the horrors of an ESL/EFL student.

[emtdan]

the following three words are spelled the same (except for the first letter), but are all pronounced differently

Rough
Cough
Dough


think about it, english pronouncantion is crazy.

 

[Desa]

While we are at it, why do we call it a "Hot Water Heater"? If the water is hot, why heat it.......

 

[O2BBubbleFree]

the following three words are spelled the same (except for the first letter), but are all pronounced differently

Rough
Cough
Dough


think about it, english pronouncantion is crazy.

Actually, there are EIGHT different ways to pronounce the 'ough.' Slough (slew) is my favorite.

 

[O2BBubbleFree]

There is one English word who’s synonym is it’s antonym.

‘Cleave’ can mean ‘join,’ or it can mean ‘separate,' depending on the context!

 

[SDNetGeek]

now I have spent five good years in america, and i would like to think taht i have a pretty good grip on the english language, but there are some things that make me want to scream!!!!
some examples- i will try to think of more.

you and squash a fly and you can zip a fly

there is no no butter in buttermilk, no egg in eggplant, no grape in grapefruit, and no peas in peanut.

English muffins weren't invented in England, french fries in France, or Danish pastries in Denmark

a woman can man a post, but a man can't women a post.

"go to the bathroom" means to piss. so you go to the bathroom to go to the bathroom- dogs go to the bathroom outside on the lawn. there is no bathroom on the lawn- so how the f-word can this be?!

two octopuses are octopi, but why arent two attennas antennae?

there is nothing to rhyme with orange!! NOTHING AT ALL!!! WTF PEOPLE?!

more to come when I think of them,.

If it makes you feel any better:

1. Most (well, a lot of) Americans have trouble with those. Except the "orange" thing, most of us don't *make* the words...

2. From your post and signature, I can see you speak FOUR langauges which is about 3.5 more than most Americans! (and two of those languages are read right to left, I can remember my school chums going CRAZY learning Hebrew!)

3. Two antennas ARE antennae, I believe, although the destinction may be that, i.e., radio stations have antennas while lobsters have antennae (If I don't know something, I just make up an answer that sounds good.)

Aren't you glad diving uses hand signals?

 

[ScubaHawk]

The one that always bothers me is the sun going down and coming up. Everything else goes up and comes down.

 

[adder70]

The one that always bothers me is the sun going down and coming up. Everything else goes up and comes down.

A lot of things go down and come up. A submarine goes down and comes up. I think it applies to where something is compared to you. The sun is "below" you at night, so it goes down.

You go down in a hole and come back up and out.

There is at least one other quite frequent use of the phrase that supports my position, but this is a family board, so I will let you figure it out on your own.

 

[Hoya97]

I doubt I could say anything right in Arabic or Hebrew.

Hey I was born here and still get confused as to when to use To, Too or Two and There, Their and They're.

The language is such that we take it every year as a subject in school for 12 years and some go on to college to major it in.

Jeff

You go 'to' a place - an action
There was a cow standing there too - in this case, too can be used in place of 'also' or 'as well'
Two is the number

There is location - There was a cow standing there too - you can point to it. Imagine a man standing by the road and saying (while pointing) THERE was a cow standing THERE too. Get the picture?
Their is possessive - Their car is broken
They're is a combination of two words - they and are. They're going to run the race
They are going to run the race

For the folks who are cursed to consider English as a second language, I pity you. English is the single most complex language in the world, for just the same reasons outlined above. Almost every word has two seperate meanings (rock - a stone/a type of music/movement back and forth) and words must always be considered in the context of utilization.

My hat's (hat is) off to anyone who can master English after first learning another language. But I do have one question, why does almost every other bloodly language in the world insist on making things masculine, feminine or neutral? What's (what is) up with that?

Grins and giggles

Lee

 

[ScubaHawk]

A lot of things go down and come up. A submarine goes down and comes up. I think it applies to where something is compared to you. The sun is "below" you at night, so it goes down.

You go down in a hole and come back up and out.

There is at least one other quite frequent use of the phrase that supports my position, but this is a family board, so I will let you figure it out on your own.

You know, that actually makes sense. As many times as I have tied Submarine jokes to that last thing . . . You think it would have dawned on me before now.... Thanks

 

[Ian T]

English is a language that has seen a lot of changes over a long period of time. It has been influenced by a large amount of languages which is why spelling and pronunciation doesn't always /ever go hand-in-hand.

There were genders in the English language but as it changed, they were lost - there were actually all kinds of inflections (prefixes or suffixes (beginnings or endings of words) that showed who, how and how many you were talking about.
There is an old poem in hmmm MiddleEnglish (if memory serves me - could have been OldEnglish) called 'Sumer is y-cumen in' which means Summer is coming (I have also seen the translation Summer has arrived)

Why would English be the single most complex language in the world? Spoken or written?
Currently trying to learn to read, write and speak Arabic, which has been mentioned in this thread, I'll use that as an example. Their alphabet number 28 characters representing a sound. They all change appearance depending on where in the word you write the character. Initial, middle or final position. So you have 28x3 symbols you have to learn. The character representing the sound 'ba' is identical to the symbol representing the sound 'bi' but you add a ' or a , above or below to indicate change of pronounciation. So the character 'ba' can also be 'bi', 'ba', 'be', etc.... and apparently you write it the way you yourself pronounce it....
and to rub salt in my linguistic wounds there is no such thing as word order...you can jumble the words any way you want and the sentence would still mean the same..

Other language - especially the tone languages - have their challenges.

Woo..turned into an essay....sorry about that... But there will be a short quiz later....