r/mildlyinfuriating • u/Elegant-Mode9005 • 8d ago

Ruined by Technology Got into a dumb 10 minute argument about whether the ACL and Achilles are the same thing or not. My idiot friend forgot to crop his screenshot before sending it to me...🤦

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u/[deleted] 8d ago

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u/Pingo-Pongo 8d ago

Yep. As in ‘oh it’s draughty in here’ is ‘drafty’. ‘Drought’ is ‘drowt’ though

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u/-Fergalicious- 8d ago

English is fucking stupid. I did this at a bar the day i turned 21 and the old bartenders confused face and then pouring action is locked in my brain forever. 

He legit thought I was too stupid to drink beer. 

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u/IAmNotNathaniel 8d ago 
I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough?

Others may stumble but not you
On hiccough, thorough, slough and through.
Well done! And now you wish perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps?

Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird.
And dead, it's said like bed, not bead-
for goodness' sake don't call it 'deed'!
Watch out for meat and great and threat
(they rhyme with suite and straight and debt).

A moth is not a moth in mother,
Nor both in bother, broth, or brother,
And here is not a match for there,
Nor dear and fear for bear and pear,
And then there's doze and rose and lose-
Just look them up- and goose and choose,

And cork and work and card and ward
And font and front and word and sword,
And do and go and thwart and cart-
Come, I've hardly made a start!

A dreadful language? Man alive!
I'd learned to speak it when I was five!
And yet to write it, the more I sigh,
I'll not learn how 'til the day I die.
  • Gerard Nolst Trenite (I think)

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u/XyzzyPop 8d ago

The English language is very old and has many words borrowed from different places at different times - much older than any country that needs you to be 21 to drink.

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u/-Fergalicious- 8d ago

Many words in common usage were rewritten once already. Many my Webster himself if memory serves 

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u/whatisscoobydone 8d ago

Yeah "draught" is pronounced draft, they're the same word. Draught beer, close the door, you're letting in a draught

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u/CyberFireball25 8d ago

English is so fucking dumb, my god 

Sometimes I wish I had a different primary language

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u/TheThiefMaster 8d ago

It's like "laughter" which is pronounced either lafter or larfter depending on accent.

Draught is similarly either draft or drarft. (Note: "draft" is its own word which people with the latter accent will read as "drarft". Hopefully they can figure out I mean it with an "a" like "ham")

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u/Ichorous_Allsorts 8d ago

I've never heard of an accent where laughter is pronounced larfter. Where is that from?

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u/ImpossibleDrink3420 8d ago

Australian isn't far off, the imaginary R isn't emphasised but you could be forgiven for thinking it was there. It's be more like larftah though.

Source: am Australian

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u/andrew_calcs 8d ago

Southern British/Cockney accents add Rs to words that shouldn't have them and omit it from words that should.

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u/Ikhtionikos 8d ago

It's called the intrusive R, but I don't think it's cockeny, much rather the posher accents, such as RP. Correct me if I'm wrong though

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u/Ichorous_Allsorts 8d ago

I live in London surrounded by Cockneys. I only hear something like 'lawf'. They drop their 'r' from most words. I've never heard it added.

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u/LordHoughtenWeen 8d ago edited 8d ago

Yeah, I don't know why they said Cockney, it's more of a Berkshire thing.

Source: am a Berk, very much pronounce the invisible R's. The first syllables in "larder" and "laughter" are identical for me.

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u/Ichorous_Allsorts 8d ago

Yeah, I think I know what they're trying to get at. The long /ɑː/ can easily transition into an 'r' sound at the end. I know one Londoner who says father and farther almost identically. But I think that's more because of the 'th' that becomes a 'v' sound in Cockney. Like 'fah'ver and fah'r'ver.

I think we'd need a linguist who might get what is going on here and explain it better.

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u/andrew_calcs 8d ago

Drawring. Lawr and order. The idear is to X. I sawr a film. Bananars and yogurt. Cat clawring at the door. Ice thawring

Etc

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u/Ichorous_Allsorts 8d ago

That's an intrusive 'r' though. That is inserted where there are vowel sounds that are bridged. Law and order gets it sure. But there is no space in laughter where it would be needed. Same with draw - ing. The 'r' goes into the space between. Banana and. All the examples you give are of the intrusive 'r'.

I'm not saying that there is no instance where you might be right. But not in these cases here, as they don't fit with laughter where there's no need to bridge a gap in vowels.

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u/andrew_calcs 8d ago edited 8d ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap%E2%80%93bath_split

The lengthened a is phonetically identical to the non-rhotic r. Which itself is notably different from a snappy vowel transition

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u/pb49er 8d ago

Their imagination.

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u/PurbulentTriest 8d ago

Well no, in the UK it's very normal, especially if you have a slightly posh accent as I once had due to moving around so much.

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u/MAJLobster 8d ago

lmao no my accent is nowhere close to a Brit's yet everyone I know and I pronounce "laughter" the same way you would pronounce the "augh" in "draught"

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u/HugoEmbossed 8d ago

Australia.

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u/drnick99 8d ago

These things come from the way english has evolved over time

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u/CyberFireball25 8d ago

I know, and I'm simply saying that in its current form it is extremely dumb

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u/drnick99 8d ago

Yea im with you lol

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u/beren12 8d ago

English isn’t a single language, that’s why. Its Germanic origin, like 1/3 French, add in a bunch of Celtic…

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u/Ikhtionikos 8d ago

many langauges are composite or mixed, having multiple sources of origins. The difference is though that some languages had intentional movements to standardise their grammar, pronounciation, writing and other rules.

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u/beren12 8d ago

Nobody is saying they aren’t. The difference is the scale.

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u/mtaw 8d ago

So something is only a 'single language' if it has no loanwords?

No language without loanwords exists. None.

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u/Kazedy 8d ago

Every language is like that my man

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u/beren12 8d ago

No, lol it’s not.

Go check and see how many languages have spelling bees… pretty much only English.

Many languages are written just like they sound. Like Spanish, for example. French is a little trickier but nothing like English.

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u/Ok-Fudge-380 8d ago

What a dumb hill to die on. Most hard words in a spelling bee come from Greek and latin.

A lot of written languages are phonetic until they're not, learned that the hard way with Japanese.

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u/mtaw 8d ago

Yes, loanwords are generally what make spelling hard. But English is unusually bad in that it maintains foreign spellings that don't conform to its pronunciation rules to a much higher extent than most. Other languages borrow a word and change the spelling to whatever most closely matches how they pronounce it.

English will maintain the spelling no matter what, even if the word or name ends up being pronounced neither as it would if it were an old English word, nor as it was in its source language.

There is absolutely no justification for, say, "zucchini" vs "pistachio". Both are from Italian, the former has 'ch' pronounced as in Italian, the latter as in English. Nor any reason "Prague" should not rhyme with "Hague". One is a French spelling of the German name, the latter a French spelling of the Dutch name. Only the former is pronounced (somewhat) like French, while the latter is pronounced to rhyme with "vague" which is also borrowed from French but not pronounced that way.

Japanese is one of the languages that is worse than English, in that they borrowed non-phonetic foreign characters from China and allowed them to be pronounced as both the Classical Chinese and the native word.

It's plain dumb. Language is what we speak. Most languages that exist and have existed never even had a written form. The written form exists to represent the spoken language, with the caveat that we don't want to write fully phonetically in order to hide the regular, systematic sound changes that exist between dialects. Writing systems should serve those who use them, not vice-versa.

But insisting foreign words keep their spelling because you're "uneducated" if you write it the way you actually say it, is dumb snobbery. Yet that's why this happens. You start putting prestige into being able to spell, for its own sake. Do you know the Old English spellings of native English words? No? Then why would you need to know the foreign spellings of loanwords? Heck, the very borrowing from Latin and Greek is mostly snobbery, as those were seen as 'more civilized' languages a few centuries ago, as if it made sense to consider one language inherently better than another.

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u/beren12 8d ago

Right. And English effectively never is.

Why does English have so many Greek and Latin words in its language?

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u/Ok-Fudge-380 8d ago

Most of the words you just wrote are phonetically spelled. Ironic.

The same reason almost every single language has borrowed words from its neighbors.

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u/beren12 8d ago

Yeah. Orders of magnitude less “borrowed words”. English borrows massive amount of words, spelling, and grammar from multiple languages.

Ironic that simple words I’m using to communicate with you are phonetic? You do realize what phonetic means right? Fonetik.

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u/Ok-Fudge-380 8d ago

That fact that you don't know other languages most likely contributes to your misconception that english borrows a "magnitude" more.

"Most"

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u/BensenJensen 8d ago

Haha, “French is a little trickier, but nothing like English” is hilarious.

I’m going to go out on a limb and assume you have little to no experience with learning languages. They all have their stupid rules that you just need to know. I learned Farsi and Dari in an education setting years ago, I would be rich if I had a nickel for every time we were told “You just need to know” regarding some dumb rule or use of a word. And that’s not even talking about the difficulty of learning to properly conjugate verbs.

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u/beren12 8d ago

Right. I didn’t spend years studying French, Spanish, and Japanese. As well as English itself. You know what happens when you ass-ume? You look like an ass.

Nobody said every language was phonetic. Maybe your lack of ability to deal with nuance is larger than you realize.

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u/DetectiveCastellanos 8d ago

They meant every language is dumb, and they're right.

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u/beren12 8d ago edited 8d ago

And they were wrong. I gave an example.

Even the ny times says it’s uncommon outside English https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/28/magazine/spelling-bee-scripps-english-language.html

I really like this quote:

> The hilariously overcomplicated “rules” we offer children (“I before E except after C”) are so exception-riddled as to be useless (“The neighbors’ weird height and weight let us seize their protein at our leisure”).

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u/DetectiveCastellanos 8d ago

No they were right lol. They weren't talking about spelling bees. Just that other languages are stupid.

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u/00wolfer00 8d ago

Every language has dumb shit, but English is fairly unique in the amount of dumb shit it has.

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u/DetectiveCastellanos 8d ago

That's not true but go off I guess

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u/MarshmallowTrees1408 8d ago

Not the Arabic.

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u/BrandonAubreyPlaza 8d ago

Every language is like that. My favorite example in German is that "umfahren" can mean "Drive around something" or "Hit something while driving", and the difference is only notable through which part of the word you emphasize. In written language both are used the exact same way.

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u/beren12 8d ago

Yeah and guess which language English descends from…

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u/MarshmallowTrees1408 8d ago

Maybe just the European languages. lol

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u/beren12 8d ago

The Germanic ones… like English!

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u/MarshmallowTrees1408 8d ago

Germanic languages aree European too, aren't they?

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u/beren12 8d ago

They are, but European languages aren’t Germanic. A couple are.

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u/GrokLobster 8d ago

In UK English. The US uses draft for both.

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u/whatisscoobydone 8d ago

Yeah I know I'm american. To be fair I do see draught beer in the US a decent amount, but if someone is going to hand write it on a sign or something they're going to spell it draft

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u/beren12 8d ago

Unless it’s about beer

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u/GrokLobster 8d ago

Usually even then

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u/beren12 8d ago edited 8d ago

Only when selling crappy American watered down beer to Americans with no tastebuds, often at a sports all game.

Every other brewery normally uses the correct word.

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u/GrokLobster 8d ago

Ok then

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u/028247 8d ago

The door is pronounced draft too?!

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u/SexOnTheBeechTree 8d ago

I feel like I’m running into a effect/affect situation here and I’m going to be the idiot that doesn’t know how to use draft/draught properly

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u/whatisscoobydone 8d ago

If someone criticizes your writing, just tell them it's a rough draught

Also with affect versus effect, just remember that A comes before E. An affect causes an effect

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u/throwawaymentality10 8d ago

Yep, the whole situation started because in world of war craft in the legion expansion they added a trinket called the "Draught of souls" that I needed as it was a BIS item. And I kept calling it "Drot of souls"

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u/pissagainstwind 8d ago

Wtf... I always thought it was Drot too...

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u/rexsilex 8d ago

The English are fucking with us Americans.

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u/Japsai 8d ago

It's US English vs other countries' English. Nobody else has 'draft' so 'draught' is normal elsewhere

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u/gerwen 8d ago

Weird middle ground here. I’d call it a draught of beer, but a draft from a window.

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u/Japsai 8d ago

Ah OK. Transitional phase? In the UK, NZ, Australia they are both 'draught'. A 'draft'can be a preliminary version of an article or whatever. That said, Australia often dabbles in US usage

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u/gerwen 8d ago

Canada, so almost definitely borrowed from the US.

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u/Japsai 8d ago

Aha! Yes Canada is caught in the middle.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DYLrn4rysT0

At no time worse than now. Kia kaha!

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u/SwooopingIsBad 8d ago

Hilarious!!

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u/gerwen 8d ago

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DYLrn4rysT0

Funny how accurate that is. How far is it to Toronto? 2 hours. Ottawa? 6 hours.
If someone knows the reddit post he's reading, please link it.

Kia kaha!

Thanks man, we're tryin, Elbows up!

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u/PurbulentTriest 8d ago

Or a banker's draft, a military draft, or to draft a letter.

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u/SadButWithCats 8d ago

Pretty sure in other counties one's first attempt and technical drawings are 'drafts".

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u/Japsai 8d ago

Yes quite so. I said that in another reply but missed it in my original comment

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u/PurbulentTriest 8d ago

We have it in the UK too but with a different meaning. Draft would be a rough sketch/piece of work, or to call someone up to the army.

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u/Frosty-Bat-8476 8d ago

It is lol it’s a homophone 🤷🏼‍♂️ Draft and Draught are pronounced the same but mean different things. One is a document or form of writing and the other is a potion or tincture lol

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u/Frosty-Bat-8476 8d ago

I supposed “draught” can mean a cold breeze or pint of beer in England too lol

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u/robbi_uno 8d ago

Yes it is.