Fun With English

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[theresearchpersona]

Do you take any delight in the "quirks" or fun things of our language?

Just an example:

Jesus'   or    Jesus's?

The latter is actually "proper", the former the result of the latter's awkwardness, and even the British typically prefer the former. But keeping consistency, technically, at least historically (I believe), the latter is actually correct: and technically I don't think one absolutely must join the two "s" sounds, rather it's arguable both are pronounceable the same way.

Any examples you guys have?

Here's another:

Put "s" in front of "laughter" (on paper) and read the word.

: )

[MidnightRider]

You will probably enjoy the poem "English is Tough Stuff":
http://www.frivolity.com/teatime/Songs_and_Poems/english_is_tough_stuff.html

[theresearchpersona]

: )  Great poem.

Notes on spelling:

English spelling is a mixture of its old dialects, its etymological roots, and a lot of other things. Thus, for instance, we say "to accede" and "to supersede": notice the latter is "sede" rather than "cede"; actually it's the only word in English to end in "sede", and it does so because its etymology is "sedeo". A big reason we don't "fix" the spelling is not only to preserve etymological relsationships (which is symbolically indicative), but also because of the various dialects. It's also fun because we can actually claim, here in America, to have many words even more originally spelled (according to English's own rules) than Britain! (not kidding!).

Some interesting things that have been researched: it's usually found in children that teaching them phonetic spelling systems increases the uptake of reading, however it slows down their reading speed compared to all their peers: this is likely due to this little known observation of our spelling: in English our words are very symbolic, less phonetic; things like "hooked on phonics" distract us from this obvious thing. That's why we can samrclbe all the itnreanl ltetres and still raed the snteneces as if nohtnig has hpnepaed, to smoe extents: our eeys fsrit look at the terminal letters of a word, and the rest is just the finishing "touch" of information we need. French is a greater extreme of symbolic writing of the language than English: one can take French for years and not figure out nearly enough of the words you'll need to be able to read comfortably; Spanish is opposite: it's easy to learn Spanish writing (however the uneducated Spanish-speaking populations could very well split the language literarily in little time at all!).

It makes me wonder if other symbolically written languages that are less phonetic than even ours enable people to read at much greater speeds: I would guess so depending on the grammar and fluency of the reader.

It's still a ton of fun to play with and make fun of, though. : )


Here's another fun one: People complain about "inverted negatives" as being antiquated, "judge not" is an example. However they're actually quite literarily, and what would you do with "do not"? There's not other way to negate "do", is there? I know there's "don't", but that's just cheating, and the negation is still on the end. You can really make it screwy (and redundant) by adding "do" to the end of it, "do not do": just thought of this one tonight.