English is a difficult language, but... it can be understood through tough thorough thought,
though.
We park our cars on a driveway, but we drive cars on a parkway.
When you transport something by car, it’s called a shipment, but when you transport
something by ship, it’s called cargo.
Piano players are called pianists, but race car drivers aren’t called racists.
The most popular sport played in America is football, but there is no ball, and they use
their hands, not their feet.
We cook bacon, but we bake cookies.
We have an alphabet with 26 letters, and it’s always recited in the same way, but is there
any reason that the alphabet has to be in that specific order?
It can get really, really confusing.
Nouns and Verbs being the SAME: Nouns are things, like literally.
They’re an object, like a table, or a car.
They’re people, they’re places.
Verbs are words that are used to describe actions.
The girl ran down the road.
The guy jumped into the pool.
But alas, English comes in and just screws this entire thing up.
Some words are both nouns and verbs at the same time, and can be used in the same sentence.
Sometimes, you can create entire drawn-out sentences from a single word.
The word “Police” is an example.
The Police are well, the police, cops, you know.
But police is also a verb, as in “watching over” or “keeping in order.”
So, technically, Police police Police police police police Police police IS A REAL SENTENCE.
So is Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.
For some reason, we call it a building even though it’s already been built.
Words like “that” and “had” can be used back to back in sentences and still end
up making sense in the end.
I don’t think that that makes any sense at all, but yet we still do it almost every
day and barely even notice it.
Two students, James and John, were taking an English test and had been asked to describe
a man who had suffered from a cold in the past.
John writes, “The man had a cold,” while James writes, “The man had had a cold.”
In the end, John’s answer was marked incorrect, while James was marked correct.
So, to summarize: James, while John had had had had had had had had had had had a better
effect on the teacher.
This is still a real sentence.
It gets a lot easier to read when we add in punctuation and emphasis on some words, but
still, just why.
Some words are spelled the same but have multiple meanings.
Homonyms.
Some of these can and can’t rhyme at the same time.
The word lead rhymes with read, but lead doesn’t rhyme with read.
Read rhymes with lead though.
Did I just polish my car?
Or did I Polish it?
Using chemicals to remove the polish is fine and pretty standard, but use chemicals to
remove the Polish and you might be hitler.
Does this shampoo mean no tears or no tears?
I kind of just realized this and I’ve been lied to my entire life.
The word bow could mean many things.
Like a bow and arrow, or a bow as in the bow on a christmas gift, or a bow of a ship, or
you could bow in front of someone.
Some words look like they should rhyme but don’t.
This is the word bomb, change the B to a T, and now it’s tomb…
I mean tomb.
Okay let’s try again, change the first letter to a C, and now it’s comb, which doesn’t
rhyme with either bomb or tomb.
Alright that’s fine, just change the C to an H and we have homb… wait that’s not
how you spell it.
There, better.
But wait, change the H to an S and it becomes some, which doesn’t rhyme with home...
But numb rhymes with some, so just change it to an N. Ugh… that’s not how it’s
spelled.
This is why English is confusing, especially for those people who are learning English
as a second language.
Letters don’t always sound the same: Letters don’t always make the same sounds.
Phonetics is the study of the way that words and letters sound, but funny enough, the word
phonetic isn’t even spelled phonetically.
X usually makes a “ksss” sound, like in the words apex, relax, and tax, but sometimes
when placed by other letters just causes it to make a completely different sound.
Xylophone and Xenophobic are two examples where the sound just completely switches to
a Z, so why don’t we just use Z instead of X?
C sometimes sounds like K, like in cat and can, but C also sometimes sounds like S like
in cigar or cent.
Quick sidenote, the letter W is named kinda weird too.
In most books and fonts and web pages, it looks more like a double v than a double u,
but it all depends on how you write it.
The letters G and H and P and H when put together end up making a “F” sound, but still,
the ending “ough” is one of the most confusing ones in the entire language.
Take these words: cough, rough, bough, through, and though.
All of these words end in ough, but somehow NONE of them rhyme with each other.
Pony and Bologna do though.
You see this abomination of a word?
Just take a guess on how to pronounce it.
Since some of our letters make multiple sounds, and when put together with other letters sound
like other letters, you can spell words in ways that they just shouldn’t be.
Use the "gh" sound in "tough," the "o" sound from "women," and the "ti" sound from "nation"
— and you get the word fish.
If you take the W in answer, the H in ghost, the extra A in aardvark, and the T in listen,
you get the word what.
Nobody would hear it though, because all of those letters are silent.
One of the DUMBEST things about English is how we use silent letters.
Letters that otherwise make a sound sometimes decide they just don’t wanna show up.
This is a B, this is also a bee.
This is a very long queue, this is also a very long Q.
This is a blue eye, so is this.
The S in island.
The p in psychology.
The h in honest.
The O in opossum.
What’s even the point of silent letters?
They’re only good for tricking spelling bee contestants who are given words that they’ve
literally never seen before or will ever use again.
Believe it or not, every single letter in the English alphabet is silent sometimes.
Sometimes, we get lazy and don’t want to say multiple words.
So instead, we use contractions.
We put in an apostrophe and just completely get rid of half the letters in some words.
“I am going to” has since turned into I’ma.
It’s informal, but we cut out 3 spaces and 75% of the letters and we all still understand
it.
Have not is shortened to haven’t, did not turns into didn’t, they are is shorted to
they’re.
But, we have multiple they’re’s.
There’s there, they’re, and their, all of which are used in their own different situations,
but we’ll get there later.
There’s plenty don’t know what the difference between your and you’re is, but hopefully
you’re not one of them.
We kinda took this too far though, and made triple contractions.
We started slurring our words together so badly that we ended up with things like y’all’d’ve
and you’dn’t’ve.
But to be honest, sometimes these contractions don’t even make much sense at all once you
expand them.
Take this question for example.
“Why won’t she come to my birthday party?”
When you expand the contraction, it becomes “Why will not she come to my birthday party?”
Some words have multiple meanings, which is fine, but what isn’t fine is when they’re
completely opposite of each other.
Contronyms.
For example, off.
Here, the light just got turned off, as in deactivated.
BUT, when my alarm goes off in the morning, it turns on, or is activated...
The word “screen” is also a contronym.
You can use a hat to screen your face from the sun, as in to conceal or protect it.
But movie theaters tend to screen new movies when they come out, as in to show or display.
Commas are also very important.
They can be used to bridge two sentences into one or separate items in a list, but there’s
a grey area here as to when you should or shouldn’t use them.
The Oxford comma is one of the most debated things in the English language.
Simply put, it’s the last comma used in a sentence with 3 or more items.
But for some reason, a lot of people choose not to use it, but to be honest, most people
don’t even know that they’re doing anything wrong.
Here’s an example: I love my parents, John, and Lisa.
This is a normal sentence right?
You can tell there’s at least 3 different people here and there’s no confusion.
Now, without the oxford comma.
I love my parents, John and Lisa.
Here, it gets confusing.
Are your parents names John and Lisa?
Or are John and Lisa other people.
It just causes unnecessary confusion, even for people who are native English speakers.
For people learning English as a second language, it makes things a thousand times more difficult
because it’s so inconsistent across the world.
Some places use them, other places don’t.
The masculine pronouns in English are, he, his and him.
So you might imagine that the feminine ones are she, shis, and shim, but they aren’t.
Instead, we change it to hers, and her.
In English, we often change things just for the sake of being difficult.
You see this fruit?
In almost every single language, it is pronounced as: ananas.
But… in English.
But Pineapples have no pine, nor are they an apple.
Some numbers make sense like sixty, seventy, eighty, but at the same time we have numbers
that don’t make sense like twenty, thirty, and forty which don’t match.
We say in November, but we say on Friday.
And we say at 5 o’clock.
So yeah, it’s pretty clear that English is broken.
If anyone ever gets upset with you because your English isn’t the best, don’t worry,
they just want you to suffer through the same things they’re going through.
Because you know, at the end of the day, it’s what it’s.
Since there is no time like the present, I feel like now is the best time to present
the present.
The gift of knowledge.
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