Members Kendrix Posted June 7, 2006 Members Share Posted June 7, 2006 Having lived in Japan Im sensitive to this. Some aspects of English are a bitch to try to explain to folks:...---------------------------------- If you ever feel stupid, then just read on. If you've learned to speak fluent English, you must be a genius! This little treatise on the lovely language we share is only for the brave. Peruse at your leisure, English lovers. Reasons why the English language is so hard to learn: 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. There is no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren't invented in England or French fries in France. Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat. Quicksand works slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig. And why is it that writers write, but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham? If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn't the plural of booth beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese? If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it? Is it an odd, or an end? If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat? In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell? How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites? You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out, and in which, an alarm goes off by going on. English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race, which, of course, is not a race at all. That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible. P.S. - Why doesn't "Buick" rhyme with "quick"? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members MorePaul Posted June 7, 2006 Members Share Posted June 7, 2006 English is a funny on because it's a mutt -- I mean it's not exactly by accident the legal system uses Norman terms It's exacerbated by it being basically a "common law" language (we have no Academie) funny thing is, this actually happens in the computer language world too -- you can do some pretty fugly cross language stuff (shout out to Blue I know he has to wrestle that beast) talk about nasty crash of languages...I18N (Internationalization) and L10N (Localization) -- the processes of preparing computers to be used across language and the process of adapting a system to e pecific lnguage repectively there you get the problems of human languages AND the problem of adapting computers to deal with em and the prolems aren;t the same across the languages (both the human and the computer languages)[Arabic adapted GUIs make me sort of seasick -- really] One thing I can ay about it though -- the translators...for whatever reasson, ost of em are knockouts and it's not sooo very bad to be "well, today I get to work with a X-ish hottie which is a nice change from working with a Y-ese hottie because my eyes were starting to hurt. It helps me look forword to working with the z-an hottie tomorrow" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members UstadKhanAli Posted June 7, 2006 Members Share Posted June 7, 2006 Originally posted by MorePaul English is a funny on because it's a mutt That's what makes it difficult to learn, but also what makes it such a fresh, cool language. Another good thing about English is that you can seemingly butcher it all to hell, and it's still understandable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Rudolf von Hagenwil Posted June 7, 2006 Members Share Posted June 7, 2006 I produced all this recordings, incl. the medical/technical one. I didn't understood a word, and somehow had the feeling the native english speaking voiceover artist did not either. http://voiceover.ch/ MEDICAL/TECHNICAL . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gus Lozada Posted June 7, 2006 Share Posted June 7, 2006 ... well, I am a non-native English speaker. Sometimes yes, it can be hard to get when two words MEAN different things. It is MEAN ! One that confused me once was... "come on... I swallow" swal Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Hanshananigan Posted June 8, 2006 Members Share Posted June 8, 2006 Yeah! I coudn't imagine trying to write rock/pop lyrics in Japanese. Engrish is so much more versatile! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.