crazy English

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Every once in a while, I'm struck by how crazy the spelling rules are for English. The example that brought this to my mind was dealing with the letter "y" when it is at the end of a word. Sometimes, if a word ends with a "y", sometimes when you add a suffix like "ed", the letter is replaced with an "I". For example "Try - Tried." But it doesn't always happen. Like the word "enjoy". put it in the past tense, and its "enjoyed", not "enjoied." Like I said, the rules for spelling in English can be crazy.

Worth another outing...

Looking at Language Archives: English is a Crazy Language (© Richard Lederer 1996).

Extracts have appeared scattered across the web, but this is the original, on the author's own site. An extract is below, I highly recommend reading the lot.

Nonetheless, it is now time to face the fact that English is a crazy language -- the most lunatic and loopy and wifty and wiggy of all languages. In the crazy English language, the blackbird hen is brown, blackboards can be green or blue, and blackberries are green and then red before they are ripe. Even if blackberries were really black and blueberries really blue, what are strawberries, cranberries, elderberries, huckleberries, raspberries, and gooseberries supposed to look like?

 

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There are 10 kinds of people in the world - those who understand binary and those who don't...

As the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, then only left-handers are in their right mind!

The letter Y

Is it as simple as if the Y is following a vowel it remains as a Y, but if its following a consonant it turns into an I? I think the same applies to plurals as well. For example Pony/Ponies vs. Donkey/Donkeys.

D.L.

Ad the advice of my english

On the advice of my english teacher in secundary school I used Murphy's to get around the most difficult parts (no pun intended), got me out of a lot of scraps.

L1e

PS after carefull consideration, pun was unavoidable ;)

sdbvs

sdbvhs shvjks hvjks hxjkvhsosvhsioius ivh

English is hardly the only crazy one

... Spanish with all its irregular verbs and multiple conjugations and what not is not fun either. Every language has its difficulties. English has its difficulties (and its strength) in that it is a merging of a great number of languages. It has enough redundancy in words and sentence structure that allow even people with limited skill to get themselves understood.

Oh and lets not go into eastern languages like Chinese.

Then again there are people that have a real skill with languages.

Kim

There is a good Reason for All That !

If you get really into the subject of Anthropology, and study primitive human societies and the origins and evolution of mankind, you will find that language evolved firstly not for communicating messages or even amusing one another, but as a signalling system that indicated that you were a member of the band you are with or that you encounter on a dark night or in the gloom of the cave. It has retained this function, although we soon added the function of group grooming replacement by entertaining each other with songs and stories (it is widely thought by the experts that primitive human speech evolved from being sung rather than spoken- the most developed and advanced languages today are spoken with little if any music to the sounds, the older and less developed ones still have this element). Detailed exact instructions or scientific precision descriptions for example had to be developed from it using languages like Latin and Greek and many others for roots, once these functions became needed because we had reached that phase.

Now, when we come to English consider these points - A native British English speaker can hear two sentences from someone and already he can deduce a great deal about the person speaking - Is it a foreigner, or one from the "colonies", or a native speaker ? But also, from what gender, from what class in society, from which part of the country (dialects are give-aways) and how educated are they? All this because our language is complex enough and varied enough, to give all this information that fast! The language is deliberately spelled differently from how it is written, to signal who is not a native english speaker! It is made difficult with rules and exceptions to them simply so that one can detect how educated the speech partner or author when written stuff is examined, really is !

English is pretty wonderful because, more than ANY OTHER LANGUAGE IN THE WORLD, it has more words for the same thing, act or quality, than any other, and more words that are the same, even if spelled differently, that have more than one meaning. This allows for enormous nuances and flavours of meaning. It has become important for International Affairs and Business because, six people from six different countries, can all meet and discuss and agree something, and when they return home to report back they have all understood something different from the other five! That is why it is so succesful. We who were born here are lucky as it gives us an automatic advantage!

Briar

Briar

English is actually one of

English is actually one of the more 'easier to learn' languages. If I compare it to my mother tongue which is german: No competition whatsoever. Just read what Mark Twain wrote about it. ;) But anyway: I got criticised for the bad english grammar of some of my articles lately. So I came to the conclusion it's not as easy as I thought it was. - At least when it comes to write whole stories in it.

------------
"Life's a laugh and death's a joke. It's true.
You'll see it's all a show.
Keep 'em laughing as you go.
Just remember that the last laugh is on you."

------------
"Die Gedanken sind frei / Sie fliegen vorbei
Kein Mensch kann sie wissen / Kein Jäger sie schießen
Mit Kugeln und Blei / Die Gedanken sind frei"

Y oh Y...

Well, Y is one of those special letters, because it denotes a special range of sounds that can, depending on context, be either a vowel close to I (e.g. try) or a consonant close to J (e.g. enjoy). There are others - I and to lesser extent J can fall into the same slot of sometimes crossing the vowel/consonant border, which can be seen very well if you track the etymology of some words containing those sounds in different related languages. W can also be one of those, as it can denote a sound that can be found in the O to A transition (O as in tooth, A as in the British pronunciation of bath) (try saying [O-A]at instead of what, and cut the beginning and end of the transition).

Bath

Depends where in Britain you are!

Some pronounce it to rhyme with Cath, others pronounce it to rhyme with Garth. Similarly, path can be pronounced -a- or -ar-. The trouble even extends to placenames! Malvern is usually pronounced Moll-vurn, whereas some pronounce it Mal-vurn. Some people pronounce Shrewsbury as Shrowsbury.

Towcester is pronounced the same as toaster, similarly the -ce- is omitted from Worcester and Gloucester. But to throw a spanner in the works, Cirencester is pronounced Siren-sester, and Leominster is pronounced Lemster.

We also have some 'interesting' placenames. How about a visit to Hollywood, or view a New Invention. We've also got Nomansland, Beer, a London Apprentice and even the Looe (to name but a few)!

 

Bike Resources

There are 10 kinds of people in the world - those who understand binary and those who don't...

As the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, then only left-handers are in their right mind!