Why do so many people write Mastadon instead of Mastodon? - eviltoast

This has become a pet peeve of mine and as a non-native English speaker I just don’t understand why so many people make that typo in the first place- what is it?

  • Gamma@beehaw.org
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    28
    ·
    1 year ago

    Because that’s how most people pronounce it, and it’s an uncommon word so most are guessing on the spelling anyway

    • alex [they, il]@jlai.luOP
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      11
      ·
      1 year ago

      Ah, sounds fair - the O is very much pronounced O in French and I didn’t realise how similar to A it would be in English. Thanks!

      • whiskyjack@lemmy.ca
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        10
        ·
        1 year ago

        So English is weird; any non-stressed syllable in a word has the exact same vowel sound: the schwa

        It’s basically a very neutral vowel sound because we are lazy speakers.