Your boy over here level 4 crying every time I see 人 and telling myself it’ll be okay:
- じん
- にん
- ーり
- ひと
- びと
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At a guess, I would say “Hiccup” is from the American Spelling Reform Movement. (but don’t know for sure). I learnt “Hiccough”. 
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I think lough is Irish and Loch is Scottish. There is Lough Neagh in Ireland, and Loch Ness in Scotland.
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This doesn’t have anything to do with readings, but you ever notice know how 前 and 後 “switch directions” when indicating space or time?
前 = before ←
前 = in front →
後 = after →
後ろ = behind ←
What’s up with that!?
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If you think about it really hard it’s similar in English.
Before means in front and after means behind.
If you are before someone in a queue you’re also in front of them.
If you’re after someone in a queue you’re also behind them.
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I mean, how many ways are there to pronounce the english letter a? At least 7, but I feel like its closer to 13…
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What is this sorcery…? This doesn’t happen in spanish! (I think…) 
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It sure does in French, so I had assumed it would in other Romance languages 
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The queue example from zyoeru? Thinking about it now, yeah, it works the same in spanish. But then, it probably works the same in any other language too, since it depends more on the mechanism of queues than in the language itself, if that makes any sense lol.
What I was trying to say in my original post was that 前 moves you forward in space but backwards in time, while 後/後ろ moves you backwards in space but forward in time and it just seemed a bit weird (as in, why not move in the same direction, space-wise and time-wise?).
The closest thing I can think of in spanish is “antes” (before) and “ante” (in front of), but those aren’t even the same word, they just sound similar.
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I wanna know how 予め manages to fit all of あらかじ without bursting at the seams.
Yeah, some of those don’t really exist in US English. Or… any dialect outside of Scottish. 
(To anyone who’s unclear on some of those, slough = “slew”, lough = “loch” or “lock” and hiccough = “hiccup”)
One fun one is the English town of Loughborough, which has two different pronunciations (it’s “luff-buruh”)
Picture it this way: if you’re in a race, someone who’s in front of you in space is also before you in time, while someone who’s behind you in space is after you in time.
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Ah, English town names the most fun Brits can have with Americans… 
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Needs video. Here you go:
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I guess I don’t get what you mean.
目の前 before one’s eyes (physical)
10年前 10 years before (well, “ago” is more natural, I’m forcing before to make my point) (temporal)
Both look like the same direction to me (or at least English does the same thing you are talking about)
maybe I’m just suffering from the curse of knowledge.
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On the morning I failed ひと. I almost went bald after pulling my hair out.
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While I completely understand your frustration, thanks to the fact that a good 50% of all Japanese variety shows have at some point people wondering around eating stuff and yelling a variant of うまい!!! or おいしい!!! I think your example isn’t the best one to illustrate your point.
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You may ask the same question about the word 承る*
BTW I remembered this あらか part thanks to game of thrones, cuz there is a weapon called “arakh”
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I was just about to make the same point. うけたまわ・る
I learned this one when I started my new job this year, and I wasn’t brave enough to start using it until a few months in. Now, whenever I answer the phone, it’s 「お電話ありがとうございます。インフォメーションメリっちゃんが承ります」 with my real name of course.
It’s certainly a heck of a mouthful and difficult to say at first when I wasn’t used to it. Now it’s par for the course though, so I feel strange using only です after my name like I used to do (in the phone-answering situation), which means thankfully the correct phrase somehow manages to make it out of my mouth without me biting my tongue anymore
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Yeah, the habit of taking two verbs (in this case うける and たまわる), smashing them together to make a new one, and then assigning a single kanji to it, results in some long readings.
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