Anomalies in English & related thots.

[Guv]

Aside from all the spelling exceptions and irregular verbs, weirdness seems common in the English language. I am sure all languages have some anomalies which are unique. I wonder if the following (which seem strange to me) are approximated in other languages.

First, all the English words that I know for men's pants look like plural words: Pants, trousers, knickers, shorts, britches, jeans, levis, slacks, dungarees. Note that "short pants" was the original term, but when abbreviated, it became "shorts." Do words for "pants" in some (all, any) other languages take plural forms?

Consider the following two sentences.

The plane flies like a bird.
The fruit flies like a banana.

When I think of one and then the other quickly, I get one of the following two concepts in my head, depending on which sentence I think of first.

Apples, bananas, oranges, et cetera with little wings whizzing around the sky.

Little mechanical insects chewing on an airplane and glancing hungrily at passing birds.

Those two sentences were mentioned to me when I was teaching programming to some linguists, who were working on language translation software. They cause obvious trouble for such software. I was led to believe that English has many instances of words which can be both nouns & verbs or nouns & adjectives, et cetera. It was implied that most other languages do not have many instances of this. This charateristic of English causes more trouble than spelling exceptions and irregular verbs.

I was also told that Basic English (a special English vocabulary with, I think, only 500 words) is much better at communicating ideas than any other language with a similarly restricted vocabulary. I was led to believe that this was true (is it?) due to many words like "fly" which can be more than one part of speech (Id est: either a noun or a verb).

A linguist once claimed that the English language indicates that England was once conquered and ruled for generations by a French speaking culture. He mentioned that most of the words for meat on the table (EG: Beef & ham) are derived from French words, while the names for the animals (cow & pig) are derived from Anglo-Saxon words. The servants who waited on the lord had to learn his names for the food being served, but the lord did not often venture to where the animals were being raised and/or slaughtered. He claimed there were other similar clues.

English has an incredible number of words for colors: several thousand, if you include all the ones made up for advertising purposes by paint manufacturers, clothes designers, and interior decorators. Consider: Red, crimson, scarlet, vermillion, maroon, pink. I have been told that many languages do not have as many as six color words, while English has at least six for variations on red.

In fact, English has far more words than any other language, and an incredible number of adjectives when compared to other languages.

I mentioned spelling weirdness in English earlier. Have any of you heard about "ghoti" as a way to spell "fish?" Words like tough and nation provide the phonetics for "gh" and "ti." I have temporarily drawn a blank on what word the "o" comes from.

The last sentence ending with a preposition reminds me of a Winston Churchill story and another story about ending sentences with prepositions.

Churchill once wrote a memo to an aide who did spell checking and fact finding for the speeches he wrote. The aide had rewritten a sentence. The memo said (paraphrase): Rewriting sentences to comply with the rules of grammar often result in unwieldy usages. This is a situation up with which I will not put.

There is at least one English sentence which ends with five consecutive prepositions. The background is a father who read stories to his children at bed time. One night he brought a book the children did not like. One of them said "Father, why did you bring that book we did not want to be read to out of up for?"

An comments on the above? Do you know of other language anomalies?

[Juan Carlos Rey]

At least in Spanish, the words that describe things that come in pairs (pants, scissors, pliers) are always plural (or should I say plurals?)

In fact, English has far more words than any other language, and an incredible number of adjectives when compared to other languages

I always believed that Spanish had many more words that any other language, and a great amount of adjectives. English always seemed a rather simple language to me. (Thou concise and precise) This is a rather subjective matter. One, when studies a foreign language, tend to schematize and simplify things.

We also have many many words for colours: rojo, colorado, bermellón, bordeaux, bordó, bermejo, rosa, rosado, fucsia, escarlata, punzó, cereza, encarnado, tinto, púrpura, óxido, ferrite, carmín, carmesí, amaranto, rubí, arrebol... All are variations of red!

What confuses me a little with English is the many many different pronounciations for the same letter or group of letters. I was told that "ough" has at least seven different ways to pronounce.

And (as you mentioned) the same word meaning different things. As beam, light, fly, etc. (What is a "light beam"? A ray of light or a small girder? What is a match-box and a box-match?)

And don´t forget about plurals! Wow! See my reply to http://forums.vb-world.net/showthrea...threadid=29553 on eleven exceptions for plurals.


[Edited by Juan Carlos Rey on 10-15-2000 at 08:24 PM]

[Sophtware]

The diffrence in saying "potato" and "potatoe"

Even thought they are the same vegetable they are pronounced different.


Or the one goof in pronounicantion that annoys me is when people say

"Advert-esment" instead of what it is commonly called "Advertisement".

When people say it in the way of "Advert-esment" they say it with that "I am very sophisticated when i say advertisement that way" look on there face.


Also one thing i notice about the spanish language..why is some things ,when translated into english.. it seems pronounced backwards!!?!!?


Example.

There is a chain of restaurants here called "El Pollo Loco" ..Now i know a bit of espanol and it seems fine that way and i know it means "The crazy chicken" BUT!! when yoou translate it ..it comes out like this.

(Spanish) Translated to (english)
El Pollo Loco The Chicken crazy

haha the chicken crazy..no i know that sounds like a **** up in speech..but that is how it translates...
so in a way it seemsl ike you have to "double translate"
one for translating it into english...then you have too rearrange it so it will make sense.

Also another thing that is weird...i see signs around here that are in spanish...and it says on the sign "Especial Descuento" i guess that means "Special Discount" but notice that "E" that is placed in the beginning.


I dont know why...whatever floats your boat is fine i guess

[Juan Carlos Rey]

El Pollo Loco = The Crazy Chick

That is not an anomality. In Spanish, the Adjective is always after the noun.

Special Discount = Descuento Especial.

Special = adj., Discount = noun.

Also, we seem we can not spell a word beginning with "s" thus we always add that "e": Spanish = Español, Special = Especial, and so on.

We also commutate adjective/noun in poetry: blue sky, sky blue, etc.

English is an analitic language: you go from particular to general. In Spanish we go the other way. And we think that way. For ex: "Beatles´ white album´s third song" , we translate as "La tercera canción del Album Blanco de los Genios de Liverpool" (the third song of the white album of Liverpool Genious) Cachai, man? Got it,
fellow?

[Sophtware]

Your probably right in what you are saying..but thats not what it is here.. all the spanish stuff i used in the last post is the EXACT way it is said where i live.

You can be free to come here and argue with the hispanic people in spanish if you wih

[HarbringerOfVole]

Interesting, but in the first example Guv gives, he uses the sentance's

'The plane flies like a bird.
The fruit flies like a banana.'

This is not a very good example of ambiguitity, as the sentances have only one meaning (the word 'the' refers to a singular entity, so 'flies' must mean 'soars through the air', to get the other meaning you could say 'Fruit flies like bananas', or if they only liked ONE specific banana, you could say 'Fruit flies like a banana', or if talking about one fly, you could say 'The fruit fly likes bananas' or, with the same proviso as above, 'The fruit fly likes a banana'), but 'This fruit fly likes a banana' would be a better usage, if the fly had not already been specified).

But the general point is correct, the English language provides us with a wealth of ambiguities. Take the sentance 'The man married a different woman every Sunday', it could mean that the man was a serial polygamist(sp), or that he was a priest, and performed the marriage ceromony for a woman (and persumably a man!) each Sunday. The word 'marry' in both tese cases is acting as a verb (I would do the action of marrying(sp) a woman, as would the priest perfoming the ceremony), showing that ambiguities can crop up from more than verb/noun dualities.

As for the French comment,it is true.(To an extent) The English were ruled by a French speaking aristocracy for many years, and I believe that 'swine' was the word of Anglo-Saxon desecent, (I belive that the (work of fiction, I know) book 'Ivanhoe' actually mentions this at one point), and that pig was descended from another language.

But you are correct about grammar being unweildy(sp), and it does produce problematic sentances. Another problem of grammar is that it is largly a matter of taste, and incorrect grammar is oft ignored if the writting is percieved to be great. Iain17, (In the link that Juan provides) mentions the example of Dickens, and I could add the example of almost any poet (who can take liberties not just with grammar, but spelling and pronuncation! Take the poem (I forget the poet)

Tyger, Tyger, burning bright,
In the forest of the night,
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

In this poem, 'symmetry' is pronunced so as to rythme with 'eye', and this is not a normal course of events! Also on this point, almost noboby (myself icluded, but I do try!) uses 'who' and 'Whom' correctly, I am not sure of the exact usage myself (Although I do know that the question 'Whom do you work for?' is gramaticly correct, and that the question 'Who do you work for?' is not.) This does not seem to bother anyone overmuch!

And finaly, I think we should compile a list of the pronounciations of 'ough', as it has intrigued me..
so, here is what I could think of:

'Hicough' in which 'ough' is the same sound as 'up'
'cough' in which 'ough' is the same sound as 'off'
'slough' in which 'ough' is the same sound as the 'ow' in 'cow'
'through' in which 'ough' is the same sound as the 'ue' in 'blue'
'though' in which 'ough' is the same sound as the 'oe' in 'toe'
'thorough' in which 'ough' is the same sound as the 'ar' in 'bar'
'ought' in which 'ough' is the same sound as 'awe'

Well, thats 7, there could be more...

[parksie]

Tyger, Tyger, burning bright,
In the forest of the night,
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

...William Blake.

I would have thought that English would be easy to learn, because a) we don't choose random genders for everything, and b) Wnatever you say, it's usually understood.