Posted on 02/13/2024 7:21:59 AM PST by OneVike
I’ve always wondered how one, struggling to learn English, deals with such homophones as way, weigh, whey.
“Once” is the word that really gets me, how do you get that pronunciation out of that?
English don’t need no steenking grammar rules...
French is pretty tough, too. French is a very degraded form of Latin (with things from Celtic and Germanic languages added). Once you know the roots of words, German and the Slavic language aren’t so terrible, but French strayed from its Latin roots. Spanish vocabulary is closer to Latin and clearer. That’s my opinion anyway, but I took French in high school and didn’t put in much effort.
“Basic English” was an idea about teaching a simple English vocabulary and translating everything into that. What the creators didn’t understand was that those simple words had to be combined in unexpected idiomatic ways to say anything. The different uses of the word “up” cited in the article illustrate the problem.
This very good and Biblically relevant, since the Bible itself, as a document of almost 800,000 words, from about 40 different writers of various occupations, covering two basic covenants, and using two languages (with a third being very limited), contains many literary genres (including Law, History, Wisdom, Poetry, Epistles, Prophecy, etc.) along with multitude figures of speech including euphemism, circumlocution, metaphor, allegory, allusion hyperbole, understatement, idiom, sarcasm, personification, pun, simile, synecdoche, etc.), within a vast number of contexts; and compiled over a period of approx. 1600 years while covering vast expanses of time, and existing in thousands of manuscripts of copies of copies of varying qualities.
And as meant to be a reflection of God, the scope and depth of human language is a primary distinction btwn man and animals (though they can excel in aspects relative to their function.
Yes I know my archive links down the page to the right are broken, but I am in the process of trying to fix it, but I lost my support technician, and now I must learn the workings of the software before I can fix what is broken. At least the top drop down venues are now working
I am not a coder, and used OpenOffice to make mine, but I myself prefer more compact, colorful and comprehensive layout, with sections (I am on a desktop vs. smartphone, which simply cannot compare as re. Internet research and reading). But Google refuses to index all but a little of our own site. I believe that salvation is the gift of God offered to man by grace and received by personal faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and that this faith is manifested in works pleasing to God (Ephesians 2:18-20; Titus 2:11-14). I believe that all true believers once saved shall be kept saved forever (Romans 8:1, 38-39; John 10:27-30; I Corinthians 1:4-8).
Too brief, and I must disagree with OSAS.
In brief, I express in conversion, one is spiritually born of the Spirit (Jn. 3:2-7) by effectual penitent, heart-purifying, regenerating faith in the Divine Son of God (http://peacebyjesus.net/deityofchrist.html) and Lord of all, (Acts 10:43-47; 15:7-9) sent be the Father to be the Savior of the world, (1 Jn. 4:14) who saves sinners by His sinless shed blood.
And which faith is imputed for righteousness, (Romans 4:5) and is shown in baptism and following the Lord, (Acts 2:38-47; Jn. 10:27, 28) whom they shall go to be with or His return (Phil 1:23; 2Cor. 5:8 [“we”]; Heb, 12:22,23; 1Cor. 15:51ff'; 1Thess. 4:17)
In contrast to those who were never born of the Spirit or who terminally fall away. (Gal. 5:1-4; Heb. 3:12; 10:25-39) Glory and thanks be to God.
How would one say “cockeyed”?
George Bernard Shaw, IIRC.
The Ancient Romans had many words for “kill” : “necare”, “interficere”, etc. Each culture has an extensive vocabulary to meet their “peculiar” needs. I guess Innuits and Swedes would have many different words for snow. Arabic probably has one. I Wonder how many words there are for buffalo in Lakota? I know only one: Tatanka. PolynesIan must have many words for “wave” ( as in ocean wave). Anyone who struggled through German knows their abysmal propensity for stringing a long series of words together to describe one object or idea where English adopts relatively shorter Anglicized Greco-Latin terms. On the whole, I stand by my
prior statement on English.
When I was a youngster, I sometimes looked in the dictionary for interesting things. The word that that really stood out was “strike”.
You can strike, enact a blow, upon a face.
You get a strike when you fail to strike a baseball.
A strike in bowling is knocking down all the pins.
One form of labor action through a union is a strike.
The strike of a match is to cause friction in such a way as to ignite it.
A striking woman merits a second look.
A strike price has to do with stock trades.
etc. etc.
You can prick your finger, but don’t finger your ........
Charles Ollier’s son. Kids those days, I’ll tell ya. lol
Bookmark.
It isn’t really easy, but it’s interesting and fun. But I can understand how confusing it would be to ESL people.
Once I got my nephews giggling when I explained how “ghoti” is pronounced “fish”.
In high school, I learned that Latin is hard. I figured it out within a few weeks, but I was committed to three years, so I suffered. (One of my most valuable classes, along with Personal Typing, for the future.)
Try Chinese. Make sure all your personal affairs are in order,
And English often gives you the choice of using the Latin or Anglo-Saxon derived version of a particular word. They’ll mean the same thing but if you want to sound sophisticated or perhaps be more precise you can use the Latin version whereas the Anglo-Saxon word is usually shorter and folksier sounding. I read an interesting book once about the prose style of Abraham Lincoln whose author pointed out that Lincoln had a distinct preference for Anglo-Saxon over Latinate words, which helped him sound relatable while expressing lofty ideas.
English...the Mother Tongue.
Let’s eat kids!
Let’s eat, kids!
Punctuation matters, too. It saves lives!
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