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Wahaha OP wrote

Reply to comment by ngmm in People give the Japanese a hard time for pronouncing 'l' like 'r', but they never reflect on the pronunciation of "Colonel" (spoiler, it's Cornel) by Wahaha

Yes, but then why is the 'e' in kernel pronounced like the 'o' in colonel?

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ngmm wrote

Heh, good point. But to be fair, the Japanese writing system also has its fair share of weirdness with the seemingly random readings of Kanji based on context, so things like this are possible... honestly, both languages have awful writing systems that often hardly reflect the actual pronunciation of words.

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Wahaha OP wrote

All languages have some shenanigans like that, but I think English is one of the few that can't decide how letters are supposed to be pronounced. Alternative meaning of the same word, like the bank to sit and the bank to put money in are one thing, but this is way worse: https://ramble.pw/f/funny/2809/the-worst-alphabet-book-ever

For Asian characters it is the norm to have many ways to read them and even different meanings depending on context, but then this happens in English, too. A whole lot, it seems: http://www.english-for-students.com/Heteronyms.html

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