12 ms·
Weird English
- onos 5y agoWould like to “fix” the issue with the first few numbers after 10. They make it much harder to teach a young child the concept of base ten counting. Would be much easier if we would replace “ten” by “teny” then “eleven” -> “teny-one” etc.
- funnybeam 5y agoActually it should be "onety" and "onety-one". "ten" is as much of a problem as eleven and twelve. Mind you, I've always had a soft spot for dozenal so could quite happily go the other way, but I guess that's a different discussion
- ALittleLight 5y agoOne ten one, one ten two, etc is my preferred pronunciation for 11, 12...
- euroderf 5y agoHere trams are numbered 1 to 10, and the latter I tell my kid is "one oh", not "ten". No need to jump into place notation just yet (he's not yet two).
- bencollier49 5y agoI take the (facetious) position that English people don't learn other languages because we already learned at least two, if not three. cf. Uncleftish Beholding: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncleftish_Beholding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncleftish_Beholding
- LudwigNagasena 5y agoLearning a vocabulary with many sources is hardly comparable to learning a second language.
- bagacrap 5y agohence "facetious" annotation
- rjbwork 5y agoIndeed. I greatly enjoyed the recent Jeopardy category, "BOOK TITLES EN FRANCAIS". Essentially, "What is the English name of the novel when given the French title?" I aced it. Can I speak French? Hardly. Has enough Latin, Spanish, French, Italian, and other bits of Romantic verbiage seeped into my brain seemingly via osmosis over the course of my 3.5 decades to allow me to read basic French? Surprisingly, even to me, the answer is yes.
- marginalia_nu 5y agoMany European languages are interlinked like that. I found learning a bit of Latin on top of my passable English and my native Swedish opened up romance languages to a honestly pretty crazy degree. Knowing the simple glue-words like demonstratives, pronouns and interrogatives means I can get the gist of it in a way I couldn't before. In a strange way looking at these languages feels like looking like the close relatives of my native Swedish does (i.e. Norwegian and Danish). It's different, but in many cases I have so many of the basic pieces the rest can be inferred from context with reasonable accuracy.
- robin_reala 5y agoSwedish brought in a big corpus of words from French though (native English, passable Swedish, school French), due to diplomatic relations in the 1700s. So, e.g. Army: Danish hær, Norwegian hær, Swedish armé, French armée Ice-cream: Danish is, Norwegian is, Swedish glass, French glace Arm-chair: Danish lænestol, Norwegian lenestol, Swedish fåtölj, French fauteuil Window: Danish vindue, Norwegian vindu, Swedish fönster, French fenêtre (of course, a bunch of French also made its way into Danish and Norwegian as well. And the pronunciation is not always obvious either with French loanwords. I shocked my partner once while waiting at Postnord by saying out loud “Säger man kön (hard k) eller kön (soft k)?”)
- Tor3 5y agoNitpick - some of the variations between Swedish and Norwegian is because Swedish and Norwegian ended up with different words from Middle Low German, i.e. the differences stem back from the Hansa period, and not as late as the French relations of the 1700s. So, "fönster", for example, didn't get picked from French, it's from Middle Low German "vinster" (which became "finster, fynster" and then "fönster" in Swedish). In this case the Middle Low German word replaced the older Swedish word (which did have the same origin as the current Danish and Norwegian words for "window"), but that replacement didn't happen in Norwegian/Danish (in other cases one or both did pick up a word from Middle Low German, but it may have been a different word because the traders in Bergen weren't the same ones which operated in Sweden).
- Borrible 5y agoBlame on you. That happens, when you make your own language open source. They tinker and fork it without any shame.
- Asraelite 5y agoA funny thing is that there do exist "closed source" constructed languages whose use it legally restricted, like Loglan.
- Borrible 5y agoThe world is a really strange place... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loglan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loglan Thank you.
- bagacrap 5y agoor French
- Borrible 5y agoLe monde est peut-être un endroit étrange, mais il y a des endroits encore plus étranges... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toubon_Law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toubon_Law Merci beaucoup
- mdturnerphys 5y agoFor those interested in the development of the English language, I highly recommend this podcast: https://historyofenglishpodcast.com/ https://historyofenglishpodcast.com/
- mathieuh 5y agoPeople always seem to complain about the etymological spelling of English but I love it. I love being able to look at a word and quickly know what its likely origin language was and get an idea of its meaning. N.B. I'm not a prescriptivist and I don't really care how you spell something as long as I can make it out. I'm just interested in languages and think it's really cool that looking at English words is like peering into history. Fair, it makes it more difficult for learners, but I'm not sure how relevant that is for a language unless you debase languages to being simply brutal ways of conveying meaning.
- eesmith 5y agoDoes that make you especially dislike the "intentional meddling" of "snobs" on English? Look at the word "island" and you might think it comes from the Latin "isle". This is a false etymology created by "snobs" who considered "yland" to be a corruption of the Latin, rather than a word with Proto-Germanic roots.
- jan_Inkepa 5y ago>This is a false etymology created by "snobs" who considered "yland" to be a corruption of the Latin, rather than a word with Proto-Germanic roots. Do you have a reference for the top-down-because-of-snob-ness rather than more organic cross-polination/interference of similar words? https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/island#Etymology https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/island#Etymology gives it as being due to interference from the French-derived 'isle' (rather than from Latin, i.e. 'insula'), as does https://www.etymonline.com/word/island https://www.etymonline.com/word/island.
- eesmith 5y agoI used the term "snob" in quotes because that's the term used in the linked-to article. Here are the relevant parts: > Okrent mostly attributes English’s idiosyncrasies to the barbarians, the French, the printing press, and what she calls “the snobs.” ... > At other times, standardization was deliberate. Those whom Okrent labels “snobs,” primarily 18th-century linguists, publishers, and pedants addicted to “intentional meddling,” consciously manipulated the language. Their meddling included the introduction of the supposedly sophisticated silent letters in doubt, indict, receipt, and salmon, as well as the Hellenized spellings of medical terms that originated as diaria, asma¸ and fleume. Nearly all sources I can find point to that same Etymonline entry. My understanding is more like https://www.quora.com/Which-language-is-responsible-for-the-word-island-having-an-s-in-its-spelling?share=1 https://www.quora.com/Which-language-is-responsible-for-the-... : > British pedants, making a wrong guess, as they often did. Surprisingly, isle and island do not have the same origin. ... > Isle comes from the French île (courtesy of the Normans). In Middle English it was spelled ile or ille. .. > This ultimately comes from the Latin insula, and in Renaissance France some pedants tried to change it to isle, but ultimately failed. ... > British pedants had more success, having decided that spellings should indicate classical origins at the expense of pronunciation. This had the advantage that it made spelling harder for those without the benefit of a classical education, and provided an opportunity for schoolboys to mock their lesser colleagues. > They had some justification for isle (though it was a stupid rule). However, they also changed iland to island, incorrectly assuming common origins. The "indicate classical origins" is from the (false) belief that this word came from Latin. https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/349393/dictionary-misprint https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/349393/dictionar... quotes the OED as: > The ordinary Middle English and early modern English form was iland, yland. ... In 15th cent. the first part of the word began to be associated with the synonymous ile, yle (of French origin), and sometimes analytically written ile-land; and when ile was spelt isle, iland erroneously followed it as isle-land, island; the latter spelling became established as the current form before 1700.
- causi 5y agoI highly recommend McWhorter's Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue.
- tpoindex 5y agoAlso highly recommended, John McWhorter's podcast, Lexicon Valley. Not only English, but also dives into other languages and why they are so. Edit: add older episode archives at Slate, https://www.booksmartstudios.org/s/lexicon-valley https://www.booksmartstudios.org/s/lexicon-valley (current) https://slate.com/podcasts/lexicon-valley https://slate.com/podcasts/lexicon-valley (archive)
- rvba 5y agoWhat I find interesting is that English speakers will rather invent a new language than use an already existing one. Klingon, Dothraki, the belter language in "The expanse" - all tv shows try hard to create something new. And I dont think politics is the reason here.
- rich_sasha 5y agoTolkien also invented at least three full languages (Elvish, Orkish, Dwarvish). Though I believe he was well-versed in languages in the world so it's not learning laziness from his side.
- dghf 5y agoIncoming pedantry: IIRC, Tolkien "only" invented two full languages, Sindarin ("Grey Elvish") and Quenya ("High Elvish"), if "full" means you could write a letter or have a conversation in it. He did create the foundations and some vocabulary for several others, like (as you mentioned) Dwarvish, and the Black Speech of Mordor, and Westron (a.k.a. the Common Speech), the language represented in the books by English (with "real" Westron words, names, etc. confined to the appendices): but I don't think he fleshed these out to the same degree he did the Elvish languages. Many of these were influenced by real languages: Sindarin by Welsh, Quenya by Finnish, and Dwarvish by (I think) Semitic languages. As you pointed out, he knew a lot about linguistics. As for Orkish: I'm sure Tolkien makes a point of saying orcs had no language of their own; rather, they used a particularly crude form of the Common Speech, often peppered with words from the Black Speech. (This is the in-story reason why the protagonists in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are able to understand and be understood by goblins and orcs.) Anyway, none of this detracts from your point: invention of fictional languages does not imply a reluctance to get to grips with actual non-English languages, at least not in the case of J.R.R. Tolkien. /end pedantry
- rich_sasha 5y agoI don't have much to say, other than it's nice to meet other (more knowledgable too) language nerds. Have a good day :)
- altacc 5y agoEnglish is a beautiful slow motion car crash of multiple languages & influences and the result is a great language but I do pity anyone trying to learn it. When I was having difficulty learning the rules & oddities of another language, it really helped me to look back at English and remember that there are so many oddities, inconsistencies and variances, that most other European languages are easy to master in comparison.
- rich_sasha 5y agoI sympathise with the view (non-native English speaker from Europe). While it's true English has a ton of inconsistencies, complications etc. they tend to happen at a slightly higher level I think. There is a reasonably big subset of English that is quite easy. French and German, not to mention Polish, are much harder to learn IMO, since the difficulties are up-front. Some examples: - French conjugation of verbs is a whole world of its own - German has noun cases, and you have to remember what verb comes with which cases - Tenses in English are quite nicely organised into a Cartesian product of {past, present, future} x {simple, perfect, continuous}. It's fiddly to learn which one to use, but it's a plug-and-play use after that. By contrast, French has similar tenses, but spread around (not homomorphic to the nice Cartesian product, if you like). Plus, agreeing tenses ("sequence of tenses" apparently), OMG - Nouns are non-gendered in English, and gendered in most European languages. Yes, a ship is a she, and referring to people or animals you use he/she etc. but in Polish and French, every word has a hidden, often undeducible gender you just have to know. Can't remember if German has rules for noun gender. - English is very economical with words; nouns, derived verbs and adjectives are often the same word (e.g. "speed" the noun and "to speed", i.e. drive too fast). No such luck other side of the Channel. Similarly, "mouse"+"trap" -> "mousetrap". In French -> "piege a souris" ("trap for mouse"). - Comparing to Polish is a bit futile, but let's just mention nasty things English doesn't have: double numbers, in addition to singular and plural (one hen, two hens, ten hens will be "[one] kura", "[two] kury", "[ten] kur"), verb aspect (whether an action is completed or not), 7 noun cases, 22 conjugation groups, stem mutation on conjugation and inflection), nouns conjugate differently by gender, and of course genders have to be agreed between nouns and adjectives... just to name a few :)
- 5y ago
- geertj 5y agoObligatory link to The Chaos by Gerard Nolst Trenité: https://ncf.idallen.com/english.html https://ncf.idallen.com/english.html
- jccalhoun 5y agoI'm amazed at how many different words UK and USA English have for the same thing. Even though I started watching UK tv shows on PBS in the 80s, I started watching Taskmaster on youtube and I hear unfamiliar words for things all the time. The one from last night was "pedal bin." Before they showed what it was I was imagining some kind of bicycle with a trash can on it but it was a trash can whose lid opens when you step on the pedal. I don't think we have a separate name for that in the USA.
- bagacrap 5y agoApparently it's usually "step trash can". I have to credit the Brits once again for their wordsmithery, as pedal bin is substantially more mellifluous imo. "Bin it" is also a lot more efficient than "throw it out" and less harsh than "trash it." (Although we do also use "toss it", that seems less common.)
- bagacrap 5y agoMy biggest English language peeve of the moment is the rise in prevalence of "have a nice rest of your day", which appears to be a mashup of "have a nice day" and "enjoy the rest of your day". No matter how much I hear it, it sounds disfluent due to the mismatched particle ("a rest of"). What seems like it started as an honest flub has taken root and is now used intentionally and extensively, especially by grocery checkers. (I argue this rant is on-topic because it's a "weird", i.e. grammatically inconsistent, turn of phrase.
- archduck 5y agoIt's no different from "a nice time in the islands," "a runty pick of the litter," etc. What's probably tripping you up is that "rest" is usually a noun that takes predicative adjective rather than an attributive adjective. It's more common to hear "The rest of my day was nice," but less common to hear "the nice rest of my day." But despite the ostensible grammaticality of the noun phrase here, frequency still plays a huge role in determining what we deem acceptable, so it's not sufficient to argue as a counterpoint e.g. "a nice rest of your day" is perfectly fine like these other analogously formed noun phrases, checkmate ... Language doesn't work like that. I'd argue that your point is actually best articulated simply as "it just sounds weird," rather than calling it any kind of flub, grammatical or otherwise.
- euroderf 5y ago"Have a nice day." "No thanks. I have other plans."
- seanhunter 5y agoTwo of my favourites: - Why do we have guarantee and warrantee that mean essentially the same thing? (Because one word was imported into English from French at two different periods in history) - Why do we have child -> children, brother -> bretheren (obv archaic but still would be understood by most people) but no other plurals that work that way? You can't say one sister many sistren for example. Even though that word existed in Old English it didn't survive into modern English.
- mbg721 5y agoI have heard, I think from a user on here, that crimes are often listed as a pair of synonyms (e.g. "aiding and abetting") because one word was Norman French and the other was English, and the law required both to be understood.
- yissp 5y agoOn a similar note, I've heard that the words for animals, like cow or pig, tend to be Germanic while the words for their meat, like beef or pork tend to be Latin.
- seanhunter 5y agoThe food/meat words are actually from French because that was what the aristocratic classes would have spoken in England in the late middle ages/early Rennaisance and they were the people eating the meat for the most part. Beef <- Boeuf Pork <- Porc Poultry <- Poulet Salmon <- Saumon Venison <- Venaison Mutton <- Mouton The latin words are in some cases the root of the French but it's not as clear or consistent.
- yissp 5y agoWhat about ox -> oxen?
- euroderf 5y agoNot to mention VAX -> VAXen.
- euroderf 5y agoWe have a 2yo we're trying to teach both Finnish (which has near-perfect letter/sound correspondence) and English (barf). But many English words are learned purely by sight ("one", "two", and myriad others), so I want to teach English spelling by using the correct letters but with visual cues (i.e. letter-level CSS styling) about which letters are not pronounced, or pronounced not as they look. Has anyone else tried this ? Would love to trade notes.