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Author | Topic: On the evolution of English as a written or spoken language. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
jar Member (Idle past 421 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined:
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One problem with language is that English is, as anyone can sea, a very elusive tongue. When a gnu word or phrase comes along it is readily added two the body of language. English can be as light as heir or as heavy as led. It can be soft as flower sifted through your fingers. It often can be only understood when red in context and many associations can be maid as the language grows. Know one can really tell when something is knew or simply an adaptation of what others new already. It flows along like the see, wave upon wave two the end of Thyme. I wood wish that it was easier four the audience to understand but fore many it is like trying to see the trees threw the would or the flour in the meadow. When I wright I always try to make sure that the spelling is write, however bee four warned that I often make mistakes. Bear with me and try to judge what is fare. Life is a slim read and bends in the wind; hear today, goon tomorrow..
Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!
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bluescat48 Member (Idle past 4216 days) Posts: 2347 From: United States Joined: |
Years ago a local radio station ran a segment call the "Correct Improper Spelling."
ie:pheier = fire Also one English spelling combination is totally ridiculous, that is "ough." rough (ruf)cough (cof) bough (bow) through (throo) thought (thot) There is no better love between 2 people than mutual respect for each other WT Young, 2002 Who gave anyone the authority to call me an authority on anything. WT Young, 1969 Since Evolution is only ~90% correct it should be thrown out and replaced by Creation which has even a lower % of correctness. W T Young, 2008
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Coyote Member (Idle past 2133 days) Posts: 6117 Joined: |
Robert A. Heinlein, The Door Into Summer:
Though the tough cough and hiccough plough him through. Edited by Coyote, : Punctuation
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1371 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
there's a dr seuss book called "the tough coughs and he ploughs the dough". it only rhymes on paper.
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dwise1 Member Posts: 5949 Joined: Member Rating: 5.2 |
Also one English spelling combination is totally ridiculous, that is "ough." rough (ruf)cough (cof) bough (bow) through (throo) thought (thot) Which leads us to a classic I Love Lucy episode. Pregnant Lucy wants them, especially including Ricky, to take English lessons so that the baby will learn proper English. So to convince him of the necessity, she has him read a children's book as a bedtime story. It is filled with -ough words and each one is pronounced differently than the previous one and Ricky tries to pronounce each new one as the previous one. Hans Conried is the English tutor:Hans: There are two words I never want to hear. One is "swell", the other is "lousy." Lucy: Swell. What's the lousy one? And they reiterate that once or twice more. Hans recites the English vowel sounds and has each recite them back. It comes to Ricky:Ricky (en puro espaol cubano): A, e, i, o, u. Hans: Wherever did you learn that? Ricky (otra vez en puro espaol cubano): Havana, Cuba. What's your excuse? Having formerly been Mexican by marriage, ... .
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dwise1 Member Posts: 5949 Joined: Member Rating: 5.2
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The big problem with English is that there are so many homonyms (the loose definition of having the same sound but different spellings). Many "grammar" lessons revolve around distinguishing between such words as "there", "their", and "they're", or "your" and "you're", etc, which have very different meanings and yet the same sound. That's not really grammar (relating to the structure of the language), but rather word choice.
I don't know the history of reading education. All I know is that I hear about how phonetics had destroyed spelling, and yet I read in words, not in sounds. So a lot of posts I read by native English speakers I find to be very difficult to understand, because they constantly choose the wrong words. For example, on a programming forum, someone had a question about C code to implement a Barber poll. OK, I thought, must be a statistical polling method I hadn't heard of, so I asked for more info. Oh, it's that twirly thing hanging in front of a barber shop. Made me seriously want to reach through those wires to slap that fool up the side of the head! I'll have more tomorrow when I'm on a different system. Win7 refuses to support my Palm Pilot. Apparently some new definition of "progress" that I hadn't heard before.
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frako Member (Idle past 332 days) Posts: 2932 From: slovenija Joined: |
Interestingly English is supposed to be a Germanic language tough it is not very close to other Germanic languages.
For instance i can understand most Slavic languages if they speak really slow and use their hands Sure there are some differences that sometimes make you laugh like the Slovakian terms for blow(as in using your lungs to produce a wind current) is Fukati, in Slovenian Fukati means to have sex, and the Slovenian word pihati (blow) means to have sex in Slovakian. Tough their grammar and most of the other words sound very similar. It is real funny to watch the reaction of people say on the beach when few Slovakians try to inflate a beach ball, and one of them cries fukaj, fukaj, fukaj, and the whole beach looks at them going wtf. Or when a Slovenian cop stopped a Slovakian friend of mine and the cop said well you will have to step out of the car and blow (as in preform an alco test), you could see the fear in my friends eyes On the same note if you compare other Germanic languages to English is not even closely as similar. Sure a few key words sound closely the same as mutter, mother, father, Vater. Tough the more you distance your self from the most used words the grater the difference is.
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bluegenes Member (Idle past 2504 days) Posts: 3119 From: U.K. Joined: |
frako writes: Interestingly English is supposed to be a Germanic language tough it is not very close to other Germanic languages. In 1066, England was invaded and conquered by the Norman French. Over the next few centuries the Germanic base, which had arrived with post-Roman Empire Germanic tribes, mixed with the French. So, we have a bastard language with a mixture of Germanic and Latin roots. So, your view that English is not very Germanic is partly true. Well done!
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Parasomnium Member Posts: 2224 Joined: |
I've heard that English has a vocabulary that's roughly twice as large as those of other European languages, and that this is due to the fact that English has adopted very many words from other languages (notably Latin) and anglicized them. So for a great many concepts there exist at least two words in English: a word with an Anglo-Saxon root, and one with a Latin root. The anglicized Latin words are often the posher ones.
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.
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Parasomnium Member Posts: 2224 Joined: |
Does anyone know how to pronounce "ghoti" in English?
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.
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frako Member (Idle past 332 days) Posts: 2932 From: slovenija Joined: |
Does anyone know how to pronounce "ghoti" in English? If you mean how one used to pronounce gothithe same way you now pronounce fish English orthography is the alphabetic spelling system used by the English language. English orthography, like other alphabetic orthographies, uses a set of habits to represent speech sounds in writing. In most other languages, these habits are regular enough so that they may be called rules. In standard English spelling, however, nearly every sound is spelled in more than one way, and most spellings and all letters can be pronounced in more than one way and often in many different ways. This is partly due to the complex history of the English language,[1] but mainly due to the fact that no systematic spelling reform has been implemented in English, contrary to the situation in most other languages.
English orthography - Wikipedia
Ghoti is a constructed word used to illustrate irregularities in English spelling. It is a respelling of the word fish, and like fish, is pronounced /ˈfɪʃ/. Its components include: * gh, pronounced /f/ as in tough /tʌf/;* o, pronounced /ɪ/ as in women /ˈwɪmɪn/; and * ti, pronounced /ʃ/ as in nation /ˈne͡ɪʃən/. The first known published reference is in 1874, citing an 1855 letter that credits ghoti to one William Ollier (born 1824).[1] Ghoti is often cited to support the English spelling reform, and is often attributed to George Bernard Shaw,[2] a supporter of this cause. However, a biography of Shaw attributes it instead to an anonymous spelling reformer.[3] Similar constructed words exist that demonstrate English idiosyncrasies, but ghoti is the most widely recognized. Linguists have protested that the placement of the letters in the constructed word are inconsistent with the claimed pronunciation. Ghoti - Wikipedia
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bluegenes Member (Idle past 2504 days) Posts: 3119 From: U.K. Joined: |
Parasomnium writes: So for a great many concepts there exist at least two words in English: a word with an Anglo-Saxon root, and one with a Latin root. The anglicized Latin words are often the posher ones. It was a bit like that. The Normans were the ruling class. That invasion (French example, like all "ion" ending words) is the reason (French) we have so many alternatives (French). Edited by bluegenes, : capitalized "french" for arachnophilia.
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JonF Member (Idle past 195 days) Posts: 6174 Joined: |
George Bernard Shaw:
Ghoti
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Jon Inactive Member |
Does anyone know how to pronounce "ghoti" in English? 'Ghoti' is a funny one; a great and ironic example of how English orthography is not as willy-nilly as some would claim. No one lacking serious background on its history would ever pronounce it [fɪʃ]. Jon Check out No webpage found at provided URL: Apollo's Temple! Ignorance is temporary; you should be able to overcome it. - nwr
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Panda Member (Idle past 3739 days) Posts: 2688 From: UK Joined: |
Parasomnium writes: It is not 'fish'. Does anyone know how to pronounce "ghoti" in English?quote:Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 I would go for 'Goaty' or 'Gotty'.
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