This ton (your) is the OG, dating all the way back to Proto-Indo-European-a language spoken millennia ago in Central Asia that evolved into many of the languages spoken in Europe and South Asia today. The French sentence Ton tonton tond ton thon includes four different words ( ton “your” appears twice) that all came from different languages and underwent different sound changes over time: French wordįrom a Proto-Indo-European word *towos (chord, fiber, something stretched), which became Latin TUUS "your"įrom a child version of the French word oncleįrom the Latin word *tondĕre (to clip, cut, shear, rob)įrom the Ancient Greek word θύνω (thúnō, "tuna"), which became Latin THUNNUSĪnd while that may work as a TL DR of where these words came from, it still doesn't explain how *towos, oncle, TONDEO, and θύνω (thúnō, “tuna”) all ended up identical sound-wise. □Īll the words in Ton tonton tond ton thon (Your uncle mows your tuna) are pronounced as -that's the International Phonetic Alphabet notation for a pronunciation like English "tone" but without fully pronouncing the final "n" and instead blowing the air through your nose like you are impersonating someone speaking French! The popular “Uncle Tuna” example is particularly hilarious because every single part of every single word in the sentence has the same exact pronunciation, even though they are all spelled differently. The TikTok that started it a Paris-based social media manager, hilariously trolls the French language in a series of artful taunts that point out many of its stylish homophones. Homophones are the result of natural sound changes over time or from languages borrowing words from different sources-and in some cases, both! Here's how centuries of language change have prepared French to be a major ✨TikTok star✨. This is especially true in French where so many letters are silent! These videos work so well because languages can have so many homophones-words that sound exactly the same, even if they are spelled differently and have different meanings. □□□□□ WTF tho □□□□□□□ #hidentalent #tunafishing #frenchlanguage #frenchlesson #frenchwords #frenchfries #paranormal #strange #whytho #wtf ♬ ton tonton tond ton thon by mexemluv - renflement brun ♥ This yields mostly nonsense in both languages from a meaning point-of-view □, but the pronunciation is □. Often made using the French language, the pronunciation meme is a type of video that has users crafting wacky sentences in English and asking Google Translate to work its magic by translating them into a language where they all magically collapse into words that all sound basically the same. If you’re anything like me, about 20% of your waking hours are spent in goblin mode on TikTok going ham on weird pronunciation memes.
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