Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Off Topic 21 Reasons Why The English Language Is So Hard To Learn

I'm sure there are lots of members who can appreciate this!!

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) After a number of injections my jaw got number.
19) Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.
20) I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.
21) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?

Whew!

I take it you already know
of tough and bough and cough and dough.
Others may stumble, but not you,
On hiccough, thorough, laugh 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,
Nor dear and fear for pear and bear.
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? Man alive,
I'd mastered it when I was five!
-anonymous (as far as I know)

*

Most importantly, how much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?

Julie

UHHHHHHHH ????????????


Stupid Braz girl

A canner can can a can,
but a can can't can a canner!!

These were ROTFLOLly, Anne and Julie!

See ya,
AnnaBtG.

LOL

July and Anne!

The pronuntiation it's what confuses me the most, why don't you just pronounce the same as it's written?! That way it won't be so easy to mistake one word for antoher :rolleyes:


Carolyn

LOL, these are fun! Thanks for posting!

At least, mostly thanks. An unfortunate side effect of reading all this is that when I got up today, this started building itself in my head:

Ken the canny canner can can a can and incant a canticle while he Can-Cans for his canary on the floor of the cannery. Can you?

Oh, and Julie... I read in a magazine years back about a guy who researched the woodchuck question. He discovered that a woodchuck, while digging its burrow, can chuck (throw) something like 380 pounds of soil per day. If we assume that weight is the limiting factor, and that the wood is in chip or mulch form, the answer should be about the same.

Paul

The English language has been influenced by so many other languages.
CBC News
Hamilton Spectator
(Imagine trying to pronounce how it was written can be difficult sometimes after readint that last article. Also, there are some other neat articles there if you look.)

Any English (or alike) majors out there? Neat to see some history. Sorry, I find it neat!

Sorree butt eye gotta take my dog four a walk.

Potted history, off the top of my head and rushed because someone else wants the computer. Bear in mind I'm an amateur at this:

Long, long time ago, people liked to invade Britain, the list is very long, they bought their langauges with them, all of them influenced English.

Interesting example: the Normans invaded in 1066, they bought French with them which became the langauge of the ruling classes, so lots of the legal terms are French words, as well as words associated with high status living. This is particularly demonstrated with meats - which are often French words: pork, beef, mutton..., but the names of the animals are not: pig, cow, sheep. This is because the peasants who didn't speak French looked after the animals, but the animals were eaten by the nobility who did speak French.

Another interesting example: the place name Breedon-on-the-Hill, or variations of that, is common in England. All the parts of the name, bree, don and hill, all mean the same thing, hill, in various different langauges. Over time, as new people arrived in an area, and the meaning of the old name got lost, they would add to the name so that the location of the place was clearer to them, so Bree (hill), became Breedon (Hillhill) then became Breedon-on-the-Hill (Hillhill-on-the-hill).

Later, the British liked to invade over countries, and they bought back new words with them. And taught English to the people they found there, who adapted it to their own situations.

Which now means that English no longer belongs to the British, but to the whole world.

Here endeth the lesson.

There are lots of books out there about this, Bill Bryson wrote a good one, but it's title escapes me right now.

Helga

Edit: Must learn to read the linked articles before posting... oh well, the French meats example is here too, for lazy people like me