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english is ridiculous

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universecannon

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

Eye halve a spelling checker
It came with my pea sea
It plainly marques for my revue
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.

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

A checker is a bless sing,
It freeze yew lodes of thyme.
It helps me right awl stiles two reed,
And aides me when eye rime.

Each frays come posed up on my screen
Eye trussed too bee a joule.
The checker pours o'er every word
To cheque sum spelling rule.

Bee fore a veiling checker's
Hour spelling mite decline,
And if we're lacks oar have a laps,
We wood bee maid too wine.

Butt now bee cause my spelling
Is checked with such grate flare,
Their are know fault's with in my cite,
Of nun eye am a wear.

Now spelling does knot phase me,
It does knot bring a tier.
My pay purrs awl due glad den
With wrapped word's fare as hear.

To rite with care is quite a feet
Of witch won should bee proud,
And wee mussed dew the best wee can,
Sew flaw's are knot aloud.

Sow ewe can sea why aye dew prays
Such soft wear four pea seas,
And why eye brake in two averse
Buy righting want too pleas.



-----------------------------------------------------------------------
I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble, but not you,
On hiccough, thorough, lough and through?
Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps?
Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird,
And dead: it's said like bed, not bead -
For goodness sake don't call it deed!
Watch out for meat and great and threat
(They rhyme with suite and straight and debt).

A moth is not a moth in mother,
Nor both in bother, broth in brother,
And here is not a match for there
Nor dear and fear for bear and pear,
And then there's dose and rose and lose -
Just look them up - and goose and choose,
And cork and work and card and ward,
And font and front and word and sword,
And do and go and thwart and cart -
Come, come, I've hardly made a start!
A dreadful language? Man alive!
I'd mastered it when I was five!

 
ok sure they're a bit corny. but they express some of the peculiarities of english well

theres a bunch more on the same page

Phoney Phonetics.
One reason why I cannot spell,
Although I learned the rules quite well
Is that some words like coup and through
Sound just like threw and flue and Who;
When oo is never spelled the same,
The duice becomes a guessing game;
And then I ponder over though,
Is it spelled so, or throw, or beau,
And bough is never bow, it's bow,
I mean the bow that sounds like plow,
And not the bow that sounds like row -
The row that is pronounced like roe.
I wonder, too, why rough and tough,
That sound the same as gruff and muff,
Are spelled like bough and though, for they
Are both pronounced a different way.
And why can't I spell trough and cough
The same as I do scoff and golf?

Why isn't drought spelled just like route,
or doubt or pout or sauerkraut?
When words all sound so much the same
To change the spelling seems a shame.
There is no sense - see sound like cents -
in making such a difference
Between the sight and sound of words;
Each spelling rule that undergirds
The way a word should look will fail
And often prove to no avail
Because exceptions will negate
The truth of what the rule may state;
So though I try, I still despair
And moan and mutter "It's not fair
That I'm held up to ridicule
And made to look like such a fool
When it's the spelling that's at fault.
Let's call this nonsense to a halt."
 
My grandmother joked about "Ghoti" being a way to spell "Fish", if you applied the F sound from Enough, the O sound from Women, the TI sound from Militia.

The thing with English (along with most languages) is that it wasn't created top-down with a master plan... Like us, it evolved bottom-up as needs and conditions applied. There have been a few prunings and rule standardizations, but our language can't hide its organic roots.

Thanks for posting these! Good fun...
 
Italian is kind of like that too. It has a strict sense of phonetics that is rarely (if ever) violated.
 
To me languages like english and french sound very flowy and smooth compared to most others. But they do have their weird moments like has been pointed out in this thread haha
 
The Serbo-Croatian is also the ultimate language: 1 letter = 1 sound :)

When you learn the alphabet, you can read anything and pronounce it correctly even if you don't know the meaning of the word yet.
 
All the best books I've read have been by English speaking authors. English is an incredibly nuanced and complex language, and I've certainly never heard of the Great Finish Novel, but I'm sure there are plenty of good books by the Fins. I've just never heard of one, and I read quite extensively.

I love English and all the subtleties involved. It's not a language for a simple mind. Most bilingual people I've met have said English is by far the hardest to master (though, with languages like Japanese, I don't see how that's possible ) .

Though, admittedly, I'm biased since I'm a dumb American that only speaks English.
 
tetra said:
All the best books I've read have been by English speaking authors. English is an incredibly nuanced and complex language, and I've certainly never heard of the Great Finish Novel, but I'm sure there are plenty of good books by the Fins. I've just never heard of one, and I read quite extensively.

I love English and all the subtleties involved. It's not a language for a simple mind. Most bilingual people I've met have said English is by far the hardest to master (though, with languages like Japanese, I don't see how that's possible ) .

Though, admittedly, I'm biased since I'm a dumb American that only speaks English.

Yeah i can't imagine it being harder to learn than a tonal language. but i don't really know for sure.

anyways, the point was to show the funny peculiarities of the language. not solely to bash it 😁
 
It was explained to me like this:

English is a very new language, a ghetto dialect. the Celts had England, then there were the Saxons and Rome. In the London ghettos these various Gaelic, Latin and Tuetonic toungues grew into a hybrid form much like ebonics or yiddish. Since then, with Englands colonialism, Americas melting potism and English becoming the worlds language...it just keeps picking up more and more words and ways to pronounce those words.

A living language, which continuously grows and changes means that there is no correct grammar, nor correct spelling. It's wide open. English is awesome for poetry....synonyms!
 
if you take the 'gh' out of enough
and the 'o' out of women;
the 'ti' from any word ending in 'tion' (civilization, etc)

'ghoti' pronounced fish

i see no problem here....
 
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