Posted on 02/13/2024 7:21:59 AM PST by OneVike
This is a light hearted post to make you think. Remember, the more you know, the more you know you don't know. Take the American English language for instance. It is without a doubt the most confusing language on the planet. Ask anyone from around the world and they will tell you that the American English language is one of the most difficult to grasp and comprehend. When I consider how difficult it can be to understand our language, I am reminded of Albert Einstein, who just happened to be one of the most intelligent men to have ever lived. Well this is what he had to say about,
Well, let s take a look at the reasons American English is probably the most difficult language to master.
1) The bandage was wound around the wound.
2) The farm was used to produce produce.
3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.
4) We must polish the Polish furniture.
5) He could lead if he would get the lead out.
6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.
7) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.
8) A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.
9) When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.
10) I did not object to the object.
11) The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
12) There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.
13) They were too close to the door to close it.
14) The buck does funny things when the does are present.
15) A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.
16) To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.
17) The wind was too strong to wind the sail.
18) Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.
19) I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.
20) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?
21) The plural of mouse is mice. The plural of house is ....? The plural of spouse is ....?
22) We eat what we can and what we can't, we can.
Let's face it - English is a crazy language. There is no egg in eggplant, nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren't invented in England or French fries in France. Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat. We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.
And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham? If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn't the plural of booth, beeth? One goose, 2 geese? So one moose, 2 meese? One index, 2 indices? Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend? If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?
If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat? Sometimes I think all the English speakers should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane. In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell?
How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites? You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which, an alarm goes off by going on.
English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race, which, of course, is not a race at all. That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible.
PS. - Why doesn't 'Buick' rhyme with 'quick' ?
You lovers of the English language might enjoy this. There is a two-letter word that perhaps has more meanings than any other two-letter word, and that is 'UP.
It's easy to understand UP meaning toward the sky or at the top of the list, but when we awaken in the morning, why do we wake UP? At a meeting, why does a topic come UP? Why do we speak UP and why are the officers UP for election and why is it UP to the secretary to write UP a report?
We call UP our friends. And we use it to brighten UP a room, polish UP the silver; we warm UP the leftovers and clean UP the kitchen. We lock UP the house and some guys fix UP the old car. At other times the little word has real special meaning. People stir UP trouble, line UP for tickets, work UP an appetite, and think UP excuses. To be dressed is one thing, but to be dressed UP is special.
And this UP is confusing: A drain must be opened UP because it is stopped UP. We open UP a store in the morning but we close it UP at night.
We seem to be pretty mixed UP about UP!
To be knowledgeable about the proper uses of UP, look the word UP in the dictionary. In a desk-sized dictionary, it takes UP almost 1/4th of the page and can add UP to about thirty definitions. If you are UP to it, you might try building UP a list of the many ways UP is used. It will take UP a lot of your time, but if you don't give UP, you may wind UP with a hundred or more. When it threatens to rain, we say it is clouding UP. When the sun comes out we say it is clearing UP.
When it rains, it wets the earth and often messes things UP.
When it doesn't rain for awhile, things dry UP . One could go on and on, but I'll wrap it UP for now my time is UP, so ... it is time to shut UP !
My last words on this some food for thought.
What is the first thing you do in the morning & the last thing you do at night? U-P
I’ve always wondered how one, struggling to learn English, deals with such homophones as way, weigh, whey.
“Once” is the word that really gets me, how do you get that pronunciation out of that?
English don’t need no steenking grammar rules...
French is pretty tough, too. French is a very degraded form of Latin (with things from Celtic and Germanic languages added). Once you know the roots of words, German and the Slavic language aren’t so terrible, but French strayed from its Latin roots. Spanish vocabulary is closer to Latin and clearer. That’s my opinion anyway, but I took French in high school and didn’t put in much effort.
“Basic English” was an idea about teaching a simple English vocabulary and translating everything into that. What the creators didn’t understand was that those simple words had to be combined in unexpected idiomatic ways to say anything. The different uses of the word “up” cited in the article illustrate the problem.
This very good and Biblically relevant, since the Bible itself, as a document of almost 800,000 words, from about 40 different writers of various occupations, covering two basic covenants, and using two languages (with a third being very limited), contains many literary genres (including Law, History, Wisdom, Poetry, Epistles, Prophecy, etc.) along with multitude figures of speech including euphemism, circumlocution, metaphor, allegory, allusion hyperbole, understatement, idiom, sarcasm, personification, pun, simile, synecdoche, etc.), within a vast number of contexts; and compiled over a period of approx. 1600 years while covering vast expanses of time, and existing in thousands of manuscripts of copies of copies of varying qualities.
And as meant to be a reflection of God, the scope and depth of human language is a primary distinction btwn man and animals (though they can excel in aspects relative to their function.
Yes I know my archive links down the page to the right are broken, but I am in the process of trying to fix it, but I lost my support technician, and now I must learn the workings of the software before I can fix what is broken. At least the top drop down venues are now working
I am not a coder, and used OpenOffice to make mine, but I myself prefer more compact, colorful and comprehensive layout, with sections (I am on a desktop vs. smartphone, which simply cannot compare as re. Internet research and reading). But Google refuses to index all but a little of our own site. I believe that salvation is the gift of God offered to man by grace and received by personal faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and that this faith is manifested in works pleasing to God (Ephesians 2:18-20; Titus 2:11-14). I believe that all true believers once saved shall be kept saved forever (Romans 8:1, 38-39; John 10:27-30; I Corinthians 1:4-8).
Too brief, and I must disagree with OSAS.
In brief, I express in conversion, one is spiritually born of the Spirit (Jn. 3:2-7) by effectual penitent, heart-purifying, regenerating faith in the Divine Son of God (http://peacebyjesus.net/deityofchrist.html) and Lord of all, (Acts 10:43-47; 15:7-9) sent be the Father to be the Savior of the world, (1 Jn. 4:14) who saves sinners by His sinless shed blood.
And which faith is imputed for righteousness, (Romans 4:5) and is shown in baptism and following the Lord, (Acts 2:38-47; Jn. 10:27, 28) whom they shall go to be with or His return (Phil 1:23; 2Cor. 5:8 [“we”]; Heb, 12:22,23; 1Cor. 15:51ff'; 1Thess. 4:17)
In contrast to those who were never born of the Spirit or who terminally fall away. (Gal. 5:1-4; Heb. 3:12; 10:25-39) Glory and thanks be to God.
How would one say “cockeyed”?
George Bernard Shaw, IIRC.
The Ancient Romans had many words for “kill” : “necare”, “interficere”, etc. Each culture has an extensive vocabulary to meet their “peculiar” needs. I guess Innuits and Swedes would have many different words for snow. Arabic probably has one. I Wonder how many words there are for buffalo in Lakota? I know only one: Tatanka. PolynesIan must have many words for “wave” ( as in ocean wave). Anyone who struggled through German knows their abysmal propensity for stringing a long series of words together to describe one object or idea where English adopts relatively shorter Anglicized Greco-Latin terms. On the whole, I stand by my
prior statement on English.
When I was a youngster, I sometimes looked in the dictionary for interesting things. The word that that really stood out was “strike”.
You can strike, enact a blow, upon a face.
You get a strike when you fail to strike a baseball.
A strike in bowling is knocking down all the pins.
One form of labor action through a union is a strike.
The strike of a match is to cause friction in such a way as to ignite it.
A striking woman merits a second look.
A strike price has to do with stock trades.
etc. etc.
You can prick your finger, but don’t finger your ........
Charles Ollier’s son. Kids those days, I’ll tell ya. lol
Bookmark.
It isn’t really easy, but it’s interesting and fun. But I can understand how confusing it would be to ESL people.
Once I got my nephews giggling when I explained how “ghoti” is pronounced “fish”.
In high school, I learned that Latin is hard. I figured it out within a few weeks, but I was committed to three years, so I suffered. (One of my most valuable classes, along with Personal Typing, for the future.)
Try Chinese. Make sure all your personal affairs are in order,
And English often gives you the choice of using the Latin or Anglo-Saxon derived version of a particular word. They’ll mean the same thing but if you want to sound sophisticated or perhaps be more precise you can use the Latin version whereas the Anglo-Saxon word is usually shorter and folksier sounding. I read an interesting book once about the prose style of Abraham Lincoln whose author pointed out that Lincoln had a distinct preference for Anglo-Saxon over Latinate words, which helped him sound relatable while expressing lofty ideas.
English...the Mother Tongue.
Let’s eat kids!
Let’s eat, kids!
Punctuation matters, too. It saves lives!
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