Amazing how anyone can learn English -- example

[MM 6,562]

It's a wonder that anyone can learn English, especially not being brought up in the language. Kudos to all of us who have somehow managed to remember all the special cases.

 

[jacko 8,696]

Here hear!

[MM 6,562]

Here hear!

There their!

[jacko 8,696]

Whose who's of what watt!

[Bushcraft 2,530]

Nigerian version of Who's Who: Who Dat?

[forcebwithu 4,669]

Whose who's of what watt!

 

No, who's on first

[jacko 8,696]

Or...

[SimplySam 517]

There their!

... and they're.

[jacko 8,696]

I forgot heir.....

[Gabor 296]

Must to confirm.... two horrible things in english for me as a not english speaking guy: the pronunciation and the complicated past tense...

[Nightrider 340]

Ear's here's a couple more

 

Eat.....Heat

 

Seem.....Seam

 

Sheer.....Shear

 

There's plenty more......!

[MM 6,562]

Ear's here's a couple more

 

Eat.....Heat

 

Do you say 'eat' and 'heat' the same way?

[jacko 8,696]

How about 'Is'..... Bill Clinton explained that one to me!

But in the USA they park on driveways and drive on parkways.

 

 

You wind something up to stop it, except a watch.

 

 

I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble but not you
On hiccough, thorough, slough and through.
Well done! And now you wish perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps?

 

Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird.
And dead, is said like bed, not bead -
for goodness' sake don't call it 'deed'!
Watch out for meat and great and threat
(they rhyme with suite and straight and debt).

 

A moth is not a moth in mother,
Nor both in bother, or broth in brother,
And here is not a match for there,
Nor dear and fear for bear and pear,
And then there's doze and rose and lose -
Just look them up - and goose and choose,
And cork and work and card and ward
And font and front and word and sword,
And do and go and thwart and cart -
Come, I've hardly made a start!

 

A dreadful language? Man alive!
I learned to speak it when I was five!
And yet to write it, the more I sigh,
I'll not learn how 'til the day I die.

[atlas2 4,329]

'Noses run and feet smell'.......... Funny? Confusing maybe, but you can see a 'logic'

 

But why do, 'fat chance' and 'slim chance' mean the bloody same??

 

 

This play on words could be my 'favourite' (note the superfluous 'u' just then)

 

'I am' is reportedly the shortest sentence in the English language. Could it be that 'I do' is the longest sentence?
George Carlin

Edited October 19, 2013 by atlas2

[Gary 4,096]

Maybe ebonics IS better. Less words to deal with and a much smaller vocabulary works.

[Fireman Sam 336]

As the original video portrays an absolute nightmare for non English speakers. It is not until you try and help somebody learn that you realise how hard it can be for them.

 

My Thai daughter who is reasonably good at English asks me the other day how do you pronounce "exhausted" she says "I know it means to be tired". So I explain the pronunciation and the also explain the connotation if you were maybe looking for something or body it could be used as in " I've exhausted every avenue". So puzzled look ensues, then she pipes up "what about our Vigo it is exhausted or not" arrg bloody hell go and ask your English teacher to explain it all !!! I suppose it shows that she is thinking about the uses of the word.

 

Yes kudos to the non native speakers that master the language.

 

 

 

 

Regards

 

Edited October 19, 2013 by Fireman Sam

[Nightrider 340]

Do you say 'eat' and 'heat' the same way?

 

Believe it or not , some brits actually do , just depends which part of the country you live....!

[jacko 8,696]

Believe it or not , some brits actually do , just depends which part of the country you live....!

Buzz or bus.......?

And the different vowel pronunciations on each side of Brum.

Book buck to the South, b-hook to the north.

[atlas2 4,329]

England on it's own it's a very small area. Don't know how many American states, (or Commonwealths) it will fit into, some of them multiple times. Considering it's smallness the number of English regional accents and dialects is staggering. I read somewhere that communities were confined to an area defined by how far they could walk with a herd of sheep or cows in half a day, (to the market and back).

 

Go to a tailors in Birmingham and ask for, 'a kipper tie' and and they'll likely ask, 'Milk and sugar?"

 

English, for better or worse has spanned the globe and there will be a lot of 'English' accents of one sort or another represented at The World Cup' next year.......... Just not English with a Scottish accent.

[MM 6,562]

Believe it or not , some brits actually do , just depends which part of the country you live....!

 

 

Buzz or bus.......?

And the different vowel pronunciations on each side of Brum.

Book buck to the South, b-hook to the north.

 

 

England on it's own it's a very small area. Don't know how many American states, (or Commonwealths) it will fit into, some of them multiple times. Considering it's smallness the number of English regional accents and dialects is staggering. I read somewhere that communities were confined to an area defined by how far they could walk with a herd of sheep or cows in half a day, (to the market and back).

 

Go to a tailors in Birmingham and ask for, 'a kipper tie' and and they'll likely ask, 'Milk and sugar?"

 

English, for better or worse has spanned the globe and there will be a lot of 'English' accents of one sort or another represented at The World Cup' next year.......... Just not English with a Scottish accent.

 

[serious]

All very well and good that mispronunciation runs rampant in the home of the language, but you also produce something called the Oxford English Dictionary that contains standard pronunciation. I don't have a copy at hand, but I suspect that "eat" and "heat" are shown with different pronunciations, as are "bus" and "buzz".

 

I will grant you all that regional/local speaking styles depart from this standard, similar to Boston and New York borough variations, but those are not enshrined in the OED or found in books on English as a foreign language.

 

[/serious]

 

Note, the quoted passages have been thoroughly searched for any smilies that might have indicated irony or sarcasm.

[Evil Penevil 7,625]

Blame it from the beginning on the Romans, French and English monks, but most of all on the failure of English-speaking countries to develop formal institutions capable of bringing spelling in line with modern pronunciation. English is stuck with a spelling system that goes back over 1,000 years and is now massively out-of-date.

During the days of the Roman Empire, the classical Latin alphabet had only 23 letters (J, U and V weren't added until much later). There simply weren't enough Latin letters to express all the vowel and consonant sounds of the Anglo-Saxon languages, so early English monks who functioned as scribes used characters borrowed from runic alphabets to express the extra sounds. These characters (thorn þ, eth ð, and yogh ȝ) were later replaced with two-letters combinations (th, sh and gh).

Then came the Norman conquest of Britain and the French language was mixed into the equation. Scribes, both French and English, had to find new ways of expressing the sounds of new words borrowed from French. A lot of the craziness with inconsistent pronunciation of vowels and vowel combinations, stems from this period. Add to this the staggering number of local variations in pronunciation at the time and the scribes had indeed a monumental job in deciding on how to spell English words.

The final factor - and many would argue the most influential - was the Great English Vowel Shift that took place between 1350 and 1700. The major difference in the pronunciation of words in Middle English and Modern English occurs with long vowels. The introduction of the printing press in the 1500s meant that English spelling was undergoing standardization, but spelling wasn't keeping up with pronunciation.

That why we have ended up with words like "bow," which has half a dozen different meanings and two pronunciations (bo and bou) as well as "bough" which has the same pronunciation as one of the "bows," but a totally unrelated meaning. The plethora of ";silent"; letters in English is also a result of the use of Middle English spelling for Modern English words.

Try to say this sentence: Though the tough cough and hiccough plough him through. And how do you pronounce "Loughborough?"

A minor, but no less irritating, source of inconsistencies between spelling and pronunciation was the attempt by earlier lexicographers to indicate the original of the word through spelling, i.e., the silent "b" in "debt" and silent "s" in "island" to tie them to Latin words. The use" of "psy" in words like "psychology" pointed to Greek origin.

Beginning in the 1700s, most other major languages acquired national academies, such as Académie française in France, to regulate the language and reform spelling. But English-speaking countries never did, so there has never been a formal body with sufficient authority to undertake reform of English spelling and enforce its decisions. This failure on the part of our forefathers has left us with an orthography in English that is very confusing and a nightmare for native and non-native speakers alike.

There have been private attempts at reform of English spelling, but only one has been a partial success: Noah Webster and his An American Dictionary of the English Language in 1824. Americans can thank Webster for the elimination of "u" in words like "color" and "labor;" dropping the extra consonant in words like "travelled" and "waggon;" "defense" instead of "defence;" and several others. But Webster wasn't entirely successful. He wanted "tongue" spelled as "tung;" "ache" as "ake;" "soup" as "soop;" and "women" as "wimmen," but those reforms never caught on.

Newspapers, which needed to keep headlines short, tried with variations like "nite" and "thru," but they never gained general acceptance as "proper" words. Some have argued that computers and the Internet will eventually enable the reform of English spelling. It's possible, although I'm doubtful; those spelling rules from the 1300s have proved very resistant to change.

Evil

[atlas2 4,329]

English is a vibrant living language and has been for centuries. It grows and changes daily because it 'lives'

 

 

• Willm Shakp
• William Shaksper
• Wm Shakspe
• William Shakspere
• Willm Shakspere
• By me William Shakspeare

 

Even he couldn't decide how to spell his own name.

 

Just remember 'Wicked' means good now......... and so does 'Bad'

 

I happen to think the American English spell checks are a 'bad' thing. I get tired of correcting the corrections and let it slide more often than I used to. Unlike Evil I'm pretty sure it will mean that American spelling hold's sway in the century to come.

 

If he couldn't spell his own name..... I doubt that olde Rapper, (master of iambic pentameter and the onomatopoeic soliloquy finished off with a rhyming couplet), Shakespeare would have a problem with it so..

 

"English spell'in, dats cocksuckin hard

I knows it, 'cause I's the muther-fuck'n Bard

Edited October 21, 2013 by atlas2

[Kev 173]

and don't forget

 

weather

whether

wether!!!

[nkped 1,208]

and don't forget

. . . .

wether!!!

Google is a wonderful thing. Learned something new.

[jacko 8,696]

I happen to think the American English spell checks are a 'bad' thing. I get tired of correcting the corrections and let it slide more often than I used to. Unlike Evil I'm pretty sure it will mean that American spelling hold's sway in the century to come.

 

I doubt that olde Rapper, Shakespeare would have a problem with it so.........

I keep setting my Yahoo spell-checker (or whatever damned plug-in I have) to UK English and it still keeps squiggly underlining my vowel rich vocabulary!

 

Jeez EP, I nearly cracked the back of my skull!

Edited October 20, 2013 by jacko