Religion and Ethics Forum
General Category => General Discussion => Topic started by: Sriram on June 09, 2015, 05:38:04 AM
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Hi everyone,
Here is an interesting article about the english language and its many ....complexities. :)
http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20150605-your-language-is-sinful
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Dearest creature in creation
Studying English pronunciation,
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse and worse.
In its fullest version, the poem runs through about 800 of the most vexing spelling inconsistencies in English. Eight hundred.
Attempting to spell in English is like playing one of those computer games where, no matter what, you will lose eventually. If some evil mage has performed vile magic on our tongue, he should be bunged into gaol for his nefarious goal (and if you still need convincing of how inconsistent English pronunciation is, just read that last sentence out loud). But no, our spelling came to be a capricious mess for entirely human reasons.
So what happened with English? It’s a story of invasions, thefts, sloth, caprice, mistakes, pride and the inexorable juggernaut of change. In its broadest strokes, these problems come down to people – including you and me, dear readers – being greedy, lazy and snobbish.
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Cheers.
Sriram
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My daughter commented only a day or two ago that she's relieved English is her first language - she thinks learning it as a second would be a nightmare.
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I tead that article this morning. Interesting but I think it's one of the things I love about the English languague. Of course languague evolves but I hope the quirkiness of English never changes.
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I tead that article this morning. Interesting but I think it's one of the things I love about the English languague. Of course languague evolves but I hope the quirkiness of English never changes.
It would help if your typing skills improved though ?!!?!? LOL
What I hate is stuff like calling women or a group with women in it all GUYS !!!! AAGGGHHHHH A guy is a man !!!
Only last night on Naturewatch did Ian, I think it's Ian, said a bird had been RUNG instead of RINGED, ie putting a ring on its leg & not just given it a call on his mobile !!!!!
I'll be adding to this as we go along....
Bahut Dhanyavad Sriram bhai !!!
Nick
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Rose
If it's a man YES but calling a girl or a woman a guy ?!?!?!?
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It would help if your typing skills improved though ?!!?!? LOL
Sausage fingers, smartphone, and not bothering to double check equals plenty of typos.
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'Guys' is awful. It reminds me of Rob Brydon talking about how middle-class parents refer to their children as 'guys', as in, 'do you guys want to help with the washing up?' It's fake friendly, fake cool.
Both my girls and myself call my son 'mate'. He likes it.
I like 'chaps' for a group, even though 'chaps' are definitely supposed to be men. 'Gang' is almost as awful as 'guys', and I don't like 'guys and girls' either - I'm not eight.
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I dislike either 'guys' or 'mate' for children.
It just sounds wrong. They are your children - not your mates. One of my work colleagues uses mate for her boys - I cringe everytime she does.
Why can't pepole just use the names they gave their children - instead of pretending to be down with the kids.
FFS.
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My boy's been 'mate' to us since he was a toddler. I'm not trying to be 'down' with the kids, it's just a term of endearment.
If I were trying to be cool I'd be calling him 'dude'. 'Mate' isn't remotely cool.
I think most people use terms of endearment for their kids - over the years my girls have been 'poppet', 'sweet pea', 'girlie' etc. 'Mate' has stuck for my boy.
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My boy's been 'mate' to us since he was a toddler. I'm not trying to be 'down' with the kids, it's just a term of endearment.
If I were trying to be cool I'd be calling him 'dude'. 'Mate' isn't remotely cool.
I think most people use terms of endearment for their kids - over the years my girls have been 'poppet', 'sweet pea', 'girlie' etc. 'Mate' has stuck for my boy.
Fair enough - but it still sounds wrong to me. Maybe it's an age thing. Or I'm just grumpy. I do have other friends who use 'dude' which also makes me cringe.
Use their given names!
Anyway I fear we are straying a little too far from the OP.
English is a difficult language - but here is the contradiction - a hugely successful language. Partly due to historical influences - but also due to it's inherent flexibility. That flexibilty does have it's price - which is the aforementioned difficulties with pronounciation, spelling and grammar.
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At least I don't call him 'junior'.
Where I grew up 'mate' doesn't just refer to friends. For example, a bloke on a market stall will call a male customer 'mate' - and a female one 'darling'. Lots of people serving in shops and restaurants refer to customers as 'love'.
As for calling my kids by their given names, I think that is unusual within families - most parents have pet names of one kind or another for their children.
'Dude' is awful though. And my son has started saying 'yo, bro.' :o
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Rather sadly I got the impression as a child that English was a dull language compared to others. It's only as I've got older that I appreciate how rich it is. And I like its idiosyncrasies and annoyances. Recently I read that apostrophes serve no purpose - yes they bloody do. Can there be anything more satisfying than a beautifully placed apostrophe? Autocorrect on Apple keep putting in apostrophes for me where they don't belong, it drives me nuts - although I do try to go back and sort them I'm sure a few stray through from time to time.
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At least I don't call him 'junior'.
Where I grew up 'mate' doesn't just refer to friends. For example, a bloke on a market stall will call a male customer 'mate' - and a female one 'darling'. Lots of people serving in shops and restaurants refer to customers as 'love'.
As for calling my kids by their given names, I think that is unusual within families - most parents have pet names of one kind or another for their children.
'Dude' is awful though. And my son has started saying 'yo, bro.' :o
My parents only seemed to use my given name when they were about to tell me off.
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At its heart, English is almost two seperate languages, old German and Norman French. Vocabularies exist from both sources side-by-side. The German roots provide us with a language which is grammatically simple, Norman French with a multiple-syllabic vocabulary with often seems pompous. There was, of course, a social divide between the two language systems with the lower orders using the German base.
It is possible, in English, to express the same idea in both language bases - eg:
Derived from Norman French: Meretricious sesquipedalianism
Derived from Old German: Bullshit baffles brains
Modern English is characterised by being grammatically simple, etymologically complex and semantically flexible.
As far as its spelling is concerned - there is no strong link between phonemes and graphemes. There have been attempts to re-order this. At one level, Noah Webster tried to do this with his dictionary - in contrast to Dr Johnson who tried to retain the eccentricities of spelling in his. George Bernard Shaw campaigned for the rationalisation of English spelling.
A few decades ago, school children were being taught to read using the Initial Teaching Alphabet - in which, I think, there were graphemic representations of 45 phonemes. It fell into disuse without ever really being evaluated - there was resistance from parents, teachers had to be appropriately retrained and children had to be "weaned" onto traditional orthography after they have become comptetent with ITA.
One of the promoters of a new orthography was Sir James Pitman, of the Pitman shorthand family. I don't do shorthand but I believe that it involves a fairly close association between phoneme and the shorthand graphemes.
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Recently I read that apostrophes serve no purpose - yes they bloody do. Can there be anything more satisfying than a beautifully placed apostrophe? Autocorrect on Apple keep putting in apostrophes for me where they don't belong, it drives me nuts - although I do try to go back and sort them I'm sure a few stray through from time to time.
The apostrophe serves one purpose and one purpose only:
it indicates elision - there is a letter or a sound missing.
Best example in English: "it's" short for "it is" - the missing "i" is indicated by a the apostrophe. As opposed to "its" which means belong to "it".
Confusion is caused by its use in the genitive form of nouns. In Anglo-Saxon (I believe) the genitive form of John would have been something like "Johnses" this has been elided into John's.
Is there a special educational institution where shopkeepers, mainly greengrocers, are taught exotic linguistic uses such as "potatoe" and "potato's"?
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Recently I read that apostrophes serve no purpose - yes they bloody do. Can there be anything more satisfying than a beautifully placed apostrophe? Autocorrect on Apple keep putting in apostrophes for me where they don't belong, it drives me nuts - although I do try to go back and sort them I'm sure a few stray through from time to time.
The apostrophe serves one purpose and one purpose only:
it indicates elision - there is a letter or a sound missing.
Best example in English: "it's" short for "it is" - the missing "i" is indicated by a the apostrophe. As opposed to "its" which means belong to "it".
Confusion is caused by its use in the genitive form of nouns. In Anglo-Saxon (I believe) the genitive form of John would have been something like "Johnses" this has been elided into John's.
Nearly - it was 'his.' So, for example, what would have been 'Master Chaucer his book' (meaning the book belonging to Chaucer) was elided in rapid speech to 'Chaucer's book' - exactly as you say, that apostrophe indicating the elision of the full word 'his.'
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My boy's been 'mate' to us since he was a toddler. I'm not trying to be 'down' with the kids, it's just a term of endearment.
If I were trying to be cool I'd be calling him 'dude'. 'Mate' isn't remotely cool.
I think most people use terms of endearment for their kids - over the years my girls have been 'poppet', 'sweet pea', 'girlie' etc. 'Mate' has stuck for my boy.
How about where people use the word brainwashed when they plainly mean indoctrinated?
ippy
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Like Leonard does?
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My boy's been 'mate' to us since he was a toddler. I'm not trying to be 'down' with the kids, it's just a term of endearment.
If I were trying to be cool I'd be calling him 'dude'. 'Mate' isn't remotely cool.
I think most people use terms of endearment for their kids - over the years my girls have been 'poppet', 'sweet pea', 'girlie' etc. 'Mate' has stuck for my boy.
How about where people use the word brainwashed when they plainly mean indoctrinated?
ippy
How is that relevant to pet names for children?
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My boy's been 'mate' to us since he was a toddler. I'm not trying to be 'down' with the kids, it's just a term of endearment.
If I were trying to be cool I'd be calling him 'dude'. 'Mate' isn't remotely cool.
I think most people use terms of endearment for their kids - over the years my girls have been 'poppet', 'sweet pea', 'girlie' etc. 'Mate' has stuck for my boy.
How about where people use the word brainwashed when they plainly mean indoctrinated?
ippy
How is that relevant to pet names for children?
It' relevant to the OP; How is the OP relevant to pet names for children?
How about now where a good sounding radio CD player in a car is often referred to as a stereo, before stereo broadcasts pre 1961 we didn't say, there's a good mono in my car, yet it would have made as much sense as the misuse we have now of the two words "a stereo".
ippy
PS could be a wind up, radio.
ippy
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Did you have a wireless instead?
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Did you have a wireless instead?
Interesting. Wireless is now a connection system for computers and home entertainment.
Language certainly doesn't stand still, does it!
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Did you have a wireless instead?
Arrbut!!!
ippy
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The English language is rich and wonderful: that's why it is so current around the world, innit!
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The English language is rich and wonderful:
All of it? :-\
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Only last night on Naturewatch did Ian, I think it's Ian, said a bird had been RUNG instead of RINGED, ie putting a ring on its leg & not just given it a call on his mobile !!!!!
Maybe he meant "wrung"?
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A few decades ago, school children were being taught to read using the Initial Teaching Alphabet - in which, I think, there were graphemic representations of 45 phonemes. It fell into disuse without ever really being evaluated - there was resistance from parents, teachers had to be appropriately retrained and children had to be "weaned" onto traditional orthography after they have become comptetent with ITA.
I was one of them, it was a stupid idea.
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Only last night on Naturewatch did Ian, I think it's Ian, said a bird had been RUNG instead of RINGED, ie putting a ring on its leg & not just given it a call on his mobile !!!!!
Maybe he meant "wrung"?
No as the context was about 'ringing' birds' legs & not wringing their necks ?!!?!?
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I tead that article this morning. Interesting but I think it's one of the things I love about the English languague. Of course languague evolves but I hope the quirkiness of English never changes.
It would, of course, make your posts on this thread far more interesting if you actually learned to spell the words in the English language - I suggest that you re-read your posts before hitting the "post" button.
Alternatively you could write your posts as a Word document, spell-check it, making sure that the spell-checker is set to "English U.K.", and then copying and pasting it into the relevant thread.
Of course, a lot of the anomalies in our language are due to the number of times this island has been invaded and the number of countries that were parts af the old British Empire from which bits and pieces have been imported.
One of my pet hates is the idea of there being "American English", thank you Mr Webster! There is no such thing as "American English" - there is only English and the version of English used by those across the Atlantic who are too lazy and ignorant to speak it and spell it as it should be.
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Americans could easily argue that their version is English "as it should be".
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The English language is rich and wonderful:
All of it? :-\
Yes, all of it. A language exists only in its entire state.
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Americans could easily argue that their version is English "as it should be".
Americans should be forced to speak and write English English. They don't speak proper English like what we do!
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Americans could easily argue that their version is English "as it should be".
Not only can, they do. Goddess forbid that ANY American should ever be proved wrong in anything.
We were speaking English long before the Pilgrim Fathers took it to America so, NO, their version cannot be "as it should be"!
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Americans could easily argue that their version is English "as it should be".
Not only can, they do. Goddess forbid that ANY American should ever be proved wrong in anything.
We were speaking English long before the Pilgrim Fathers took it to America so, NO, their version cannot be "as it should be"!
In some respects they are still speaking the English that the Pilgrim Fathers used. The "generic" American accent (if such a thing can be imagined) is believed by some people to be similar to the accent spoken a few hundred years ago in the West Country. The past participles of to get and to dive - gotten and dove are archaic English usages.
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Yes, both have diverged from a common root - but even then there were different versions and accents in England - which also influenced different American colonies depending on the origin of the immigrants (settlers).
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There are aspects of American English which I like very much - their ability to express situations in a very visual way like leaning over backwards and rubbernecking.
An American linguistic habit I deplore is that of using nouns as verbs. A particularly horrible example of that practice is by Patricia Cornwell: To receipt as in I receipted the gun to the officer. (Several times in Port Mortuary - I made the mistake of reading this from cover to cover. In doing so I squandered time that I shall never be able to recover. It is dire.)
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There are aspects of American English which I like very much - their ability to express situations in a very visual way like leaning over backwards and rubbernecking.
An American linguistic habit I deplore is that of using verbs as nouns. A particularly horrible example of that practice is by Patricia Cornwell: To receipt as in I receipted the gun to the officer. (Several times in Port Mortuary - I made the mistake of reading this from cover to cover. In doing so I squandered time that I shall never be able to recover. It is dire.)
To net - score a goal
To medal - to come first por second or third
etc
HORRIFIC!
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Wow! I can assure you that my Yankee relatives don't write that way nor talk that way. "I receipted the gun to the officer." No, a Yankee would write, I gave the gun to the cop. But I liked listing to mom and her Yankee pronunciations of some words. But please check out the outrageous English language of the Newfie. And I have a Newfie wedding to attend in August. I won't understand anything said to me but that's just as well.
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Wow! I can assure you that my Yankee relatives don't write that way nor talk that way. "I receipted the gun to the officer." No, a Yankee would write, I gave the gun to the cop. But I liked listing to mom and her Yankee pronunciations of some words. But please check out the outrageous English language of the Newfie. And I have a Newfie wedding to attend in August. I won't understand anything said to me but that's just as well.
I don't care what you can - or cannot - assure me. Your Yankee relatives have nothing to do with this. I have no interest in the accent used by inhabitants of Newfoundland. This thread is about the idiosyncrasies of the English language and we have strayed into differences between English and American usage and the American practice of forming verbs from nouns.
I suggest that you go to a bookstore and purchase Port Mortuary by Patricia Cornwell. It is a novel. Then you have to do the difficult bit: you have to read it all the way through, from cover to cover. This is difficult - not just for you but for anybody - the novel is so turgid and poorly written.
You will find the particular construction I have described more than once.
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The last Patricia Cornwell I read was free from a hotel library I was staying at. I was ripped off
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Wow! I can assure you that my Yankee relatives don't write that way nor talk that way. "I receipted the gun to the officer." No, a Yankee would write, I gave the gun to the cop. But I liked listing to mom and her Yankee pronunciations of some words. But please check out the outrageous English language of the Newfie. And I have a Newfie wedding to attend in August. I won't understand anything said to me but that's just as well.
This thread is about the idiosyncrasies of the English language and we have strayed into differences between English and American usage and the American practice of forming verbs from nouns.
The reason that Americanisms have entered this thread is quite simply because Americans insist that what they speak IS English.
Your comment makes it abundantly clear that, even to you, they do not! And thus when discissing American usage of the English language we are in fact, discussing its misuse.
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There are aspects of American English which I like very much - their ability to express situations in a very visual way like leaning over backwards and rubbernecking.
An American linguistic habit I deplore is that of using verbs as nouns. A particularly horrible example of that practice is by Patricia Cornwell: To receipt as in I receipted the gun to the officer. (Several times in Port Mortuary - I made the mistake of reading this from cover to cover. In doing so I squandered time that I shall never be able to recover. It is dire.)
To net - score a goal
To medal - to come first por second or third
etc
HORRIFIC!
'To medal' is nauseatingly awful. I find watching interviews with athletes at big championships barely possible because of it. And they use it like they are being really 'cool'. Ew.
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The last Patricia Cornwell I read was free from a hotel library I was staying at. I was ripped off
Stupid woman.
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2013/dec/03/walter-sickert-jack-ripper-sex-evil
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Wow! I can assure you that my Yankee relatives don't write that way nor talk that way. "I receipted the gun to the officer." No, a Yankee would write, I gave the gun to the cop. But I liked listing to mom and her Yankee pronunciations of some words. But please check out the outrageous English language of the Newfie. And I have a Newfie wedding to attend in August. I won't understand anything said to me but that's just as well.
This thread is about the idiosyncrasies of the English language and we have strayed into differences between English and American usage and the American practice of forming verbs from nouns.
The reason that Americanisms have entered this thread is quite simply because Americans insist that what they speak IS English.
Your comment makes it abundantly clear that, even to you, they do not! And thus when discissing American usage of the English language we are in fact, discussing its misuse.
By what peculiarities of what passes in your mind for logic have you arrived at this conclusion? I am talking about differences in usage not misuse.
The fact that I do not like a particular usage does not make it misuse.
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If you're English try to not laugh out loud if you hear an American pronounce "agoraphobia".
ippy
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The point is .. that English does not have, and never has had, a final, "fixed" form. This is one of the reasons why it has been successful but also why it has all the complexities indicated in the OP. You can invent new words, spelling and grammar as needed without having to have it passed by a committee.
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Only last night on Naturewatch did Ian, I think it's Ian, said a bird had been RUNG instead of RINGED, ie putting a ring on its leg & not just given it a call on his mobile !!!!!
Maybe he meant "wrung"?
Pet hates:
1) The car broke (rather than "braked").
2) Fred, Dave and myself are going to the pub.
Most hated advert: Me and my Magnum.
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Americans could easily argue that their version is English "as it should be".
Not only can, they do. Goddess forbid that ANY American should ever be proved wrong in anything.
We were speaking English long before the Pilgrim Fathers took it to America so, NO, their version cannot be "as it should be"!
In some respects they are still speaking the English that the Pilgrim Fathers used. The "generic" American accent (if such a thing can be imagined) is believed by some people to be similar to the accent spoken a few hundred years ago in the West Country. The past participles of to get and to dive - gotten and dove are archaic English usages.
And "color". I seem to remember a plaque in Canterbury Cathedral remembering something military with "colors" written on it.
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The point is .. that English does not have, and never has had, a final, "fixed" form. This is one of the reasons why it has been successful but also why it has all the complexities indicated in the OP. You can invent new words, spelling and grammar as needed without having to have it passed by a committee.
Agreed. The French are right to have a committee to protect the French language since it is under assault from English words. Heck, they even have to import Canadian French words like "Cheferie" in an attempt to stop people using "leadership".
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Some of the histo(u)ry
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_and_British_English_spelling_differences#-our.2C_-or
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Harrow,
If you think Yankees speak like that author writes then you know nothing about how Americans speak. That's a fact. And just to burst the resident witch's bubble. Matty, You Brits don't own nor are you the authorities on good English.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxUm-2x-2dM
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"Bad English pronunciation..."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snt2OyU8pto
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Americans could easily argue that their version is English "as it should be".
Not only can, they do. Goddess forbid that ANY American should ever be proved wrong in anything.
We were speaking English long before the Pilgrim Fathers took it to America so, NO, their version cannot be "as it should be"!
In some respects they are still speaking the English that the Pilgrim Fathers used. The "generic" American accent (if such a thing can be imagined) is believed by some people to be similar to the accent spoken a few hundred years ago in the West Country. The past participles of to get and to dive - gotten and dove are archaic English usages.
You can find reference to this in Bill Bryson's book "Made in America", sounds about right it's probably true in a lot of cases, it makes sense to me.
The American accent is supposed to be a mix of West Country and Norfolk accents, I'm quite familiar with the East Anglian accents, founding fathers and all of that and it does add up for me when I listen to the American accent.
ippy
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"Bad English pronunciation..."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snt2OyU8pto
Both brilliant Woody, do you know the difference between a Buffalo and a Bison, no, you can wash your hands in a bison, catering for about 12 years of age the same age group as your very silly but very funny links.
ippy
PS Yes my sense of humour didn't develop at all after the age of about twelve, I'll put my hands up to that.
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Oh good grief Ippy, you think you have a sense of humour.
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Pet hates:
1) The car broke (rather than "braked").
My car broke, it cost £345 plus VAT to fix. (I hated that!)
2) Fred, Dave and myself are going to the pub.
Why? Are Fred and Dave bad company or is it a crappy pub?
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Pet hates:
1) The car broke (rather than "braked").
My car broke, it cost £345 plus VAT to fix. (I hated that!)
2) Fred, Dave and myself are going to the pub.
Why? Are Fred and Dave bad company or is it a crappy pub?
They don't understand supernaturalistic probability
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Oh good grief Ippy, you think you have a sense of humour.
I often respond to your posts Woody.
ippy
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The difficulties around pronouncing English correctly has been brought home to me by my kids. They attend Welsh language school so although they are 1st language English speakers they are not 1st language English readers. Watching them sound out English words brings home just how hard it is sometimes to work out whats going on unless you know the 'rule book'.
As a 1st language English speaker and reader taught in the 80's I was taught by rote, so words are said 'so' just because they are not because there is rule behind the reason so watching my kids work it out has been an eye-opener in that regard.
As to pet names, the youngest is 'little man'
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A long time ago, one of my teachers was Max Coltheart - who was one of the leading researchers into linguistic cognitive science in the world. If I recall correctly, he suggested that languages varied according to their graphemic-morphemic transparency - essentially the reliability of written letters and vocal sounds having a uniform relationship.
A highly transparent language would have a very high correspondence between letters and sounds. English (and French) have low transparency, Italian has high transparency. (Again, if I recall correctly) it was postulated that some forms of dyslexia may be more common in low transparency than high transparency languages.
I believe that Welsh has a fairly high level of transparency - so someone whose first spoken language was English but first written language was Welsh would have extraordinary problems adapting to the orthography of English.
There have been debates and disputes among academics about the effectiveness of different methods of teaching children to read, but I think that prescriptive politicians have known better and enforced reading schemes onto teachers. One of the most prescriptive was David Blunkett, who, being blind, was in an admirable position to impose his expert views on teachers.
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Only last night on Naturewatch did Ian, I think it's Ian, said a bird had been RUNG instead of RINGED, ie putting a ring on its leg & not just given it a call on his mobile !!!!!
Maybe he meant "wrung"?
No as the context was about 'ringing' birds' legs & not wringing their necks ?!!?!?
Woooosh!
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Americans could easily argue that their version is English "as it should be".
They have a good case that their version is the more pure.
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Americans could easily argue that their version is English "as it should be".
They have a good case that their version is the more pure.
I think they have a lot more innovations than archaisms, though the archaisms are more noticeable.
But then again, I don't think pure is a good thing. Nothing says the old way is the best way or the right way.
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The past participles of to get and to dive - gotten and dove are archaic English usages.
I thought that was true of gotten but not dove which is more recent. When I here people using dove instead of dived it sounds very odd to me. And, since we're on the subject, why is it pronounced differently from the bird?
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A long time ago, one of my teachers was Max Coltheart - who was one of the leading researchers into linguistic cognitive science in the world. If I recall correctly, he suggested that languages varied according to their graphemic-morphemic transparency - essentially the reliability of written letters and vocal sounds having a uniform relationship.
Pronunciation varies and evolves continually. There's no way to keep it in sync with spelling. Phonetically spelt languages are either
-- languages that have only been written (or written in the current alphabet) in recent times, or
-- dead languages that have stopped evolving.
Luther had big problems trying to produce a pan-German Bible. Many people were mystified by his chosen spellings, which seemed to have little resemblance to the way they spoke in their part of Germany. German is only phonetic to those who pronounce it as spelt, which is artificial.
In English, most of us (except Burns) haven't yet realised that we speak one language and write a different language, though in many countries that's the first thing you have to understand, because the difference between the local dialect and the national standard is too big to be glossed over.
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The past participles of to get and to dive - gotten and dove are archaic English usages.
I thought that was true of gotten but not dove which is more recent. When I here people using dove instead of dived it sounds very odd to me. And, since we're on the subject, why is it pronounced differently from the bird?
Why is the bird spelt the same as the verb? Dove, love, glove are anomalous spellings, but so are have, give, live. (Logically we'd write "liv for today", but "live wire".)
Generally, English doesn't like to end a word with a v, so it sticks an e on the end for no good reason. This is probably because Latin never ends a word with a consonantal u/v.
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Generally, English doesn't like to end a word with a v, so it sticks an e on the end for no good reason. This is probably because Latin never ends a word with a consonantal u/v.
The influence of Latin on English is generally greatly over-stated.
Etymologically love, glove and dove all originate from the German roots of English.
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Generally, English doesn't like to end a word with a v, so it sticks an e on the end for no good reason. This is probably because Latin never ends a word with a consonantal u/v.
The influence of Latin on English is generally greatly over-stated.
Etymologically love, glove and dove all originate from the German roots of English.
What I meant was, the people who invented spelling and grammar rules were often over-influenced by Latin.
They also made up the one about a preposition not being a word you can end a sentence with. Although in English it's a perfectly natural construction to make use of.
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At its heart, English is almost two seperate languages, old German and Norman French. Vocabularies exist from both sources side-by-side. The German roots provide us with a language which is grammatically simple, Norman French with a multiple-syllabic vocabulary with often seems pompous. There was, of course, a social divide between the two language systems with the lower orders using the German base.
More correctly, the old German was actually the combination of several Germanic languages, especially those of the Saxons and the Angles - hence 'Anglo-Saxon'. As HH says, there was a social divide between those who spoke this language and the newer-comer, Norman French, which - in itself - is a Romance language based on Latin and Greek, as are all the languages of the Southern European nations.
However, it should also be remembered that long before the Angles and the Saxons arrived in Britain (early- to mid-5th century), there was already the Celtic language, varieties of which are now mostly spoken in Brittany, Cornwall, Galicia, Ireland, Isle of Man, Scotland and Wales, which vied with the incoming Latin and Greek of the Phoenician traders and Romans.
Even more historically, all these languages have a common ancestor - an early form of Sanskrit - which gave rise (according to some linguists) to the Proto Indo-European family of languages.
Since the arrival of the Normans, there have been tranches of additional vocabulary and even grammar as a result of borrowings from languages that the British have traded with and/or colonised. Modern English is an amalgamation of all of these factors and heritages, and we should not decry it's resulting complexity.
From a language learning p.o.v., it is possibly the 3rd hardest to learn as a non-native language, after Cantonese and Tamil (the language of Tamil Nadu in South India), though obviously, any such listing has to take one's own mother tongue into account.
As far as its spelling is concerned - there is no strong link between phonemes and graphemes. There have been attempts to re-order this. At one level, Noah Webster tried to do this with his dictionary - in contrast to Dr Johnson who tried to retain the eccentricities of spelling in his. George Bernard Shaw campaigned for the rationalisation of English spelling.
Every such attempt to rationalise the spelling of English has fallen foul of the very nature of the language - the variety of sources that its vocabulary has come from as mentioned above.
One of my favourite examples, which I've shared (here?) before, is that of a Nepalese nursing student questioning why a book on 'Pediatrics' was in the library's section on children's health. It transpired that she had had a voluntary English teacher from Britain (VSO, iirc) at school and she had been taught that anything starting with 'ped-' referred to feet (pedestrian/pedal/pedicure/...). The book she was querying had been produced in the USA, where the same thing doesn't apply. Most of the books in the college library had come from Britain, so most child health books referred to 'Paediatrics'.
One of the promoters of a new orthography was Sir James Pitman, of the Pitman shorthand family. I don't do shorthand but I believe that it involves a fairly close association between phoneme and the shorthand graphemes.
I understand that the problem Pitman's system faced is that faced by any such system within English: you get a far larger number of homophones - words that sound the same, even if they don't mean the same - eg: sew (repair or make clothing)/sow (put seed into the ground)/so (an adverb or conjunction). This actually makes it more difficult for learners.
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Does anyone agree with the 'American' they took it OFF OF the table rather than just off???
Or should he put it back ONN ON ????
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At its heart, English is almost two seperate languages, old German and Norman French. Vocabularies exist from both sources side-by-side. The German roots provide us with a language which is grammatically simple, Norman French with a multiple-syllabic vocabulary with often seems pompous. There was, of course, a social divide between the two language systems with the lower orders using the German base.
More correctly, the old German was actually the combination of several Germanic languages, especially those of the Saxons and the Angles - hence 'Anglo-Saxon'. As HH says, there was a social divide between those who spoke this language and the newer-comer, Norman French, which - in itself - is a Romance language based on Latin and Greek, as are all the languages of the Southern European nations.
However, it should also be remembered that long before the Angles and the Saxons arrived in Britain (early- to mid-5th century), there was already the Celtic language, varieties of which are now mostly spoken in Brittany, Cornwall, Galicia, Ireland, Isle of Man, Scotland and Wales, which vied with the incoming Latin and Greek of the Phoenician traders and Romans.
Even more historically, all these languages have a common ancestor - an early form of Sanskrit - which gave rise (according to some linguists) to the Proto Indo-European family of languages.
Since the arrival of the Normans, there have been tranches of additional vocabulary and even grammar as a result of borrowings from languages that the British have traded with and/or colonised. Modern English is an amalgamation of all of these factors and heritages, and we should not decry it's resulting complexity.
From a language learning p.o.v., it is possibly the 3rd hardest to learn as a non-native language, after Cantonese and Tamil (the language of Tamil Nadu in South India), though obviously, any such listing has to take one's own mother tongue into account.
As far as its spelling is concerned - there is no strong link between phonemes and graphemes. There have been attempts to re-order this. At one level, Noah Webster tried to do this with his dictionary - in contrast to Dr Johnson who tried to retain the eccentricities of spelling in his. George Bernard Shaw campaigned for the rationalisation of English spelling.
Every such attempt to rationalise the spelling of English has fallen foul of the very nature of the language - the variety of sources that its vocabulary has come from as mentioned above.
One of my favourite examples, which I've shared (here?) before, is that of a Nepalese nursing student questioning why a book on 'Pediatrics' was in the library's section on children's health. It transpired that she had had a voluntary English teacher from Britain (VSO, iirc) at school and she had been taught that anything starting with 'ped-' referred to feet (pedestrian/pedal/pedicure/...). The book she was querying had been produced in the USA, where the same thing doesn't apply. Most of the books in the college library had come from Britain, so most child health books referred to 'Paediatrics'.
One of the promoters of a new orthography was Sir James Pitman, of the Pitman shorthand family. I don't do shorthand but I believe that it involves a fairly close association between phoneme and the shorthand graphemes.
I understand that the problem Pitman's system faced is that faced by any such system within English: you get a far larger number of homophones - words that sound the same, even if they don't mean the same - eg: sew (repair or make clothing)/sow (put seed into the ground)/so (an adverb or conjunction). This actually makes it more difficult for learners.
Good googling there, Hope.
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Good googling there, Hope.
Sorry BA, but as an English teacher who is interested in the history of the language this is stuff I know as a matter of course. I had to check up on the date that the Angle and Saxons invaded Britain but the rest is stuff that I have taught and studied many times.
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Does anyone agree with the 'American' they took it OFF OF the table rather than just off???
Or should he put it back ONN ON ????
This site gives a great discussion - https://motivatedgrammar.wordpress.com/2012/07/31/on-off-of/
As you say, it is un-grammatical in so many ways!!
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Good googling there, Hope.
Sorry BA, but as an English teacher who is interested in the history of the language this is stuff I know as a matter of course. I had to check up on the date that the Angle and Saxons invaded Britain but the rest is stuff that I have taught and studied many times.
Bashers I fear finds the concept of acquiring and retaining knowledge alien - he regularly accuses people who know stuff of simply Googling it.
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Good googling there, Hope.
Sorry BA, but as an English teacher who is interested in the history of the language this is stuff I know as a matter of course. I had to check up on the date that the Angle and Saxons invaded Britain but the rest is stuff that I have taught and studied many times.
Bashers I fear finds the concept of acquiring and retaining knowledge alien - he regularly accuses people who know stuff of simply Googling it.
If you honestly believe all the stuff posters submit on here is their own knowledge, then we are in the midst of the world's greatest collection of experts.
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And as if English words are not bad enough...we have all those French words and expressions that are thrust in every now and then...the usage of which for some odd reason are considered classy and more intellectual. How the heck they are pronounced...is always a problem.
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And as if English words are not bad enough...we have all those French words and expressions that are thrust in every now and then...the usage of which for some odd reason are considered classy and more intellectual. How the heck they are pronounced...is always a problem.
French words - classy and more intellectual? Where do you get that from? It's not something that I'm aware of here in the UK.
In this country we are awash with words like bungalow and veranda, pyjamas and shampoo, chutney and dinghy and jungle and nirvana.
Where do these all come from, I wonder?
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Hi everyone,
Here is an interesting article about the english language and its many ....complexities. :)
http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20150605-your-language-is-sinful
***********************************************************************
Dearest creature in creation
Studying English pronunciation,
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse and worse.
In its fullest version, the poem runs through about 800 of the most vexing spelling inconsistencies in English. Eight hundred.
Attempting to spell in English is like playing one of those computer games where, no matter what, you will lose eventually. If some evil mage has performed vile magic on our tongue, he should be bunged into gaol for his nefarious goal (and if you still need convincing of how inconsistent English pronunciation is, just read that last sentence out loud). But no, our spelling came to be a capricious mess for entirely human reasons.
So what happened with English? It’s a story of invasions, thefts, sloth, caprice, mistakes, pride and the inexorable juggernaut of change. In its broadest strokes, these problems come down to people – including you and me, dear readers – being greedy, lazy and snobbish.
***********************************************************************
Cheers.
Sriram
I would have thought the English language problems arose from the fact the uneducated who probably taught themselves as much as they could.... spelled words as they sound rather than as they were written.
But with all language it is the basic education behind it.
Photograph for instance and Philip when PH put together it gives an 'F' sound...
English language means you have to understand the words definitions being used.
Their coat is over there. The witch could not decide which broomstick she wanted to use...In the English mind we know which spelling is for witch but speaking English without learning to write it can be a nightmare.
The old English was different from the new English. As a new words such as photography, photograph and photosynthesis have entered the language then the education means not a simple language anymore. It is diverse and with new meanings as time goes by with new words.
The word 'Bastard' now a common term as a swear word was perfectly legitimate word with a legitimate meaning.
The difficulty is now it is used as a swear word it is difficult to use it in it's proper sense without it being offensive.
The English language isn't a mess. It is the people who are not educated in the heart of the definitions and the use of the words...
It is complex but not a mess...
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Good googling there, Hope.
Sorry BA, but as an English teacher who is interested in the history of the language this is stuff I know as a matter of course. I had to check up on the date that the Angle and Saxons invaded Britain but the rest is stuff that I have taught and studied many times.
Bashers I fear finds the concept of acquiring and retaining knowledge alien - he regularly accuses people who know stuff of simply Googling it.
Very sad indeed. :( I might have flunked maths and science, but my general knowledge is pretty good. I had prizes in that subject for nearly every year whilst at school!
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And as if English words are not bad enough...we have all those French words and expressions that are thrust in every now and then...the usage of which for some odd reason are considered classy and more intellectual. How the heck they are pronounced...is always a problem.
French words - classy and more intellectual? Where do you get that from? It's not something that I'm aware of here in the UK.
In this country we are awash with words like bungalow and veranda, pyjamas and shampoo, chutney and dinghy and jungle and nirvana.
Where do these all come from, I wonder?
Yes...there are many more words from Sanskrit....but most of them are pronounced in a fairly straight forward way.
About French words...take words such as...apéritif, au contraire, au revoir, avant-garde, carte blanche, chef d'œuvre, concierge, haute couture, Cul-de-sac, faux pas, genre, hors d'œuvre......and many more.
You need some more examples?
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I have noticed that wherever there are multi lingual signs posted, a good 95% of the time the shortest with the least amount of letters is in English, just think how much printing ink or paint could be saved there just for starters.
Yes I say, without bias, the whole world should be taking up English as the first language.
ippy
All of those Os and As the Italians keep using on the end of their words, they need to go too.
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Good googling there, Hope.
Sorry BA, but as an English teacher who is interested in the history of the language this is stuff I know as a matter of course. I had to check up on the date that the Angle and Saxons invaded Britain but the rest is stuff that I have taught and studied many times.
Bashers I fear finds the concept of acquiring and retaining knowledge alien - he regularly accuses people who know stuff of simply Googling it.
Seems to worry you! But then, if the cap fits...
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My boy's been 'mate' to us since he was a toddler. I'm not trying to be 'down' with the kids, it's just a term of endearment.
If I were trying to be cool I'd be calling him 'dude'. 'Mate' isn't remotely cool.
I think most people use terms of endearment for their kids - over the years my girls have been 'poppet', 'sweet pea', 'girlie' etc. 'Mate' has stuck for my boy.
indeed. I have made up countless names for my children including ningnong, bibblebum, bustiavan, bossitch, boyboy, nimbusnoo, oot ootings, bontious bontious and moan-a-tron. I use them all frequently.
utter nonsense and something of a tradition in my family. My brother used to call me migadoo and simba timba ongawa. I actually had to collect a letter addressed to that name from an old bedsit when he posted something there by mistake... I actually had to ring the bell and ask for a letter posted to Simba Timba Ongawa... quite embarasing.
anyway, that has nothing to do with the OP but I wonder if that kind of playful invention is possible in languages with a more rigid structure?
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Seems to worry you! But then, if the cap fits...
No, it doesn't worry me in the slightest; it's just immensely irritating to see you wheel out the same knackered old tripe so often.
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And as if English words are not bad enough...we have all those French words and expressions that are thrust in every now and then...the usage of which for some odd reason are considered classy and more intellectual. How the heck they are pronounced...is always a problem.
French words - classy and more intellectual? Where do you get that from? It's not something that I'm aware of here in the UK.
In this country we are awash with words like bungalow and veranda, pyjamas and shampoo, chutney and dinghy and jungle and nirvana.
Where do these all come from, I wonder?
Yes...there are many more words from Sanskrit....but most of them are pronounced in a fairly straight forward way.
About French words...take words such as...apéritif, au contraire, au revoir, avant-garde, carte blanche, chef d'œuvre, concierge, haute couture, Cul-de-sac, faux pas, genre, hors d'œuvre......and many more.
You need some more examples?
I think, from an English point of view, the reasons are fairly simple. I can't answer it from an Indian point of view, though. In some cases the words which you have quoted originate from a business environment in which the French used to be perceived as being the leaders - food, hotels and hospitality, fashion. Some of your words have been absorbed into English. Some are more apparent in American usage than British, for example concierge. We have receptionists. To my ear, concierge sounds pretentious.
Another reason for their adoption into English comes from the fact that French was (and possibly still is) the most taught foreign language in British schools. French words and expressions were reasonably accessible to a significant part of the population.
Then there was the fact that until, perhaps, the outbreak of WW2 French was the de facto language of diplomacy. This accounts for many of the routine procedural French expressions used in English (carte blanche etc). My British passport - two years old and biometric - has French annotation on the personal details page.
The effects of WW1 should not be forgotten. Soldiers came back from the front using French expressions in a rather distorted way - Toodle-oo, san fairy ann etc.
Oh, and to a Frenchman, these French words are all pronounced in a straightforward way. But you should hear what they say anout Belgians, Canadians, Swiss ... and did you know that London is reputed to be the seventh largest French town?
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Seems to worry you! But then, if the cap fits...
No, it doesn't worry me in the slightest; it's just immensely irritating to see you wheel out the same knackered old tripe so often.
Well, if it's irritating you, then my work is done! ;D
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How childish.
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How childish.
Ah, the innocence of childhood - me all over, that! ;)
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Another reason for their adoption into English comes from the fact that French was (and possibly still is) the most taught foreign language in British schools. French words and expressions were reasonably accessible to a significant part of the population.
It should also be remembered that French was the language of the aristrocracy, of law and of a whole host of other areas of civil life in England (also Scotland, I believe) until the Tudors and Stuarts. They would simply have been transferred into the early English language because of existing usage.
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Another reason for their adoption into English comes from the fact that French was (and possibly still is) the most taught foreign language in British schools. French words and expressions were reasonably accessible to a significant part of the population.
It should also be remembered that French was the language of the aristrocracy, of law and of a whole host of other areas of civil life in England (also Scotland, I believe) until the Tudors and Stuarts. They would simply have been transferred into the early English language because of existing usage.
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Much of classic Scots - which diverged from English round about the early fourteenth century - has elements of French - as well as Danish, Flemish and Gaelic, with a trace of Brythonic Welsh still evident.
With the advent of trade from India, certain wordfs like 'clarty', 'jildy', etc, became Scotticised in their present form, though not used as much nowadays.