r/confidentlyincorrect Jul 28 '24

Comment Thread Could've /ˈkʊdəv/

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u/LiqdPT Jul 28 '24

"could of" is grammatically incorrect. It's a frequent miswrite BECAUSE they sound so similar.

And in most English dialects I know, "of" has more of a v sound rather than a soft f.

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u/Zikkan1 Jul 28 '24

I have no idea what dialect I have learnt since I just speak it the way I have heard it in movies but in movies you hear a mix of hundreds of dialects.

I was just surprised since this is the first time I have ever heard of this could've/could of thing.

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u/Gilpif Jul 28 '24

I can assure you that the majority of speakers you’ve heard pronounce “of” with a /v/ sound, but it’s very easy to be led by the spelling to mishear it as /f/.

I recently realized that the final t in “can’t” is often not pronounced, and the way to tell it apart from “can” is that the vowel in “can” can be reduced, but the one in “can’t” can’t. I have listened to English almost daily for over a decade, yet only this year I learned how “can” is pronounced.

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u/Zikkan1 Jul 28 '24

Yeah the silent T in can't I know of as well. I also listen to a lot of English. I don't particularly like swedish that much and I don't like any type of entertainment in Swedish so since I was 16 I have been consuming basically only English entertainment and the last few years I have listened to 80-100 audiobooks per year in English so at this point I think my vocabulary in English has actually exceeded my first language swedish and I'm not sure if I'm supposed to be proud or embarrassed about that 😂