A bit difficult language, perhaps

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Profile Bill Walker
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Message 1499252 - Posted: 3 Apr 2014, 18:33:55 UTC

In English, we park on driveways and drive on parkways.

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Message 1499603 - Posted: 4 Apr 2014, 7:23:59 UTC - in response to Message 1499252.  

In English, we park on driveways and drive on parkways.


What a coincidence, we do too.
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Message 1499864 - Posted: 4 Apr 2014, 20:30:47 UTC

In English a door can be a jar.....
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Message 1499883 - Posted: 4 Apr 2014, 21:25:09 UTC

Two people can go to the east, and go too far!
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Message 1499890 - Posted: 4 Apr 2014, 21:39:15 UTC
Last modified: 4 Apr 2014, 21:50:54 UTC

I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble, but not you
On hiccough, thorough, slough, and through?
Well done! And now you wish, perhaps
To learn of less familiar traps?

Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird.
And dead; it's said like bed, not bead;
For goodness sake, don't call it deed!
Watch out for meat and great and threat,
(they rhyme with suite and straight and debt)
A moth is not a moth in mother.
Nor both in bother, broth in brother.

And here is not a match for there.
And dear and fear for bear and pear.
And then there's dose and rose and lose --
Just look them up -- and goose and choose.
And cork and work and card and ward,
And font and front and word and sword.
And do and go, then thwart and cart.
Come, come, I've hardly made a start.

A dreadful language? Why, man alive,
I'd learned to talk it when I was five,
And yet to write it, the more I tried,
I hadn't learned it at fifty-five!


Not mine. :^) Although, I do play at recitals yet recite at plays. My house may burn up or it may burn down, but my computer may burn out if I don't give it a thorough burn in. My alarm goes off by going on. I fill out forms by filling them in. I'm a vegetarian because I eat vegetables, so don't think I want to be a humanitarian. And why is "abbreviated" such a long word?
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Message 1499895 - Posted: 4 Apr 2014, 22:04:04 UTC

My alarm goes off by going on


Just like Windoz, you turn it off by hitting
the 'on' button......
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Message 1500035 - Posted: 5 Apr 2014, 5:29:36 UTC - in response to Message 1499864.  

In English a door can be a jar.....


... and a jam.

They can also be alarmed but always look so calm...
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Profile Graham Middleton

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Message 1500245 - Posted: 5 Apr 2014, 18:28:23 UTC - in response to Message 1500157.  

I think I can sign in, sign out, sign on, sign off, sign for, sign away.

Can sign up, too. But can I sign down?



Only if you're deaf.
Happy Crunching,

Graham

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Profile Graham Middleton

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Message 1501524 - Posted: 8 Apr 2014, 21:40:53 UTC

A friend sent me this & I thought it might be appropriate here...




You think English is easy? I think a retired English teacher was bored.

THIS IS GREAT!

Read all the way to the end

This took a lot of work to put together!



1) The bandage was wound around the wound.

2) The farm was used to produce produce.

3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.

4) We must polish the Polish furniture.

5) He could lead if he would get the lead out.

6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.

7) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.

8) A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.

9) When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.

10) I did not object to the object.

11) The insurance was invalid for the invalid.

12) There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.

13) They were too close to the door to close it.

14) The buck does funny things when the does are present.

15) A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.

16) To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.

17) The wind was too strong to wind the sail.

18) Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.

19) I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.

20) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?

Let's face it - English is a crazy language. There is no egg in eggplant, nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren't invented in England or French fries in France . Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat. We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.

And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham? If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn't the plural of booth, beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese? One index, 2 indices? Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend? If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?

If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat? Sometimes I think all the English speakers should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane. In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell?

How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites? You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which, an alarm goes off by going on.

English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race, which, of course, is not a race at all. That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible.
Happy Crunching,

Graham

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Message 1501643 - Posted: 9 Apr 2014, 9:50:01 UTC - in response to Message 1501524.  

Nice post Graham :) and try EXPLAINING all that in minute detail in a minute! I still remember trying to explain to my son when we lived in a flat that we lived in a flat that just wasn't flat, and that other flats, whilst also being a flat, were also not flat. :)
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Message 1501703 - Posted: 9 Apr 2014, 14:33:51 UTC - in response to Message 1501524.  

8) A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.

They should have painted the bass on the base of the bass drum.
David
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Waiting for a message from a small furry creature from Alpha Centauri.

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Message 1501780 - Posted: 9 Apr 2014, 17:32:39 UTC - in response to Message 1501703.  

8) A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.

They should have painted the bass on the base of the bass drum.



Bassically true.
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Message 1502194 - Posted: 10 Apr 2014, 16:28:57 UTC

So where do you paint on a snare drum?


Preferably not on the skin, doesn't sound too good...
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Message 1502229 - Posted: 10 Apr 2014, 17:17:56 UTC

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Profile Bill Walker
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Message 1502415 - Posted: 10 Apr 2014, 22:44:21 UTC

Now there is a proper Englishman, using proper pronunciation, eh Chris?

Interesting rhymes:

Hallelujah / peculiar

Dough / know / no

and so on ...

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Message 1502570 - Posted: 11 Apr 2014, 7:26:58 UTC - in response to Message 1502556.  

The words that ofen give people the most trouble are the ones with ough in them

Through
Bough
rough
Bought
Thorough



Tough though...;)
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Message 1502703 - Posted: 11 Apr 2014, 15:54:38 UTC

I had a school mate once named Hough....
Huff!
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Message 1502736 - Posted: 11 Apr 2014, 17:00:28 UTC - in response to Message 1502623.  

Bought (ort)
Thorough (rah)


Do you really pronounce bought as "bort" and thorough as "thurrah" ?
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Message 1502757 - Posted: 11 Apr 2014, 17:35:23 UTC - in response to Message 1502747.  

I don't get the adding in the r in a word that doesn't have an r, like bought. My mother used to do the same thing with wash; she'd pronounce it worsh. Like George Worshington or go worsh up your face before dinner. Seems odd to me. ;-)
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Message 1502775 - Posted: 11 Apr 2014, 18:11:33 UTC - in response to Message 1502757.  

I don't get the adding in the r in a word that doesn't have an r, like bought. My mother used to do the same thing with wash; she'd pronounce it worsh. Like George Worshington or go worsh up your face before dinner. Seems odd to me. ;-)

Some parts of the US do that. Generally, the farther northeast you go, the more pronounced it is (the guys on This Old House do it a lot, and Maine is really bad), but it's also in the middle latitudes of the Midwest -- for example, in the song "I'm just a girl who cain't say no" from Oklahoma1, Ado Annie sings "just when I orta say nix." In downstate Illinois, you go to the store to buy grosheries.

"Generic American accent"2 doesn't do it. Most American actors have had whatever regional accent they grew up with trained out of them, unless a role calls for it. National newscasters too; Dan Rather is from Texas, but rarely sounded like it on the air.

Pavement is whatever the surface of a road is.

1 I once commented that when I listened to the audio books of the Campion mysteries, the British narrator made all the Americans sound like they were from Oklahoma, even if they were supposed to be from New York or Atlanta or Boston.

2 Sounds a lot like standard Canadian accent, except they pronounce "out and about" as "oat and aboat." Tragically, they also do this in Minnesoder.

David
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Waiting for a message from a small furry creature from Alpha Centauri.

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Message boards : Cafe SETI : A bit difficult language, perhaps


 
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