs though. Which Is different to say Serbian, or most other languages where the letter always has the same sound.

But accents are slightly different than different letter sounds aswell

For example you can have people with the same accent speak different sounds on words. Like a person that says the herb as Bayzil compared to somebody that says Bahsil, even with same accent.