English as She Is Spoke [English practice]

[Aiwendil]

The "-wise" suffix does sound a little corporate-speakish to me, but not annoyingly so.

[Monika]

That's fine, I was going to use it in a work e-mail and suddenly I thought: Wait, is this even correct English? Does it mean what I think it means?

[Monika]

Are blackbird and Blackbeard pronounced the same?

[HES]

Not for me, no.

I discovered last week talking to a Spanish friend that bird/bear/beard/beer is a common difficulty. There are a lot of pronunciation videos if you google those four words. (We decided that hand actions were more fun, though)