Comments by "seneca983" (@seneca983) on "The Battle for Kherson: It Could Change the Entire Conflict" video.

  1. "I recommend pronouncing a simple H sound instead, which is far nearer to the Ukrainian and Russian phonetic original." That's somewhat subjective. To my knowledge, the sound in Ukrainian/Russia is the unvoiced velar fricative. You could argue that K is closer because it's also a velar consonant (just a plosive rather than a fricative) whereas H is not velar.
    4
  2.  @lmcsquaredgreendale3223  As a disclaimer, I'm not a linguist either. I'm just a layman who's somewhat interest in linguists.
    2
  3.  @donnievance1942  "This dam is most likely a gravity dam, not an architecturally structural dam." Wikipedia says its type is "earth-fill embankment with gravity sections".
    1
  4. The digraph 'kh' denotes the sound [x] which English does not have. It reasonable that they approximate it with a sound that English does have like K.
    1
  5. He might have meant say "to" rather than "from".
    1
  6. It might be that Ukraine couldn't hide a planned attack anyway. If that's true then there might be little downside to announcing it.
    1
  7. He might have meant say "to" rather than "from".
    1
  8. English doesn't have that phoneme so it's understandable that the might mispronounce it.
    1
  9.  @liamnixon4428  That's somewhat subjective. The correct pronunciation and K are both velar sounds whereas H is not velar. Maybe it sounds closer to K for an English speaker. I've read that in fast speech English speakers may pronounce Ks as [x] so they might have trouble distinguishing those sounds.
    1
  10. The digraph 'kh' denotes the sound [x] which English does not have. It reasonable that they approximate it with a sound that English does have like K.
    1
  11. The digraph 'kh' denotes the sound [x] which English does not have. It's understandable that they might approximate it with a sound that English has.
    1
  12.  @RipMachine1  No, but "has" begins with the sound [h]. Kherson begins with the sound [x]. These are different sounds.
    1
  13.  @RipMachine1  It's not the same. The sounds [h] (unvoiced glottal fricative) and [x] (unvoiced velar fricative) are different. They are not the same. Maybe you could argue that [h] is a closer approximation of [x] than [k] but that's subjective. It may be that [k] sounds closer to [x] for an English speaker.
    1
  14.  @nobodyknows3180  The digraph 'kh' denotes the sound [x] which English does not have. It reasonable that they approximate it with a sound that English does have like K.
    1
  15. "Kherson is pronounced Herson because if a K is followed by a consonant the K is silent like Kharkiv is pronounced Harkiv." It's not quite like that. Rather the digraph 'kh' denotes the sound [x] which English does not have. It's understandable that they might approximate it with some other sound that English actually has.
    1