Think of these four English words...

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Could, would, should, mould.

Didn't you want to pronounce the last one mwuuhd?

Hugs,
Erin

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4?

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OMG....soo funny ROFLMAO

Yup

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In the hierarchy of laughing, from laughs to Lots of Laughs (LOL) to Rolling on the Floor Laughing (ROFL), ROFLMAO adds My Ass Off. It wouldn't surprise me if there's an extension of that roaming around - although at those lengths, you have to wonder whether returning to "laughs" would be both more apt and more economical with letters...

As the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, then only left-handers are in their right mind!

And....

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Andrea Lena's picture

...sour, flour, hour, detour... I actually had a friend in Middle School - Duncan MacDonald of all people, who pronounced it MacHine. :)

  

To be alive is to be vulnerable. Madeleine L'Engle
Love, Andrea Lena

And remember if you ever get

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And remember if you ever get a boat, have your beau tie a bough on the bow with ribbon tied in a pretty bow.

The reason English is so messed up

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The reason English is so messed up is that most of English started as something else. Since the rules for spelling and pronunciation are based on the language the word was stolen from, and those rules vary wildly, plus the fact those rules are altered (then re-altered based on region/ accent) once the word has been stolen. It makes English a language of exceptions, not rules.

There is no other language

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with all of the intracacies and complications of today's contemporary English language as spoken by amsericans, which is slightly different from the British/United Kingdom's Queen's/Kinng's English along with the local dialects.

    Stanman
May Your Light Forever Shine

GHOTI

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rouGH

wOmen

naTIon

Nuff said?

Rose

Rose

One Billion Served:

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Andrea Lena's picture

Mandarin is spoken by over a billion people; to those of us who don't speak it, it's likely as complicated and challenging a language as you'll find! This from tvtropes dot org:

Further, Chinese is a tonal language. Mandarin Chinese uses four tones and a neutral tone. A student not accustomed to tonal speech can easily mishear what is intended or form strange malapropisms just by not paying attention to the tone. As an example, the words for 'mother' (妈/媽 mā), 'to scold' (骂/罵 mà), 'hemp' (麻 má), and 'horse' (马/馬 mǎ) are distinguished only by a change in tone* (now there's an international incident just waiting to happen).

So if I told a friend in Lanzhou that my favorite movie of all time was I Remember Mama, they might think I was talking about scolding my mother or owning a hemp horse, aye?

  

To be alive is to be vulnerable. Madeleine L'Engle
Love, Andrea Lena

According to Bill Bryson in

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According to Bill Bryson in Mother Tongue:

"In Cantonese, hae means 'yes'. But, with a fractional change of pitch, it also describes the female pudenda."

Ban nothing. Question everything.

I'll raise you

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Penny Lane's picture

Blood, food, wood.

I just love the English language!

Penny

English is a crazy language

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Look up The Chaos, by Charivarius (Gerard Nolst Trenité) - it's the one that starts:

Dearest creature in creation
Studying English pronunciation,

I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse and worse.

It's also worth taking a peek at Richard Lederer's "Crazy English: The Ultimate Joy Ride Through Our Language." The introduction was once available on his website - he's now pulled it but someone's archived it and published it over here. One short extract:

Sometimes you have to believe that all English speakers should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane:

  • In what other language do they call the third hand on the clock the second hand?
  • Why do we call them apartments when they're all together?
  • Why do we call them buildings, when they're already built?
  • Why is it called a TV set when you only get one?
  • Why is phonetic not spelled phonetically? Why is it so hard to remember how to spell mnemonic? Why doesn't onomatopoeia sound like what it is? Why is the word abbreviation so long? Why is diminutive so undiminutive? Why does the word monosyllabic consist of five syllables? And why is there no synonym for synonym or thesaurus? And why is there an s in lisp?

English is crazy.

If adults commit adultery, do infants commit infantry? If olive oil is made from olives, what do they make baby oil from? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian consume? If pro and con are opposites, is congress the opposite of progress?

And the sheer number of homophones are alluded to in Jerrold H. Zar's Candidate for a Pullet Surprise (aka "Owed to a Spelling Checker", first two stanzas below):

I have a spelling checker.
It came with my PC.
It plane lee marks four my revue
Miss steaks aye can knot sea.

Eye ran this poem threw it,
Your sure reel glad two no.
Its vary polished inn it's weigh.
My checker tolled me sew.

As the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, then only left-handers are in their right mind!

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