Posted on 02/13/2024 7:21:59 AM PST by OneVike
This is a light hearted post to make you think. Remember, the more you know, the more you know you don't know. Take the American English language for instance. It is without a doubt the most confusing language on the planet. Ask anyone from around the world and they will tell you that the American English language is one of the most difficult to grasp and comprehend. When I consider how difficult it can be to understand our language, I am reminded of Albert Einstein, who just happened to be one of the most intelligent men to have ever lived. Well this is what he had to say about,
Well, let s take a look at the reasons American English is probably the most difficult language to master.
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?
21) The plural of mouse is mice. The plural of house is ....? The plural of spouse is ....?
22) We eat what we can and what we can't, we can.
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.
PS. - Why doesn't 'Buick' rhyme with 'quick' ?
You lovers of the English language might enjoy this. There is a two-letter word that perhaps has more meanings than any other two-letter word, and that is 'UP.
It's easy to understand UP meaning toward the sky or at the top of the list, but when we awaken in the morning, why do we wake UP? At a meeting, why does a topic come UP? Why do we speak UP and why are the officers UP for election and why is it UP to the secretary to write UP a report?
We call UP our friends. And we use it to brighten UP a room, polish UP the silver; we warm UP the leftovers and clean UP the kitchen. We lock UP the house and some guys fix UP the old car. At other times the little word has real special meaning. People stir UP trouble, line UP for tickets, work UP an appetite, and think UP excuses. To be dressed is one thing, but to be dressed UP is special.
And this UP is confusing: A drain must be opened UP because it is stopped UP. We open UP a store in the morning but we close it UP at night.
We seem to be pretty mixed UP about UP!
To be knowledgeable about the proper uses of UP, look the word UP in the dictionary. In a desk-sized dictionary, it takes UP almost 1/4th of the page and can add UP to about thirty definitions. If you are UP to it, you might try building UP a list of the many ways UP is used. It will take UP a lot of your time, but if you don't give UP, you may wind UP with a hundred or more. When it threatens to rain, we say it is clouding UP. When the sun comes out we say it is clearing UP.
When it rains, it wets the earth and often messes things UP.
When it doesn't rain for awhile, things dry UP . One could go on and on, but I'll wrap it UP for now my time is UP, so ... it is time to shut UP !
My last words on this some food for thought.
What is the first thing you do in the morning & the last thing you do at night? U-P
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Most difficult languages are Navajo, Finnish and Hungarian.
Interestingly they all originated from the Altai mountains of central Asia.
To paraphrase Kelly Bundy, regarding her poor grades in English, “So what? Like I’m ever gonna go to England.”
it is said that the English Language is the only language that allows one to say exactly what they mean...
Words do mean things, and words do mean things.
enjoy that one
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“Stop a head” it’s a trick... there is no head
“Fine for littering” again, a trick, it’s not fine to litter, it will cost you!
“No, U-turn” once again, a trick... do not turn! You get a fine! And you didn’t even litter!
“End roadwork” (who allowed protestors to put protest signs up like that on busy roadways anyways?)
Try Mandarin sometime. Each word can mean at least 5 different things.
For example Yenjing (sp) can mean eyes, eye glasses or penis plus a couple others I forget.
[[words do mean things]]
Only to the easily offended (ie democrats)
All true. But I have found Slavic languages to be impenetrable.
A.ot of our words are very similar to German and also to other languages like Spanish. German though is kinda close to English for many words
Brazilian Comedian Rafi Bastos has a pretty funny take on English:
I passed Latin and German proficiencies back in the day, mainly because I had a decent memory for vocabulary and was fast with a dictionary. I learned neither as a spoken language. I do not pretend to any expertise in linguistics.
That said, my layman’s response when this comes up in conversation is that English is an easy language to learn to speak semi-passably; varieties of pigeon English seem to crop up spontaneously, almost like an invasive weed, everywhere from remote Pacific islands to sub-Saharan Africa to Appalachia to urban ghettos.
English is an great linguistic stew agglomerated through waves of conquest of the British Isles amplified by centuries of colonial and commercial expansion. Declensions and conjugations ... dustbin of history. Hard rules of structure ... dustbin of history. Vocabulary ... completely open. Etc.
We are left with an amalgam that lends itself to improvisation but that is so open that it cannot really be “mastered.” How do you “master” something with so few rules? As it stands now, it is the world’s best language for humor, for irony, for wild creativity, for indirect and hidden meanings ... and for misunderstandings among even fluent English speakers, let alone the pigeon English speakers.
Using English with precision requires extra care. And understanding one’s audience is a high art. I don’t think any other major world language has this character — though I wouldn’t bet against something from India coming close.
American English especially keeps 'em guessing.
There's not using normal procedures. They're using some kind of code.
So many UPS!
Then can you believe it? Word of the *Deliverer* has gone out throughout the camp, so what does the Dark Side DO?
It goes after the *deliveries.*
Foolish porch pirates.
Well, if you have plural spouses, it can get spicy.
“Why Can’t the English” (From My Fair Lady)
Oh, why can’t the English learn to set
A good example to people whose
English is painful to your ears?
The Scotch and the Irish leave you close to tears.
There even are places where English completely
Disappears. In America, they haven’t used it for years!
Currently, I enjoy using Duolingo daily. German, Welsh, Spanish, Italian, Gaelic, Irish, Japanese. German gets the most use as I don't want to lose the original proficiency. I finished the Welsh course. It is since been enhanced, so there is room for another round to grow vocabulary. The Scots Gaelic voice synthesis is not great. Sentences are spoken with discrete words "pasted" together. Words spoken by males and females of different ages. By comparison, the German and Welsh synthesis are very good.
A couple moved in next to us. He was a Senior master sergeant in the army and she was a Russian who worked as a translator for the UN. They met in Japan where they were both stationed. She spoke several languages fluently. Her English sounded a great deal like Audrey Hepburn’s character Eliza Doolittle after she had received training from Professor Henry Higgins. I asked if she had seen the movie, My Fair Lady but she had no idea what I was talking about.
Her husband was sent abroad for a year and she went back to live in Russia with her parents in Vladivostok during that time period. When she and their child came back the toddler was bilingual with an impressive vocabulary. She would talk to us in English and then get on the phone with her grandmother and prattle away in Russian.
A friend from work commented that the penalty for bigamy is two wives.
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