The Language Known as English January 24, 2009
Posted by pazybien2009 in The D.R..trackback
After another week of attempting to teach English. I am even more astounded as to the strangeness of the English language. I know that every language has its quirks, but right now I am seeing the English ones. How many different sounds does each letter in the English language have. Think about the letter “A”. It has two sounds, right?: Short A as in apple and long A as in train, but that´s not all. What about “boat” where there is a letter “A”, but it has know sound at all. Or what about the word “what”? That has a completely different sound. That is only the first letter of the alphabet and I am sure that I am missing a few sounds. I won´t even get started with “ph” or “gh”.
Please, reply with some other pronunciation quirks from the English language to help me prove my point and, perhaps to prepare me for teaching more of these oddities.
Ha, phonics, my eye.
Hi Bry,
Here’s one – night… knight or how about the “c” in ice. Ok how about the “ss” in tissue. What is up with that? All I can say is good luck. I am sure (there’s another strange “s”) there are hundreds more. I look forward to seeing others on the comments.
Talk to you soon.
Love, Mom
Since working with my Vietnemese co-worker and good friend; I should be able to write a book about this subject. Huong says words and at times – I’m like what the heck is she saying and then it dawns on me what word she was saying and why she said it the way she did. Then I have to try and explain – well no we say that word this way. So I know exactly where you are coming from with this subject. I’ll have to pay attention this week at work at our conversations and see if any examples come up.
Te amo!
I wouldn’t want to explain the word TO when it means TWO, TOO. Something like that could drive you crazy. You might get a kick out of this.
The Word “UP”.
This is a fascinating thought process. There is a two-letter word, and that is “UP”.
It’s easy to understand UP. meaning toward the sky or at the top of the list, but when we waken in the morning, why do we wake UP?
At a meeting, why does a topic come UP? Why do we speak UP and why are the officers UP for election and why is it UP to the secretary to write UP a report?
We call UP our friends, we use it to brighten UP a room, polish UP the sliver, we warm UP the left overs and clear UP the ktchen. We lock UP the house and some guys fix UP the old car.
At other time the little word has real special meaning….
People stir UP trouble, line UP for tickets, work UP an appettite, and think UP excuses.
To be dressed is one thing, but to be dressed UP is special.
And this is confusing….
A drain must be opened UP because it is stoped UP . We open UP a store in the morning but we close it UP at night. We seem to be pretty mixed UP about UP.
To be knowledgeable of the proper uses of UP, look UP the word in the dictionary. In a desk size dictionary, UP takes UP almost a quarter of the page and the difinitions add up to about thirty.
If you are UP to it, you might try building Up a list of the many way UP is used. It will take UP a lot of your time, but if you don’t give UP, you many wind UP with a hundred or more.
When it threatens to rain, we say it is clouding UP. When the sun comes out we say it is clearing UP. When it rains, it wets UP the earth. When it doesn’t rain for awhile, things dry UP. One could go on and on, but
I’ll wrap it UP. for now my time is UP, so I’ll shut UP…..
Love ya, Garndpa & Grandma
have you ever heard the “english” spelling of the word “fish”?
ghoti
gh as in lauGH
o as in wOmen
ti as is emoTIon
but i really start to sympathize with people trying to learn the english language when I consider these two words:
cough
dough
they look so similar and sound about as different as can be! How do you teach that? It’s not like one of them is a fluke, because we also have “bough” and “tough”. CrAZy!
miss you, B!