Italian local dialect from where I live (strong dialect, I don't talk like that):

"Tu m'pu m'pu m'pu, ma pu pu!!"

Translation: you always say you can't, but in the end you do can!

:P

The issue with English is that it's essentially a composite language at this point. Any individual word could be from any number of different languages. Sometimes you follow the pronunciation rules from the original language, and sometimes you don't.

That story about "Home" sounds bogus. I've only ever heard it pronounced one way, even in a name. Maybe it's a regional thing?

I need to bookmark this link.... :-)

http://i.qkme.me/352vlo.jpg

Uhm, it smells of Final Fantasy. Or spam.

Then again, your viewpoint is totally biased. In any case, intonation carries plenty of meaning in Finnish and English as well, although on a syntactic (sentence) level; there is a distinct difference between saying "I am a dog" with a falling or rising intonation, the former indicating declaration of fact, the latter inquiry or uncertainty. Not to mention word stress - RE-cord and re-CORD are completely different things, the former being a noun and the latter a verb.

Because people wouldn't pronounce English as it was written but write it as it was spoken. I think you see the problem if you consider the number of English speakers and their wide variety of accents and dialects. It would be the 17th century all over again, when there was no standardized way of spelling words and so people could and did write - and, most importantly, print! - however they damn well pleased. It was a nightmare even back then, even though most English speakers lived in, uh, England. Thankfully Samuel Johnson came along and gave us standard English which, despite all its flaws, is an enormous convenience. The orthography is off, but it's off for everyone and so it's actually quite fair.

If you're still not convinced, consider this. There was a fellow from southeastern Asia giving a lecture in our university a few years ago, and it took my teacher about twenty minutes to decipher his accent and finally understand what he was on about at any given moment. The southeast Asian listeners, on the other hand, had no trouble at all listening to him, but they were quite baffled by the rallienglanti accent most Finnish speakers exhibited to some degree. If everyone wrote phonetically, these people would probably have been unable to understand each other, and you could argue their texts had been written in related but distinctly different languages.

Also, /ŋ/ is NOT the only exception to Finnish pronunciation. Consider the word "hernekeitto" (pea soup for you non-Finnish speakers out there). Do you pronounce it with a short or long /k/? From what I've witnessed, the long /k/ version is more common, so why isn't it spelled "hernekkeitto"? What about the sentence "Anna kahvia"? It's actually pronounced "annak kahvia". What about "Anna ajaa"? It can mean "Anna is driving" or "Let me drive" depending on whether there is a glottal stop (/ʔ/) between the words, yet it's not marked in any way. I could go on, but instead I'll draw your attention to the so-called "yleiskieli" which very few people speak on a regular basis but which we take for granted anyway. If you want to make an impression, you write in yleiskieli rather than whichever dialect you happen to speak with your friends, workmates and relatives. Why doesn't this strike you as odd?

Sorry I didn't put a smiley in there somewhere, I wasn't being totally serious (again). As I presume the OP wasn't either.

But now to semi-serious mode:

While I am not a linguist, I don't think that applies in Finnish, really (albeit some may have incorrectly borrowed that habit from foreign languages, like English). "Minä olen koira?" doesn't sound proper Finnish at all as a question, with any intonation. Either it would be "Minäkö olen koira?" or even "Olenko minä koira?" (a bit different meaning with the latter), irrespective of the intonation used.

Put a pause between the words, or at least say them slowly. I don't know about you, but at least I don't say: "Annak... kahvia.", "hernek... keitto"

I say "anna... kahvia" and "herne... keitto". And even if you don't put the pause, I don't think there is any rule saying you should pronounce them as "annak kahvia" or "hernekkeitto". Some may still say it that way and it may be hard to hear the exact difference if spoken quickly,

Was reading something on WoW's forums and found that, so figured to post it here. Found it very funny. :)

In my language, there's a word play based on accents on individual words:

Gore gore gore gore, neg' sto gore gore dolje.

Meaning, roughly: "Mountains burn worse up there than mountains burn down there."

It was en example, and not a good one at that as it turns out, so I'll throw a simpler one just for the sake of argument. Even "hei", with various kinds of intonation, can indicate e.g. greeting, inquiry, affection, discontent or surprise. You know how to construct grammatically correct sentences, so articulate them with different pitch and intonation and notice how the covert meaning changes completely.

Prescriptive grammar (schoolbook grammar if you will) has no such rule, but descriptive grammar (based on how language is used in practice whether the speakers are aware of it or not) suggests this happens anyway. “Anna kahvia” becomes “Annak kahvia” because there is a pause between the words. Phonetically, plosives (/d/, /t/, /k/, /g/, /p/, /b/ and so on) themselves are but silence; their effect is only audible if something else follows them. If you try to produce just /k/, nothing comes out, and if something does, it's very likely to be be /kə/. The pause assimilates into the following plosive, which essentially has the effect of lengthening it, producing phrases like “annak kahvia”, “hernekkeitto” and “vaatekkaappi”. Not having the pause/extended plosive makes you sound like you're from somewhere around the Sastamala region. If you're speaking naturally (i.e. without deliberate emphasis) you'll notice your velum closes right after “anna” or “herne”, so even biologically there is no pause during which your vocal tract would have time to reset between the words.

Of course that sentence fails on the very first word, as that is spoken, not written language.
Should be kokoa, not kokoo.

But if you not mind that, you can still add to that sentence, like this:

Kokoo kokoon koko kokko Kokkolassa.

Or if you want to get political:

Kokoo kokoon koko Kokoomuksen kokko Kokkolassa.


And to give something to think about:

Haen lakkaa satamasta kun lakkaa satamasta.

I'll raise.

Etsivät etsivät etsivät etsivät etsivät.

The best part about that sentence is that its meaning is slightly different depending on word order, or which word has what grammatical function if you will.

The second part really gave it away. :)

Do you realize that in Poland "koko" is the sound that hens and chickens make? :D

And AlKim, you NEED to tell me if THIS kokokoko the way they sing it means anything in Finish http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIsX5Rh1ktE Start with 0:26, those are just the first words that follow :P Please do tell! :)

EDIT: Or other Finnish ppl, ofc. I haven't noticed there are so many of you here :D