I’ve always found it funny how single vowels are pronounced in English, e.g. when you say the alphabet.
Any other language:
A, E, I, O, U
English:
Ayy, I (as in “mirror”), Eye, Ouu, Yuu
Letters in English are pronounced differently from their phonetics, oddly enough
It’s not just English. Afrikaans: Ah, 'ere, ee, <the diphthong in “whip”>, <not present in any English words>
This is why I had a problem with “phonics” as a teaching philosophy.
You have “ph” sometimes teaming up to cosplay as a freaking “f”. And that’s one of the easier rules. It’s all broken from the get-go.
My favourite word is pterodactyl
It’s got a silent letter at the beginning, and then a silent o in the middle, and an invisible a, which you pronounce but don’t type, and then a silent c, before going back to some sort of sanity for the last three letters. Who decided that’s how it should be spelt?
We already had the word Terra so why did they have to go spell this version Ptero
vaseline sounds like it should have been spelled vasilene but the i and the e got switched as a funny prank and it stuck.
Use the International Phonetic Alphabet.
/rɛːd/, /riːd/
/ˈlɛd/, /ˈlɛd/Or make everyone switch to a language that is orthographically transparent, like Finnish, Serbo-Croatian, and Spanish.
English has no rules, we should all revel in the chaos rather than having our language be stringently defined.
As someone who speaks 3 languages, I can confirm english is a weak ass language.
It’s strong point is that daily and normal speech and formal writing or speech are almost the same. Thats not the case with most languages, specially the older and more complex ones.
I kind of like how it’s ever changing and evolving, I know that sours some people’s pickles but I think it’s neat. I like how it incorporates and is built on so many other languages. I enjoyed reading a short story posted here a while ago that progressively walked backwards in time as a language and it was really neat to me. I’m an idiot though so most other languages probably do this also.
American English has never be bashful about filing the serial numbers off a word and then claiming it as our own. It can lead, (lead/lead/led?) to confusion even among us native speakers. At least until we sort it out.
Personally I blame the French, (for no reason other than I can), for all the ills in the English language.
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That’s the indication of a healthy and alive language.
English has the most speakers and is the scientific and professional language of the world currently. So it is the most up to date and alive one currently.
Do u happen to speak german? I’m studying it rn and it’s making me very grateful we live in an English speaking world :/
While german is hard and weird, but it’s not far harder than english.
I used to know german but never used it and lost the muscle.
I speak Persian(Farsi), Arabic and English. I tried to learn Japanese and Chinese (mandarin) for a while but I just gave up.
I’m glad we’re not speaking Mandarin as our common language. It’s one of the least interesting languages and objectively the hardest languages I’ve seen. At least Japanese has it’s beauties, but I couldn’t find them in Mandarin.
English can certainly be difficult! It can understood through tough thorough thought though throughout the learning process.
If y’all ain’t get the gist of it y’ain’t thunk it thru enuff.
This was the easiest sentence to parse out for me…
I’m a fan of the phrase “before was was was, was was is”"
I’d guess this sentence would be just as flashy in any language really, not just in english
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.
A real English sentence.
Yeah I never understood that one myself
Unless I’m missing something it’s supposed to be Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.
Bison from the city of Buffalo bully other bison from the city of Buffalo.
Buffalonian bison [who] Buffalonian bison bully [also] bully Buffalonian bison. Eight is correct!
Dang!
Ah got it, thanks!
No. It’s shit
He said in English.
Do you speak other languages tho?
Yeah lol
English is the most adaptable language in the world. England got colonised something like seven different times up until the mediaeval age. The language that came out of the end of that process is precision designed to accommodate unfamiliar words and grammar. There’s no better language to put a loanword into. And it’s really easy to invent new grammar for English, which is why English has the most neopronouns.
English has sacrificed its logic and structure to grow fluidity.
Reading that gave me a tough hiccough.
English-language spelling reform now.
But let’s only do it in some English speaking countries and not others! I am joking, but this is one of the reasons why American English has diverged from British English.
Relevant xkcd:
Speling Reeforma
What? Speak English.
Adultery is not the opposite of infantry; whimsy is not an adjective; you can live together in an apartment; and the Midwest is in the Eastern US.
“flammable” and “inflammable” mean the same thing
What a country!
Bye, everybody! *dies*
"Inflammable means flammable, what a country! "
Dr. Nick
Edit added end of quote
Why can I be overwhelmed or underwhelmed, but not perfectly adequately whelmed?
Nobody’s stopping you using “whelmed”. You can just start using it whenever the opportunity arises.
I use it occasionally, though normally not seriously, along with words where you have an “un” or "dis’, but no positive equivalent, e.g. “gusting” as a positive “disgusting”
English lacks a “gusting” word, but romance languages don’t.
e.g. in Italian “gustoso” is the opposite of “disgustoso”
That’s a brilliant fact, and perfect example if anyone disagrees with me, thank you :)
lol I love “gusting.” Next time I eat someone else’s cooking, I’m throwing that out there.
Whelm and overwhelm are synonyms.
The way I learned it, is that people have a tendency to emphasize, so when became overwhelmed. You see the same thing with ‘good’, ‘great’, and 'epic’meaning the same thing within certain contexts.
If you want to get technical, I believe “whelm” originally came from waves hitting the hull of a ship, overwhelmed was when the waves crashed over the side and onto the deck.
‘Jam’ can mean a fruit preserve, to play music, a stuck door, traffic, to cram something into something else, a tense situation, or to block a radio signal. All spelled and pronounced the same.
Just wait until you learn about ‘set.’
Also door jambs
Jim should shim the jamb.
the Midwest is in the Eastern US.
That actually makes sense because it’s from the point of view of Europe.
Just as middle east and western Asia are the same region
As an Asian, “Midwest” always feels off. Only now I realized this is the same shit as “Middle East” (which I forgot to give second thoughts as an adult). Now both terms really sucks to me!
It is from the POV of the original colonies.
the Midwest is in the Eastern US.
This explains some of my US geography confusion over the years…
Midwest is not a place, it is a People.
past tense read and toxic lead vs reading and leading if somebody doesn’t underntand
Careful, though: reading (past tense of ‘to read’) doesn’t rhyme with Reading (place name)
And leading (being in front) doesn’t rhyme with leading (the metal on a roof).
Lol I did get it immediately after, but my instant thought was wait, read and lead don’t rhyme?
I feel like I walked on a rake after a perfect catwalk reading you. Love it.
So? Eminem makes all the words in the English language rhyme so balance is restored in the world
I genuinely read that as ba-se-lin-e
do u mean
bejslajnorbaseliin?the 2nd one, but “base” has two syllables.
thats what i mean, thats not a “but”
not like the word “base” which is pronounced
bejs
Maybe start with the fact that not all words in use in English are English words.
Or that people in different parts of the world say/spell words differently and we inconsistently applied it:
Kernel and Colonel were the same rank but we took the pronunciation of the first and the spelling of the latter.
comb bomb tomb tome come
only two of these rhyme.
My brain got fired while reading this. 🗿
In the ever so pretensious words of Walt Whitman…
“English is the greatest language ever!! It’s as great as life itself! Also death!”
I would like to recommend Highly Irregular: Why Tough, Through, and Dough Don’t Rhyme—And Other Oddities of the English Language.
It’s a pretty quick read and it explains exactly how the English language became such a mess. For each thing that doesn’t make sense, it provides a reason that explains it. Short version: the timing of the Great Vowel Shift relative to the invention of the printing press really screwed it over. There’s quite a bit more (Norman invasion in particular), but that was what codified all the badness.
Learning the “why” of so many previously preposterous language and spelling rules was gratifying and enlightening. They’re still preposterous but slightly less maddening now.
There’s also an excellent podcast interview with the author on 99% Invisible. Check it out. It made me buy the book and I definitely recommend it every time a post like this comes up.
IMO, the more important reason is that English is crusty af. Lots of languages had massive changes since the printing press was invented, but that didn’t stop them from changing their orthography. Germany even had an official spelling reform in the 1990s.
Those three are even all from the old vocabulary, they all have German cognates: zäh, durch, Teig
