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hermit
Velociraptor
Joined: Dec 20, 2005
Posts: 495
Location: Upstate NY
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 Posted: Mon Jan 16, 2006 12:16 am Post subject: The Answer! The trouble with English... |
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While 'talking' with someone at my computer tonight I just came to the realization
that the problem is not us, it's the English language!
Shades of meaning...
Two words with the same pronunciation and spelling...
Double entendres...
(everything else)
It's all the fault of English... |
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Emettman
Microferroequinologist
Joined: Dec 19, 2005
Posts: 1027
Location: Suffolk, UK
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| Posted: Mon Jan 16, 2006 2:46 am Post subject: |
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Yes.
English is flexible, rich, and superb at adapting and absorbing new and foreign words.
The penalty for this is a somewhat ramshackle (lovely word) structure, with all the little tricks and pot holes you can think of, and a few more.
I once read a philosophical book which appealed for all debate in that field to be in German, as it was much more precise, whatever it's other properties.
English, in its varieties, is likely to take over the world: sheer usage can win out over pure quality. (Do you remember VHS/Beta? )
Last edited by Emettman on Mon Jan 16, 2006 7:55 am; edited 1 time in total |
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ghotistix
Phoenix
Joined: Feb 03, 2005
Posts: 1186
Location: Massachusetts
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| Posted: Mon Jan 16, 2006 5:39 am Post subject: |
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I've always found this poem to show off the language's weirdness pretty well. Try reading it out loud -- it's tough, but imagine how much harder it must be for people whose first language isn't English!
The Chaos
by G. Nolst Trenite
Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.
Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it's written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.
Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.
Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation's OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.
Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.
Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Feoffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.
Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.
Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.
Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.
Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.
Pronunciation -- think of Psyche!
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won't it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It's a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.
Finally, which rhymes with enough --
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!! |
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danlo
Phoenix
Joined: Mar 12, 2005
Posts: 1069
Location: Western Australia
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| Posted: Mon Jan 16, 2006 7:42 am Post subject: |
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| The English language is such a wonderful language. It's really quite clever how a word can have so many different meanings depending on how it is used and the context surrounding it. Really, it's not the language itself that is the problem, it's all the English-speakers who aren't really all that fluent at using it, and do not know all the rules, including those context-deaf people who attempt to use it. |
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ascan
Phoenix
Joined: Feb 23, 2005
Posts: 1709
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| Posted: Mon Jan 16, 2006 8:22 am Post subject: |
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| danlo wrote: | | The English language is such a wonderful language. It's really quite clever how a word can have so many different meanings depending on how it is used... |
Yeah, wonderfully lucrative if you're a lawyer. |
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WooYayHooplah
Phoenix
Joined: Jun 14, 2005
Age: 32
Posts: 1012
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| Posted: Mon Jan 16, 2006 9:27 am Post subject: |
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very clever poem - must have taken some time...
_________________
www.letsmakeamovie.co.uk - if we don't make it, then we are just an movie that couldn't be bothered to happen. Indifference is a virtue.... 
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The last thing I want to do is hurt you. But it's still on the list. |
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Sarcastic_Name
Don't look.
Joined: Mar 27, 2005
Age: 20
Posts: 3582
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| Posted: Mon Jan 16, 2006 9:32 am Post subject: |
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Double entendres are great for punning.
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(Currently undergoing personality reboot) |
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Litguy
Phoenix
Joined: Aug 18, 2005
Posts: 669
Location: New Jersey
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| Posted: Mon Jan 16, 2006 9:45 am Post subject: |
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| The poem makes me glad that I teach English to native speakers and not as a second language. |
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Namiko
snape-o-doodle
Joined: Jun 14, 2005
Posts: 2439
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| Posted: Mon Jan 16, 2006 12:11 pm Post subject: |
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English is a very difficult language to learn if you are not a native speaker. It is a combination of almost every European language and isn't very similar to any of them. Unlike Spanish/French/Italian, which can all be understood a little if you speak one of those languages.
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Itaque incipet.
All that glitters is not gold but at least it contains free electrons. |
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kevv729
Shai-Hulud
Joined: Sep 23, 2005
Posts: 2850
Location: SOUTH DAKOTA
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| Posted: Mon Jan 16, 2006 4:45 pm Post subject: |
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You just have to keep Your English simple and to the point to get Your point across. You do this by making sure the words that You use do not have any if possible double meanings. That is how I try to do it in the end.
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Come on My children lets All get Along Okay.
http://www.pearlsofwisdom.forumup.com |
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mjs82
Majestic Lord of the Sock Puppets
Joined: Jun 21, 2005
Posts: 2186
Location: Australia
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| Posted: Mon Jan 16, 2006 8:10 pm Post subject: |
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Why is it that when people talk to those who don't understand English well, THEY BEGIN TO TALK LOUDLY AS IF IT WILL HELP SOMEHOW AND... BEGIN... TO... TAKE... LONG... PAUSES... AND... (waves hands erratically) CRAZY... (waving) HAND... GESTURES??
_________________
Laugh amongst the dust and cobwebs... |
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MsTriste
OTS
Joined: Dec 08, 2005
Age: 44
Posts: 3373
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| Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2006 1:11 am Post subject: Re: The Answer! The trouble with English... |
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| hermit wrote: |
Double entendres...
It's all the fault of English... |
Double entendres are French! |
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