The English Language

[Idioteque]

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: it's 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)
.

And here is not a match for there
Nor dear and fear for bear and pear.
And then there's dose and rose and lose -
Just look them up - and goose and chose.

There's cork and work and card and ward
And font and front and word and sword,
And do and go and thwart and cart -
You know, I've hardly made a start!
A difficult language? Man alive!
I could speak it when only five.
(But can I write it? I've really tried,
But still have problems - at fifty-five!)

Why is it that a writer writes but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce, humdingers don't hum and hammers don't ham? If the plural of tooth is teeth, shouldn't the plural of booth be beeth? One goose, two geese - so one moose two meese? One index, two indices - one Kleenex, two Kleenices?

And why can you make amends but not just one amend, that you comb through the annals of history but not just one annal? If you have a drawer filled with odds and ends and you empty it out - except for just one thing - what do you call the odd item you've ended up with?

Why can you be taught by a teacher but not praught by a preacher? A vegetarian eats vegetables but a humanitarian doesn't eat humans. Why can't we say that a man wrote a letter about a dog which bote him?

Have you ever pondered the fact that English people drive on parkways and park on driveways? Recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship orders by truck and send "cargo" by ship? Why do dirty little boys have noses that run while dirty old men have feet that smell?

And why is it, on a dark night, that when the stars are out they are visible but when the lights are out they are invisible


This phonetic labyrinth
Gives moss, gross, brook, brooch, ninth and plinth;
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like would and should.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation's OK
When you say, correctly, croquet.


Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.
Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
They say hallowed but allowed,
People, leopard, towed but vowed.


Mark the difference, moreover.
Between mover, plover, Dover.
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise.
Chalice, but police and lice.
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.
Petal, penal and canal,
Wait surmise, plait, promise, pal.


Finally, which rhymes with enough -
Though, through, plough, cough, chough or tough?
Hiccough has the sound of "cup".
My advice is: give it up.

English is the easiest language in the world to learn - BADLY

[fable]

No arguments, there. I've heard from plenty of non-American friends how deceptively simple English is, thanks to all the exceptions that have clustered around it due to its mongrel nature. By comparison, German is much harder to learn--damn those tenses and genders!--but it's completely standardized.

[Beldin]

Quote:

Originally posted by Idioteque English is the easiest language in the world to learn - BADLY

Absolutely correct . But even learning it BADLY is better then NOT learning AT ALL ...

If nothing else it gives us non anclistic types the possibility to post here

No worries,

Beldin

[garazdawi]

If you think english is hard then you should try swedish.... we have like 4 different spellings for the same "sh" sound :|

but then again english also has alot unusual things happening aswell...... and that "poem/story/whatever" really point that out

[fable]

Quote:

Originally posted by garazdawi If you think english is hard then you should try swedish.... we have like 4 different spellings for the same "sh" sound :|

But is that bad? It doesn't make Swedish any harder to learn. Contrast that with, say, Hungarian, where Roman lettering was adapted, and badly, to fit a host of sounds as perceived by an invading group of hunter/herders from Mongolia: "s" is pronounced "sh," "sh" is pronounced "z," "g" is pronounced "d," etc.

Back to English: assuming you're not writing, it is hard to manage because its declensions and pronunciations are highly irregular.

[garazdawi]

it sure makes reading alot harder... words like "skjorta" (shirt) is pronounced with the same starting sound as "stjärna" (star) and also "skepp" (ship) has the same sh sound.... there's alot of other word than the ones above but I don't wanna sit and type forever......

the things that are hard with ungarian seem more straight forward than this.... but then again...what do i know.... I've only heard hungarian a couple of times but that's what it seems to me....

[fable]

Quote:

Originally posted by garazdawi [Bthe things that are hard with ungarian seem more straight forward than this.... but then again...what do i know.... I've only heard hungarian a couple of times but that's what it seems to me.... [/B]

Hungarian is typically regarded as one of the most difficult languages to learn. It combines a unique pronounciation of Latin letters that doesn't match up with any other language; an extremely arcane grammar; plenty of accent markings; and an agglutinative approach to word formation--like other languages whose development was stopped at an early point, new words are simply made by gluing morphemes together. This means that some words have forty letters or more in them.

[garazdawi]

Quote:

Originally posted by fable Hungarian is typically regarded as one of the most difficult languages to learn. It combines a unique pronounciation of Latin letters that doesn't match up with any other language; an extremely arcane grammar; plenty of accent markings; and an agglutinative approach to word formation--like other languages whose development was stopped at an early point, new words are simply made by gluing morphemes together. This means that some words have forty letters or more in them.

yikes.... that's one long word.....

[fable]

My favorite example of an agglutinative word is a Welsh town on the island of Anglesey, called
"Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysili ogogogoch." That translates as "St Mary's church in the hollow of the white hazel near a rapid whirlpool and the church of St Tysilio of the red cave." My second favorite example of an agglutinative word is the Turkish one, yaramazlaþtýrýlamýyabilenlerdenmiþsiniz, which means "you, as the one who is incapable of being perceived as naughty/wrong."

Hungarian has all that, and more! For instance, in Hungarian, nouns, not just pronouns, are modified by their place in the sentence. So: ajtok is "doors', nominative, but it becomes ajtokat if the doors are accusative, the objects in a given sentence. Vowels are broken out into high, and low, but each kind has two forms, and in some cases, three.

Even the Hungarians joke about their language. They seem quite proud, though, that's it so tough and arcane.

[garazdawi]

I knew of the welsh town's name, but I haven't (until now) know what the name ment.... and lol @ that turkish word

[Kayless]

Quote:

Originally posted by fable "Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysili ogogogoch."

I can beat that:

"Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapik imaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu"

The Maori placename of an otherwise unremarkable hill in New Zealand. It's often shortened to "Taumata" by the locals for ease of conversation. The Welsh argue that the name has been contrived to be longer than Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysilio gogogoch, which some others argue was contrived to be the longest British place name in the first place.