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American English includes one of the rarest sounds on Earth, but we use it all the time

Er…this is odd.

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Learning to make sounds we didn't grow up with can be tricky.

When (or if) kids learn phonics at school, they're taught the symbols that go with sounds of their country's native language or languages. People all around the world grow up learning to make specific sounds with their mouths by imitating the language(s) they are immersed in, which can leave us completely unaware of how many other sounds there are until we hear a language that's far different from our own.

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Even the common foreign languages that American school kids learn have sounds that can be tricky to get down. The rolled "r" in Spanish. The nuances of French vowel pronunciations. The glottal stops in German. The sound that's a mix between "r" and "l" in Japanese. And for people learning English, one of the trickiest sounds to get down is "er," as in the American pronunciation of "bird," "world," "summer," or "percent."

Oddly enough, for as common as the "er" sound is in English, it's linguistically rare. According to the Linguistics Channel @human1011, the "er" sound is found in less than 1% of the world's languages, rarer than the click consonants found in some languages in East and Southern Africa.

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

As rare as the sound is, there are a lot of people in the world who use it, mainly because it's also used in Mandarin Chinese, or at least many variations of it. So, while there aren't many languages that use it, by sheer numbers of people, it's not that uncommon.

"So, a sound that's so rare that it's in less than 1% of the world's languages just happens to exist in the two most spoken languages on Earth? Can that really be a coincidence?" the @human1011 video asks. Well, yes. English and Chinese don't share a common linguistic root, so those sounds just happened to evolve in very different parts of the planet. According to some people in the comments of the video, there are regional dialects in Brazil where the "er" sound is used and in certain parts of the Netherlands as well.

Pronouncing the "er" sound is hard if you don't grow up with it, largely because it's all about the placement and shape of the tongue inside the mouth combined with the way the lips are positioned. That combination is physically tricky to show someone. This video, from a non-native-English-speaker does a good job of explaining the mouth movements that create the sound.

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

What's particularly interesting about the "er" sound in American English is that it functions as a vowel sound. Most of us learned that the vowels in English are a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y, and that's true as far as written vowels go, but vowel sounds are different. In the word "bird," the letter "i" is a vowel, but doesn't make any of the "i" sounds that we learned in school. Instead, the "ir" combine to make the "er" vowel sound. It's called an r-controlled vowel, and we see it in tons of words like "work," "were," "burn," "skirt," etc.

Learn something new every day, right?

Here's another video that explains the physical aspects of articulating the r-controlled vowel sound.

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

Most of us don't think about the fact that sounds we pronounce without even thinking about it have to be specifically learned and practiced by people who didn't grow up with them. It's not until we start trying to learn a language that's different from our own that we see how many sounds we have to work hard to make, sometimes even having to train our mouth muscles in ways they've never been used before.

It's also a good reminder to be patient and kind with people who are learning a language. It's not easy, and anyone making an effort to communicate in someone else's language deserves our grace and kudos.

You can follow @human1011 on YouTube for more interesting linguistics trivia.

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How Japanese introductions literally translate to English is a wild linguistics lesson

"First time! I'm Under the Forest."

Photo by Satoshi Hirayama/Pexels

Greetings in Japanese sound quite odd when literally translated to English.

Studying a language other than your own native tongue is always a trip. Wrapping your head around completely different grammar and syntax rules, trying to create sounds your mouth isn't used to, sometimes learning entirely new alphabets (or characters when there is no alphabet)—all just to be able to communicate with more of your fellow human beings. (Seriously, when are we going to decide on an actual universal language?)

Linguistics is wild, as evidenced by Japanese teacher Hikari's video demonstrating what Japanese introductions would sound like if they were translated literally into English.

One of the first greetings you learn in Japanese is "hajimemashite," which is generally interpreted as "Nice to meet you," or "How do you do"—something you say when you meet someone. But the literal meaning of the phrase is "at the beginning" or "first time," which of course sounds odd in English. (Similarly to if you were to literally translate "How's it going?" from English to another language, the understood meaning of "How are you feeling right now?" wouldn't come through, since the words "it' and "going" have nothing to do with how you're feeling.)

Then there are name introductions, which seem like they should just be straight up names, but aren't because of what they mean. "I'm Under the Forest." "I'm Inside the Field." Huh? And wait til you see how they share their ages. Watch:

If Americans spoke like Japanese #japanese #japanesebelike #japaneselanguage #japaneseculturewww.youtube.com

To make things a little clearer, the name "Under the Forest" is almost certainly Morishita, a common last name in Japan. (Japanese people generally introduce themselves by last name.) The translation "under the forest" comes from Chinese characters used in Japanese, Kanji, that most Japanese last names are written in. Morishita is 森下 in Kanji, with 森 (mori) meaning "forest" and 下 (shita) meaning "below" or "under." "Inside the Field" would be the name Tanaka, with a similar explanation, but with different characters.

As far as ages go, that's a whole other cultural quirk. In Japan, time is separated into imperial eras based on whoever the emperor is, and each era has a name. "Shining harmony 63" means she was born in 1998, or the 63rd year of the Shōwa ("shining harmony") era. Moons are months, and days are, well, days.

Japan is the only country where Japanese is an official language, but thanks to the tech boom there in the 80s and 90s and the rise of the popularity of anime worldwide, the Japanese language has seen continually growing interest outside the archipelago nation. According to University of Pittsburgh, there are around 125 million Japanese speakers worldwide, with some concentrated pockets outside of Japan in Hawaii and Brazil.

(Side note: Having studied Japanese myself, I can attest that it's a very fun language to learn. The alphabets and Kanji are the hardest parts—the phonetics are consistent and the grammar is quite logical, with far fewer exceptions to the rules than English.)

In addition to videos like this one, Hikari offers Japanese lessons on her YouTube channel. You can follow her here.


This article originally appeared last year.

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Comedian's 'English lessons' highlight the absurdity of English spelling and pronunciation

Nothing but sympathy for anyone trying to learn English as a second language.

Courtesy of Bobby Finn/Instagram

English makes no sense.

If you've ever tried to learn another language, you know what a daunting task it is to grasp different grammar, syntax, pronunciation and spelling rules, in addition to the exceptions to those rules. Other than something like Esperanto, the thousands of languages humans speak weren't purposefully invented, but evolved over millennia, which means the structures of them don't always make perfect, logical sense.

The English language is a perfect example.

English spelling and pronunciation are just utterly chaotic.

Despite being one of the most taught languages in the world, English is notoriously difficult to learn. So much of it is simply nonsensical, and there are so many exceptions to the rules it sometimes feels like there's no point to even having the rules. This is especially true when it comes to the way combinations of letters are pronounced differently in different words.

Comedian Bobby Finn highlights the absurdity of English spelling and pronunciation in his "English Class" videos, which showcase how futile it is to try to logic your way through learning the language.

For instance:

Finn's "You don't see how?" and "Why would you think?" are the perfect tongue-in-cheek responses to the confusion on the student's face when none of the logical conclusions he lays out add up.

And it just keeps going…

And he didn't even get to how "read and "read" and "tear" and "tear" and "lead" and "lead" are different pairs of words spelled the same but pronounced differently and with a different meaning.

Clearly the "ea" diphthong is an issue, but it's certainly not the only one. There is a seemingly endless list of English letter combos that combine in head-scratching ways as if they were purposefully designed to confuse and confound.

We've all been down the dreaded "ough" road, right? Imagine trying to learn this stuff as a second-language learner.

Teaching English requires either major gaslighting or admitting it's non-sensical

"Nooooo. Why would you think?" and "Remember what I said earlier." Hoo boy, you really can't teach English without either gaslighting the dickens out of students or just admitting that there's no rhyme or reason to anything. People who teach English and those who have had to learn it shared their delight at him nailing the assault on the brain that is English language learning.

"As an English major, former English instructor, and current supervisor of English, I vehemently agree that English makes no sense! 😂"

"The more of these videos i see, the more amazed i am that i actually learned English 😂."

"Oh man I’m reliving the trauma of my younger self learning English as a second language. 😆"

"OMG flashbacks of being in that seat having to answer the ESL teacher’s questions and all variations playing in my head knowing that there is no way I am going to guess the right one. Lol 🤣"

"I feel so awful for anyone that has to learn English as a second language. It’s chaotic."

"As a native English speaker, I apologise to everyone learning English for the chaos that it is. 🤣"

"As a teacher with lots of ESL students, when they ask 'how,' I just apologize. 😂"

"I love that there is no REAL explanation from teacher about why he is getting it wrong. Just the wonderful “NO” coupled with the wonderfully condescending repetition of the proper sounds. 😂💀👌🏼"

via GIPHY

Why do so many people learn English if it's so hard?

English may be somewhat ridiculous, but it has become an increasingly important one to learn. It's an official language in 75 countries (39% of countries in the world) and is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. More than half of the world's scientific and technical periodicals are published in English and English has long been the language of international business.

In the absence of a truly universal language, English is arguably becoming a default common language. It's not unusual to travel to different countries and see signs in the country's language and in English. Even within the European Union, people from countries that speak different languages natively often find common ground in their basic command of English, which the most widely understood language in the EU.

As of now, somewhere between 15% and 20% of people on Earth speak English either as a primary or secondary language. Unless we get moving on choosing a more appropriate auxiliary language for everyone to learn in addition to their native language, it looks like English is a wise–even if frustrating—language to learn.

You can follow Bobby Finn on Instagram for more comedy.

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People are shocked to learn that 200 years ago we lost the 27th letter in the alphabet

We got rid of it for no good reason.

via Pixabay/Pexels and Andrea Piacquadio/Pexels

Woman shocked to learn about the history of the English alphabet.

An eye-opening video on TikTok by @ZachDFilms3 is an excellent example of how language constantly evolves. In a video with over 900,000 views, he explains that the English language had a 27th letter a little more than 200 years ago.

ZachDFilms3 is popular on TikTok for creating videos that explain surprising facts about science and history.

In a video posted on March 6, he surprised many by revealing that the ampersand ( or "&") once came after the letter Z in the English alphabet. “This is an ampersand and believe it or not, it used to be the 27th letter in the alphabet. You see, back in the day, this symbol came after the letter Z and signified the word 'and,’" he shares in the video.

However, incorporating the letter into lessons for English-speaking kids was a problem.


“But when reciting the alphabet, students weren't allowed to just say 'and' after Z. Instead, they were taught to differentiate the symbol by saying 'per se' before it, which sounded something like this: Q R S T U V W X Y Z &. And 'per se &' ampersand."

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The melding of the words “and per se” eventually led to the strange symbol called the “ampersand.” According to ON Words, other names for the symbol included ampazad and zumy-zan, but they failed to take hold with the general public.

It’s believed that the symbol got its name around 1835, but it ceased to be part of the English alphabet by the late 19th century.

The symbol dates back to over 1700 years ago when Roman scribes wrote in cursive and commonly used the Latin word “et,” which means “and.” So, the cursive combinations of the E and T together came to symbolize “and.” The symbol evolved over decades into the ampersand we know and love today.



These days, the ampersand is relegated to informal English and is mainly used as an abbreviation or in the names of businesses (AT&T, US News & World Report) or partnerships (Simon & Garfunkel, Jacoby & Meyers). However, it’s doing far better than the 5 other letters ditched from the original Old English alphabet recorded in 1011 by the monk Byrhtferð.

In the original Old English alphabet, there were 29 letters, which included the ampersand and 5 additional English letters: Long S (ſ), Eth (Ð and ð), Thorn (þ), Wynn (ƿ) and Ash (ᚫ; later Æ and æ). During that time, 3 new letters were added: J, U and W.

So whenever people get stuffy about new slang that they are using or changes in style or grammar, remind them that language is ever-evolving and that what we accept as standard today may be archaic in just a few decades. As the writer Rita Mae Brown once remarked, "Language is the roadmap of a culture. It tells you where its people come from and where they are going." So, when a language becomes static, it’s safe to say that those who use it have failed to evolve as well.


This article originally appeared on 7.3.24

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