What about similar oddities in English?
(This question is inspired by this comic by https://www.exocomics.com/193/ (link found by BunScientist@lemmy.zip))
Edit: it’s to its in the title. Damn autocorrect.
My wife and I had a good snicker one time when I brought home edamame peas in the shell.
They were shelled, but she wanted them shelled.
Flammable/imflammable is another one that comes to mind.
As carved into history by Dr. Nick:
English has many contronyms.
- Clip: to attach (clip X to Y) or detach (clip coupons)
- Dust: to remove dust or to add it (dust the cake with icing sugar)
- Fine: excellent (fine wine) or not great but decent (it’s fine)
- Left: remaining (I have 5 left) or gone (I had some but they left)
- Oversight: supervision (he had oversight over the whole process) or lack of supervision (I forgot to do that, it was an oversight)
And the alarm goes off means it actually starts ringing. Weird language indeed!
And this might just be a UK thing but if a person goes off it means they get really angry. And it can mean to leave for somewhere.
So a firework goes off which makes the fire alarm go off which makes the safety officer go off. Then he goes off to get a fireman. But he leaves the milk out, so it goes off.
Just remember
Pretty sure the past tense of “lead” is actually “led.”
Unless of course you’re referring to the type of metal, lead, which I guess the meme isn’t clear on.
Pretty sure there’s a chemical element named “lead”
I heard lead leads in weight.
Interesting if true.
And German has a word for it: Blei
That would explain why a pencil, which contains a “lead” (actually a polymer or graphite now) is Bleistift
Some call it differently because it doesn’t contain lead anymore but Bleistift is still the common name
Bly in Swedish. But we add some weirdness to the Bly part so a “lead pencil” is blyertspenna (“penna” meaning pencil). I can’t think of another word where that specific addiction is used, and I have no idea what it means.
I’ve looked it up and “blyerts” means “black lead, graphite” from German “Bleierz” (lead-ore).
It’s not saying anything about past tenses in that meme, it’s just saying that each word has two different pronunciations that rhyme with the other.
What’s not clear? It’s written right there!
It’s all about led vs lēd.
I had to look this up.
And today I learned ALL my brit friends are spelling it wrong. That’s more than two!
Brits aren’t “spelling it wrong” any more than those in the US are. It’s just cultural differences. Do you also claim Germans spell things wrong? Or the Chinese?
Also the language is called English. By default, the English are doing it right and anything else is wrong. Maybe better, the argument can go for decades longer, but if anyones wrong its everyone else.
My point is no one is wrong. Well, you are, but not for the way you spell things.
It’s “its,” by the way.
This is the grammar thing I fuck up the most, and I don’t call people on it because I’m pretty sure I don’t know how it works. Autocorrect changes it & I just say “oh, whoops”, and it still looks wrong…
it’s means “it is”. It is really not difficult, just pretend you are Data and swear off contractions.
I think the contraction vs possesive thing messes with me, and my brain can never settle on what goes where when, how, or why…
Just try changing it to “it is”. If the sentence still makes sense, it’s “it’s”. Otherwise it’s “its”.
Here’s a shortcut: test if you could drop “his” into the same spot and have it make sense. (And you’d definitely never write it as hi’s.) If “his” would work, “its” would work.
Bought, caught, taught, fought, thought, sought, and wrought are all past tense verbs and all rhyme. The present tense forms are buy, catch, teach, fight, think, seek, and work, none of which rhyme.
Spanish is awesome. All its verbs in their regular form do end in “-ar”, “-er” and “-ir”.
The conjugations can get as weird as English sometimes, though. Case in point: Ser.
“que sera sera” es un ejemplo.
How is that weird, as (nearly?) the only regular form of this verb?
Me too, thanks!
Fast can mean moving with great speed or fixed securely in place (among other things).
The alarm went off so i turned it off.
My ally turned on me and then I turned her on
It’s because the people who set the rules for the English language, could barely speak it.
The first guy to popularize the printing press was Dutch, so the guy who bought England’s first one didn’t know how it worked and neither did any English speaker
So he hired a bunch of Dutch who knew how to operate it.
And they got a bunch of handwritten books and were told to mass reproduce them.
Sometimes it was a mistake in the original, sometimes the typesetter made a mistake. Sometimes the writer just disagreed with how it should be written, and sometimes even the typesetters who couldn’t speak English made choices to change it
No one gave a fuck about accuracy, it was about pumping out as many books as possible. Because just owning a book was a huge status symbol still from when they were handwritten and crazy expensive.
But all those books eventually got read, and the people who learned to read them were very proud that they could read. So they insisted that all the random bullshit was intentional and had to be followed to a T by everyone forever.
Most other languages had a noble class who kept it sensical, but for a long ass time only peasants spoke English, the wealthy in England all spoke French, cuz they were French.
Anyways, that’s why English doesn’t make any sense. There was also a natural thing happening where vowel pronunciation was changing. So when the typecasters solidified everything, it was already in a state of flux. That’s why pronunciation doesn’t line up with spelling.
This also occurred in the middle of the Great Vowel Shift, a period when spoken English pronunciation was changing significantly.
Yep…
There was also a natural thing happening where vowel pronunciation was changing. So when the typecasters solidified everything, it was already in a state of flux. That’s why pronunciation doesn’t line up with spelling.
I missed that, my bad.
It certainly doesn’t help that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.
A French. The language where you have 5 wovels, use 3 for the word goose and the other 2 to pronounce it.
What? The e is just silent.
The French word for goose is Oie, pronounced “ua”
It’s really not. Maybe if you pronounce an English ‘u’, but not a French one. Source: I’m French Canadian.
What I get from this is that if those English idiots had stuck to French, we wouldn’t have this mess.
More like if the French royalty hadn’t conquered England…
England hasn’t been ruled by the English for centuries bro
Oh god, we’d be stuck with all those silent letters
On the other hand, you seldom have the issue of having no clue how something is pronounced because you’ve only ever seen it written. So it balances out.
The primary accent for 2-syllable words that are used as both a noun and a verb depends on the part of speech. The noun places the primary accent on the 1st syllable, the verb on the 2nd syllable.
Examples:
The musician records a record.
The farmer produces produce.
You’re not permitted to fish without a permit.Potential exception: “Adult.” Arguably because it generally isn’t a verb when emphasis is on the second syllable, some people do that even when it’s a noun.
I’m an Adult vs. I’m an aDULT. *
Use as of “adult” as a verb is non-standard and where to emphasise that is even less clear-cut for those of us who put the emphasis on the first syllable of the noun. Interestingly, “adulterate” is less strange as a verb and the emphasis is definitely on the second syllable there.
We could tie ourselves in knots analysing the late emphasis form as a verbified noun, re-nounified. Ow.
* The underlying truth of said statement is irrelevant. Chronologically, I have been one for some time. Mentally… ehh.
Not an exception for me, I definitely use different accents for adulting / adulteration and adult. Maybe that’s a British vs US English difference?
The Chaos by Gerard Nolst Trenité (1922)
https://ncf.idallen.com/english.html
Dearest creature in creation
Studying English pronunciation,
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse and worse.I will keep you, Susy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy;
Tear in eye, your dress you’ll tear;
Queer, fair seer, hear my prayer.Pray, console your loving poet,
Make my coat look new, dear, sew it!
Just compare heart, hear and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word.
…Very long. Highly recommended
“Read” and “readed.”
Present: read
Past: red (in the fediverse), redd (on the old site)
Obvious.
“It has been red”.
So was the text red or has the text been read?
Both. How do you know it was red when you have not red it? Someone must have red it to state it’s red.
I can’t reed
“Read” is spelled s-a-m-e? English is a weird language.
Wait until you hear about how we pronounce colonel!
We pronounce it the same as the linux colonel.
Good old Colonel Angus!
What about parmesan?
Where, were, we’re. Even native speakers have problems with this. I don’t know how many times I had to correct such cases, especially with American authors.
Pretty much only native speakers have problems with this, I see this type of mistake far less frequently with those who learned English as an additional language.
Pretty much only native speakers have problems with this
That makes no sense since they would use it more, however native speakers from the US do have problems with it, and other words (they’re/their).
Rarely encounter it with others.
Their spelling is embarrassing, same as their very limited vocabulary. IDK what they do in schools.Native speakers acquire the language before learning to read. Remember, writing is a representation of spoken language not the other way round.
It’s true that I see it more rarely with the British. I suppose they read more or something.
Pretty much only native speakers have problems with this
99% agree with this. This is a native speaker issue, except where someone took up bad habits from the natives…
I pronounce these all differently though? [wɛɹ], [wəɹ] and [wiɹ]
Maybe, yes, but as someone who has seen tons of unedited writings, I can tell you those mixup as common as muck.
Where, were, we’re.
I never had a problem with those, until I started with stuff like Reddit.
Now, I find myself making the mistake and catching it in proofreading.
Guess my brain is starting to age too.
Reed, red. Homophones should be homographs too.
What dialect of English will we base the new spelling system on?
Read and readed
Reed and Red
