English, a most curious language

[Cloud9Gal]

I loved reading this one~

All in good fun


We'll begin with a box, and the plural is boxes;
But the plural of ox became oxen not oxes.
One fowl is a goose, but two are called geese,
Yet the plural of moose should never be meese.
You may find a lone mouse or a nest full of mice;
Yet the plural of house is houses, not hice.
If the plural of man is always called men,
Why shouldn't the plural of pan be called pen?
If I spoke of my foot and show you my feet,
And I give you a boot, would a pair be called beet?
If one is a tooth and a whole set are teeth,
Why shouldn't the plural of booth be called beeth?
Then one may be that, and three would be those,
Yet hat in the plural would never be hose,
And the plural of cat is cats, not cose.
We speak of a brother and also of brethren,
But though we say mother, we never say methren.
Then the masculine pronouns are he, his and him,
But imagine the feminine, she, shis and shim.
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.
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?
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 folks who grew up speaking English should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane.
In what other 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.
Where did this strange language come from and why do we speak it?
'Cause we don't know another, I guess...

[Ken Stallings]

Yep, and we owe it all to the myriad of languages which English is rooted upon -- Latin, French, Celtic, Gaelic, German, and many, many, many others that filled us with their naturally derived terms which those of us who speak the Queen's had to figure out how to hodgepodge them! Throw in the efforts of the many colonials, old and current, and the picture emerges!

Thanks folks!

Ken

[Wing_Z]

Maybe I'll stop being so dam' snooty about apostrophe abuse, it really is a patchwork of a language!
'Course out in the colonies, we constantly re-imvent it, and someone from Mother England might have difficulty understanding something like:
"Yistaday we took the cuds fushing"

[Eoraptor1]

Maybe I'll stop being so dam' snooty about apostrophe abuse, it really is a patchwork of a language!
'Course out in the colonies, we constantly re-imvent it, and someone from Mother England might have difficulty understanding something like:
"Yistaday we took the cuds fushing"

I'm a big fan of Bernard Cornwell's Richard Sharpe books, and also of the BBC series. I'm not exactly unwashed as to the mechanics of the English language, but I often have to turn on the subtitles to understand what everyone is saying. I can usually understand gentlemen, and after time was able to understand Sean Bean as Sharpe very well, but the Highland regiments, the Irish, the Welsh. I'm at a loss.

JAMES

[HouseHobbit]

AIN'T IT THE TRUTH, LOL..LOL
Not a problem for most Americans. we speak American..
And depending what part of the country you come from it is always different..
LOL..

[Snuffy]

English by far is the hardest language there is on the planet ... I'm still trying to learn it, and I've been at it for 54 years now.

Pretty good stuff C9G! Thanks for that bit of humor and insight!

[n4gix]

Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends,
But not one amend?

Actually, one may amend a wrong... but yet would still be making amends, even in the case of a single wrong...

Even with it's peculiarities and exceptions however, English remains one of the easiest languages to learn.

The British Foreign Office conducted a language study recently and concluded that the most difficult language to learn is Basque, spoken in parts of Spain and France, followed closely by Hungarian, which has 35 cases or noun forms. On the other hand, German and Russian languages use a punctuation system said to be among the most difficult ones in the world. Languages that use characters may seem hard to read and write to users of the Roman alphabet, but they are not always that difficult. Experts agree that Chinese and Korean can be learned rather easily by speakers of Western languages; Vietnamese and Japanese, however, are much more complex.

[6297J]

This is what it used to sound like -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QE0Mt...eature=related

Those were the days!

[HouseHobbit]

What do yo mean used to sound Like..
You haven't been to any of the bars in Dayton Ohio at closing time..
it still sounds alot like this..
LOL..LOL..

[Odie]

Add in all of the local terms that permeate the various regions, apply a healthy dose of regional accents and you'll see how wonderfully bendable the English language truly is !!! :d

[Collin]

I must be bi-lingual...I speak Essex, but can understand Dirtman and Talon 80 percent of the time.

regards Collin:ernae:

[Technogrunt]

AIN'T IT THE TRUTH, LOL..LOL
Not a problem for most Americans. we speak American..
And depending what part of the country you come from it is always different..
LOL..

Househobbit,
You are very correct. When I was in the US Navy, I had a guy on my ship that just came off shore duty in Japan. He taught his wife a Japanese citizen English , if you did not speak with an eastern Texas accent, she would look at Jim to translate.
<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" /><o> John</o>

[Henry]

I must be bi-lingual...I speak Essex, but can understand Dirtman and Talon 80 percent of the time.

regards Collin:ernae:

for starters get the spelling right
as it was told to my wife you may think you a re speaking English
but you are speaking American
i can teach yall how to speak Narfulk
LOL
H
btw they speak funny in Essex
H

[CADFather]

When I was in Korea in the mid 80's the "ladies" there could for the most part speak some pigeon English that they had picked up from GI's. It was neither English nor Korean, but it worked well enough for their purposes and ours as well. I did manage to pick up some actual spoken Korean and even now I sometimes catch myself using it, when I answer the phone. I never did learn to read it, but most of my interactions with Koreans weren't in libraries.
CAD

[Collin]

for starters get the spelling right
as it was told to my wife you may think you a re speaking English
but you are speaking American
i can teach yall how to speak Narfulk
LOL
H
btw they speak funny in Essex
H

Fank gawd we's got Suffolk as no-mans land between us.

regards Collin:ernae:

[Quixoticish]

Yep, and we owe it all to the myriad of languages which English is rooted upon -- Latin, French, Celtic, Gaelic, German, and many, many, many others that filled us with their naturally derived terms which those of us who speak the Queen's had to figure out how to hodgepodge them! Throw in the efforts of the many colonials, old and current, and the picture emerges!

Thanks folks!

Ken

Actually modern English does not owe as much as many expect to Latin, and old and middle English less so. Latin was considered sacred; the language of the clergy, and the church actively fought to keep it from entering the common vernacular at various points throughout history. Barring the odd word or phrase they were largely successful. The vast majority of Latin words in English tend to be judiciary, or scientific in meaning, however Latin itself did not really shape the evolution of our language.

Obviously as a Germanic (not German, there is a huge difference) language there has been plenty of cross cultivation with the various Scandinavian Germanic languages over the years, and the most obvious shift occurred with the Norman invasion in 1066 who brought a large Gallic influence with their Old Norman language (itself rooted more in the Norse and Celtic languages). Interestingly the Germanic base of Old English remained intact for many generations however the gradual adoption of more linguistic nuances from Old Norman resulted in a broadening of the common vocabulary by a tremendous amount.

The English language is truly fascinating and it's a crying shame that many people get completely turned off on the subject at school due to the education systems obsession with Shakespeare, the Romantic Poets and other topics that are rather hard for children to get into.

I'm always constantly bemused when people tell me Shakespeare is "Old English".

[Wild Bill Kelso]

So you think English is a remarkable language?

Well, I can't resist to add this:

"A person who has not studied German can form no idea of what a perplexing language it is.
Surely there is not another language that is so slipshod and systemless, and so slippery and elusive to the grasp.
The inventor of the language seems to have taken pleasure in complicating it in every way he could think of."

Mark Twain: "The Awful German Language"

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Awful_German_Language

I may highly recommend reading this essay before mocking about your language again!

Cheers,
Markus.

[Quixoticish]

So you think English is a remarkable language?

Well, I can't resist to add this:

"A person who has not studied German can form no idea of what a perplexing language it is.
Surely there is not another language that is so slipshod and systemless, and so slippery and elusive to the grasp.
The inventor of the language seems to have taken pleasure in complicating it in every way he could think of."

Mark Twain: "The Awful German Language"

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Awful_German_Language

I may highly recommend reading this essay before mocking about your language again!

Cheers,
Markus.

As an inflective language I found German quite simple to pick up. Once you've got the nominative, accusative, dative and genitive properly ordered in your head it's relatively straightforward.

[Roger]

Great thread

I enjoy finding "lost positives". An example of a lost positive is 'kempt' as only the negative, 'unkempt' is in general usage today.

[Milton Shupe]

Here is Gallegher's rendition of the English anomalies. Always loved this one.

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[Cazzie]

Yep, and we owe it all to the myriad of languages which English is rooted upon -- Latin, French, Celtic, Gaelic, German, and many, many, many others that filled us with their naturally derived terms which those of us who speak the Queen's had to figure out how to hodgepodge them! Throw in the efforts of the many colonials, old and current, and the picture emerges!

Thanks folks!

Ken

True Ken,

Plus we have the native American languages and the many, many names and words we use from them. And don't forget that American English will incorporate any foreign term that is to the liking. One of the funniest things at the Tour de Pont was listening to Phil Leggett and Paul Sherwin trying to pronounce native American terms! We were all pretty au culture from some fine red wine, but I would laugh until my belly ached. Funny the Aussies never had a problem!

Caz

[Bjoern]

English by far is the hardest language there is on the planet ...

English was easy to learn for me, at least way easier than french.

I've always wanted to learn russian, but dang, it's a whole different universe away from the "standard" languages. :isadizzy:
Same for anything asian.