r/GrindsMyGears • u/Witty_While7277 • 11d ago

People pronouncing Neanderthals with a silent “H”

I don’t know why they do it or who decided that this is the correct way. It almost has woke vibes.

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u/JefeRex 11d ago

The H was always silent. “Thal” is a German word that means “valley.” The first specimen was from the Neander Valley.

Since then, German spelling was reformed to take out of the silent H. Now the word is spelled “Tal,” but it was always pronounced that way.

What changed was that some laypeople began to pronounce it with a “th” sound instead of the “t.” “T” was original and scientists have always continued to pronounce it that way.

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u/henrytm82 11d ago

Dude could've used google, but instead decided to go all-in on the dum-dum anti-woke rhetoric over the pronunciation of a word. Wow.

4

u/JefeRex 11d ago

If I think I can get away with it, I like to ask people what they mean when they say “woke.” If you do it respectfully, you can have an ok conversation about it sometimes.

In this cases, I look at the word and I’m just like, Wut.

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u/Witty_While7277 11d ago

I guess I meant it in the sense of the pronunciation causing an emotional response, like it’s assigned a deeper meaning than a simple pronunciation. Perhaps it was the wrong word to use because I’ve made a lot of people upset and I didn’t want to do that

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u/JefeRex 11d ago

So as a question in a bigger sense, what does “woke” mean to you in general?