Claudines last blog post..Application for English Speaking Job in Korea

common japanese wordss last blog post..How to Learn Japanese Words

Ever tried Japanese?

Astrid Lee Reiki Master Teachers last blog post..Suze Orman

Whoever said that English syntax is confusing needs to go back to their grammar books. English is my 4th language (Russian my first, Spanish and French my second and third) and I find that English syntax is quite consistent and logical.

dave sos last blog post..Chinese New Year 2009

boxing rings are square – “ring” also means “arena”, not just “circle”

nor ham in hamburger – “Hamburgers” are so named because they come from Hamburg, Germany

make amends but not one amend – this is because it is assumed that more than one thing needs to be reconciled in order to fix the situation

slim chance and a fat chance be the same – in the first case, they mean “a slim (small) chance that it will happen” and in the second, “a fat (large) chance that it won’t

As for things like “playing at a recital” vs. “reciting at a play” and “runny nose” and “smelly feet”… these things are called “idioms”. I suggest you revisit the 6th grade… English teachers are very fond of them there. Finally, idioms and irregularities in spelling rules (especially with past-tenses of verbs and plurals of nouns) are found in every language on earth. In fact, differing rules for forming the past-tense of a verb is institutionalized in a great many foreign languages, and is ubiquitous in the older languages (Old English, Old German, Old French, Latin, etc)… meaning, of course, the languages that all current languages stem from. It would be just as easy for a native German-speaker or a native French-speaker to do the same for their own languages.

The only reason that English *might* be more confusing (seriously, have you looked at Scandinavian languages? 20 times worse)is that its rule sets are made from several different origins, not one or two set linguistic traditions as in most languages.

Also writing down the most complicated bits of English language isnt gonna convince anyone that it’s hard, and its not very likely that anyone will use those phrases anywhere but a book.

If you think English is hard, I’d like to see what you think of Russian or Chinese languages :)

Granted, many inconsistencies excist. But don’t make your story inconsistent. Inconsistency is the trademark of a language that has developed, not specifically of English.

Hal’s last blog post..Crazy Inventions

It (the concept of grammatical error) is simply an improper abuse of slang.

Give it up or give it away? Up, up and away!

The English language doesn’t need to make grammatical sense because the people who speak it are(n’t) morons. Grammatical errors in a sentence, do not, I repeat do not, mean that the word has an infinitive quality. If the definition of a word must alter itself to make sense, then the sentence itself is in err. Up isn’t special, merely vague at best.

Swear words work on the same principle. That is why they are faux pas. Not because they express anger. It is because in a moment of emotional involvement, words leave you, so, sometimes things get thrown in (usually vague terms) that don’t belong.

So if you happen to write something containing ‘it’ or ‘up’ or any other variant of this plague, destroy the sentence. Start again. Unless, of course it is in conversation, you don’t want your characters coming as wooden pompous jerks would you?

=)

Tahirih’s last blog post..Tools of the Mind

And the main reason English is so messed up is that it doesn’t have a single source. French, Spanish, Italian and Romanian all come from Latin; Chinese, Japanese, Hebrew and Arabic have been they way they are since the beginning of time, it sometimes seems; while English is a mutt. We get Saxon, French, Gaelic and Norse mixed in with the scholars’ need to throw around Latin and Greek, plus words with the same root will enter usage at different times from sightly different places, and it’s no wonder it’s so dang hard to understand.

Anyway, thanks for letting a history major and etymology fan ramble. It’s a fun post.

I could go on and on, in fact I could likely find a logical reason for every one of its uses, one that my generation is keenly familiar with is the 1-up when gaining a “life” in a video game. Furthermore at the end you just use up as many times as you could conceive to, to stress the point that we as English users can use it a lot.

One could make a case that English in all its eccentricities quizzical qualities, is proof in itself that if you can be called articulate that you are a master of the the stupefying and befuddling.

Word.

RMC

Rob2.0’s last blog post..Grasshoppers Demi Ribbon Espresso

Another thing that’s mind-boggling for English native speakers are the three genders in German, and what makes them even harder is that many of them are just plain arbitrary, like door, chair, tree, … all of which come with a (male or female) gender assigned in German, none of which make much sense.

Fred’s last blog post..Need A Sysadmin?