it's homophones..but that knowledge does not mean I'm gay!!
No, it just means you sound gay!
The English Language
by Simon 32 Replies latest social humour
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funkyderek
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franklin J
...Interesting and accurate observance, Simon. And who can we trace this language back to? Great Britain. "Galic" ( Gaelic?) was spoken during the Ancient Roman occupation; and I believe that it is a very early form of the English language; although I do not know much about its syntax or pronounciation.
I find it also interesting to hear the different "accents" each english speaking country has; and how the colloquial expressions and different jargon have startlingly different meanings, ( somewhere on this forum is a thread about the meaning of the American and British jargon of "fanny").
Frank
ps. Simon; you can't point a finger at the Americans for this one!
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betty boop
I just think its funny that people from Britain call cigarettes "fags"
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dubla
simon-
cool essay......would you mind citing your source, a link maybe? thanks.
aa
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Aztec
horseful carriage or a strapful gown? Met a sung hero or experienced requited love? Have you ever run into someone who was combobulated, gruntled, ruly or peccable?
The reason a dictionary isn't helping CW is that most of these words aren't real words. It's making the point that although there is a horseless carriage (automobiles), there isn't a horseful one. Same for strapless gowns, unsung heroes, unrequited love, discombobulated, disgruntled, unruly and impeccable. Hope that helps.
~Aztec
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Country_Woman
thanks for the explanation Aztec,
I was thinking that horseful carriage or a strapful gown? belongs together that's why I coul'nt made anything of it...
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Double Edge
Yes, it's a difficult language ... no wonder Americans get it so wrong. Awe, c'mon ... you know you murder it ... surely?
Yep, we do..... and that should read "y'all know that you murder it".
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Abaddon
English is a mongrel language.
European languages, with the exception of Euskara and Finnish, are all Indo-European in origin, and are divided into several groups.
English comes from the Germanic group. The Germanic group has three divisons; an extinct one Eastern one which included languages like Gothic, Frankish, Visigoth and Vandal; the Northern group which includes Icelandic, Faroese, Norwegian, Swedish and Danish; and the Western group which includes German, Dutch and English.
Prior to the Roman's Britain was inhabited by Celts speaking Gaelic (another of the Indo-European language groups). These either got along with the Romans or retreated to the margins.
After the Roman Empire's gradual departure from Britain Germanic tribes (Angles, Saxons and Jutes) moved from the continent bringing their Western Germanic Languages with them.
It was the decendant of these languages that was the language at the time of the Norman Conquest, which is where English started diverging from its continental European cousins German and Dutch.
The Normans spoke a form of French, which is one of the languages in the Latin or Romance branch of Indo-European. The Normans were called 'Nor'mans as they came from the North; basically England was invaded by a bunch of Vikings who had settled in France for a few generations.
Thus the 'Western Germanic' English had an infusion of 'Romance' French spoken by ex-Vikings. As the current generation of Vikings was also rather active in the centuries preceding and after 1000 AD, to the extent they occupied the North of England at one point ("The Danelaw"), the 'Western Germanic' English had further infusions of 'Northern Germanic' Norse languages.
This lead to several things. One was English has ended up with a lot of synonyms. An English speaker can often chose between a word orginating from Western Germanic, Romance, or Northern Germanic origins, where a Dutch speaker will only have the Western Germanic word and a French speaker would only have the Romance word.
This has even lead to funny things; sledgehammer actually means 'hammer hammer', as one part of the word is Western Germanic and the other part Northern Germanic. There are several places called things like (when translated) 'hill hill hill', as each succesive group of people added their word for hill to the name used by the previous inhabitants; for example 'pen' in Gaelic means hill, as does 'dun' in Anglo-Saxon.
Add in the use of Greek and Latin to coin new words, words borrowed from other countries, like yacht, bungalow, jodphers, bouy, etc., and you get modern English. One major nightmare (the spelling) is caused by the fact pronounciation changes over time, and spelling becomes fixed. Thus 'love' and 'trove', which once rhymed, now don't. Other languages have had various spelling reforms to take this into acount but although (as in cow) the English could have done this through (oo) the ages if they had given it a bit of thought (a) (it wouldn't even have cost much dough (as in low)), and it would have cetainly been a lot less rough (uff)if they had done so, they did, so every where from Slough (ow, again) to Scarborough ( ò) one can hear people cough (of) and hiccough (up) their way through (oo again) the language.
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talesin
betty boop
From WWI, a soldier's song ..
Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag and smile, smile, smile
While you've a lucifer to light your fag, smile boys that's the style
What's the use of worrying? It never was worthwhile, so,
Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag and smile, smile, smile!
I always thought it was a strange expression as a kid, when I learned this song in music class, but it's been around a long while.
Lucifer = match, btw. ;)
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Maverick
Wonderful stuff Simon! I can't spell to save my life and after reading some of the very fine comments I don't feel so bad about it!
When I was an artist at the newspaper we had style books and the AP Wire Guide to refer to on grammer and punctuation so there would be some consistency. Spoonful, and not spoonfulls, comes to mind. And each region in America adds it's own flavor to the language. And the spoken language is greatly influenced by the advertisers and the media. They create new catch words and phrases all the time! I travel alot so I listen to the way the "a" and the 'r' are pronounced. You can tell alot about where someone is from by how they pronounce those letters. Along with those points add in "attitude", New Yorkers have it in mass quantities, so do New Englanders, even our Southerners have a pride and manner they hold dear to their hearts. Add the cultural infusion, Ebonics, along with a mix of Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese and a half a dozen other languages being plugged into everyday speech.
Some people just get it. I struggle everyday to master the twisted and convoluted path of the American spoken and written word. Mav