nightmare: SOUTHERN DISCOMFORT Wouldn’t it be nice if English had regular pronunciation like Spanish? Learn the rules of pronunciation once and apply them logically forever. Well, English pronunciation can be an illogical nightmare. Take, for example, the adjective “southern.” It comes from the noun “south,” which is pronounced just like “mouth.” So, logically, the adjective form should echo that sound. Right? Wrong. “Southern” has more in common with “mother” and “other” than with “mouth.” It is pronounced as if it were spelled: “sothern.” If someone asks you to speak this pattern out loud: “north, northern; east, eastern; west, western; south, ______,” be careful! English is not a sensible, logical language when it comes to pronunciation; it can be a nightmare!
fact: BREAD VS. TOAST Bread is made from flour, water, and yeast. It is baked in an oven until it is brown outside and soft inside. Toast is made from bread, but it is not the same thing as bread. To make toast, you slice bread and lightly brown the sides of the slice; this action is called toasting. Often, the process is down in a kitchen appliance called a toaster. Bread is not toast until it is toasted. QED
nightmare: WHEEL-Y CONFUSING Are you more than a bit confused by all the many similar-sounding English names for two-wheeled transportation? Motorcycle, motor scooter, moped, motor bike, not to mention scooter, electric scooter and electric bike? Maybe this explanation will help.
Let’s start with what almost everyone rides in Taiwan and calls a “motorcycle.” While there are a few genuine motorcycles in Taiwan that have huge engines and can go on the expressway with the real cars and trucks, the Taiwan step-through model with its small engine is called a motor scooter in the rest of the world. Now, the term motor scooter can be a little confusing too because scooters usually are ridden standing up.
Children have enjoyed riding un-motorized two-wheeled push or kick scooters for years. The power is supplied by one foot pushing the rider along. Recently, in cities and on university campuses, scooters with electric motors—no foot-power necessary—have become popular, so in a sense they are motor scooters too. The easiest, least confusing name for them is e-scooters. That clearly separates them from the kids’ toy scooters, but it does create another problem: what about a Gogoro, the sit-down electric motor scooter? Well, most people can easily tell the difference between a stand-up e-scooter and a Gogoro, so the issue is not that big.
Finally, we come to the motor bike, the moped, and the electric bike. The simplest way to keep them straight is to organize the names: motor bike is the general name for any bicycle-style vehicle with some kind of motor assistance. In that general category, we have the moped and electric bike. A moped has both a small gasoline motor and regular bicycle pedals; the rider has a choice of power. An electric bike also provides the rider with a choice of power, except with an electric motor instead of a gasoline one.
Life is getting so complicated. Personal transportation used to involve just two or four legs! Now, you almost need an engineering degree to understand your options. Bon voyage!
fact: COLOR OR COLOUR? In addition to all the other inconsistencies of English, we have differences between US and UK spellings. The British write colour as well as honour, flavour, and neighbour, while the Americans drop the letter “u” from all those words. There is actually quite a long list of British and American words that are spelled almost the same but not quite. Analyse (UK) becomes analyze in the US. The Americans have a “Defense Department.” The Brits do, too, but they spell it “Defence.” In the US, you are a traveler with a tour program but not in England; there, you are a traveller with a programme.
Who is to blame that we must deal with all these small but annoying spelling differences? If you want to point a finger at one single individual, try Noah Webster, the publisher of the first dictionary of American English. In 1828–45 years after the Americans beat the British the first time and 26 years after the second American victory over them—Webster printed his An American Dictionary of the English Language. In it, he included all the American spellings, shown above, and many other similar, small changes from traditional British spelling. Webster said he was trying to simplify spellings, but as a solid supporter of all things American, Webster was also definitely using spelling as a constant reminder of the sharp break that had occurred between the new United States and the old mother country, England. Webster had “politically corrected” the American version of the English language, and today, we must still deal with his decision because his Dictionary became so influential.
nightmare: SPLIT PERSONALITY CLEAVE More evidence that English is a crazy language is the word cleave which can mean “to split in two” in one sentence or “to stick together” in another one! It is most commonly used today in its first meaning, in the forms of cleaver and cleavage. A cleaver is that big chopping knife used by meat cutters, and cleavage is a woman’s—well, um, er—“career line.” But, those old sexist writers of the Bible tell us that a woman should cleave to her husband, and they don’t mean “chop him in two.” They mean that a married couple should “stick together.” So, please be careful: once you have cleaved something in two, it is practically impossible to cleave it back into one piece.
nightmare: LUNCH OR DINNER? In Taiwan, most people are taught that the three meals of the day are breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Simple, right? Well, with English, few things are rarely that simple.
The confusion here concerns the label dinner. That word can refer to either a day’s third meal or its second meal, depending upon where the native English speaker comes from. In some parts of the eastern US, dinner means the second meal of the day, and supper is the name of the third meal. In the UK, too, dinner and supper are sometimes used in this way.
So, be careful when you make a dinner date with a native English speaker. You are both speaking the same language, but you may be communicating in a very different way—a way that could leave you wondering where your dinner companion is!
fact: TAXIMETER CABRIOLET If you had lived in London or Paris in the late 1890’s and needed an Uber, you would have had to stand on the corner and shout, “Taximeter cabriolet!” The first private, pay-to-ride passenger carriages, pulled by horses, appeared in those cities, and no one knew what to call them. So, as is often the case, they were named, uncreatively, after the machine that figured the ride cost (taximeter) and the kind of carriage that was used (cabriolet).
Now, we know that people are universally lazy when it comes to language. Imagine having to shout, “Taximeter cabriolet!” each time you wanted to hire a ride. So, it is no wonder that the name was soon shortened to “taxicab” and later, even shorter to just “taxi” or “cab.” Even today’s Uber taxi name has already been shortened to just Uber. Life is short; language imitates life.
nightmare: SPLIT PERSONALITY SANCTION What kind of language has words in it that can have opposite meanings, depending on the sentences in which they are used? English is that kind of language! Take the word sanction, for example. It can mean “give permission to do something” in one sentence but have just the opposite meaning--“deny permission to do something”--in another sentence. “The government will sanction the use of force if it is attacked” means the government will permit its army to fight back, if attacked. However, in the sentence, “The government will sanction any North Korean trade in nuclear material,” the word sanction means just the opposite: the government will not permit North Korea to buy nuclear bomb material. Minor nightmare? Yes, but that’s English!
fact: LONGEST ENGLISH WORD? That is an easy question to ask but a hard one to answer. Choices range among one monster of 189,819 letters (!), describing a protein, that takes hours to pronounce and does not appear in dictionaries—obviously; a 45-letter medical term for a lung disease which is in dictionaries; counterrevolutionaries and deinstitutionalization (both 22 letters) that are common but used mostly in written texts; and uncharacteristically, a 20-letter adverb that is frequently heard and spoken. So, you see: the question is easy to ask, but the answer depends on how you define “the longest English word.”
fact: FIRST ENGLISH DICTIONARY Before the 18th century, there was no “correct” form for spelling the English language. All spelling was done by ear, according to the way a word sounded. Unfortunately, different people heard things differently and used different letter combinations to reproduce the sounds that they heard, so in documents earlier than 1755, you are likely to find “cat” spelled “kat” or “catt” or “katte.”
That all changed when Dr. Samuel Johnson, the many-talented London genius, published the very first Dictionary of the English Language in 1755. Believe it or not, Dr. Johnson spent nine years alone, writing the whole dictionary by himself, aided only by a few secretaries to copy his written notes. His Dictionary was a huge success and finally brought to the English language standard spellings and definitions—something other languages had enjoyed much earlier.
Because of Dr. Johnson’s great authority as a scholar and writer, his Dictionary became, for all educated English speakers during that period, the final word on correctness of spelling and word meanings, and the many English dictionaries that have been published since 1755 have all used Dr. Johnson’s remarkable Dictionary as their model.
fact: COMMONEST ENGLISH WORDS Ever wonder what the most common English words are? Well, research shows that there are 100 of them and that those simple, common words make up about 50% of everything we say and write. And, not one of the most common English words has more than two syllables; by far, most have only one. So, that means if you just learn those 100 simple English words, you are already half way to mastering English communication!
The most common word in the English language is the first word of this sentence: the. The most common verb is the verb in this sentence: forms of be. I is number 10, but you only ranks number 18; does that fact tell us something about humans? Similarly, take (#9 among verbs) outranks give (#15). But, don’t lose hope for the English-speaking human race just yet: good is our number one favorite adjective, while bad only comes in at a distant #23.
Here is a link to the complete top 100 listing: 100 Most Common English Words
nightmare: ILLOGICAL ENGLISH No one has to tell a second-language learner that English can be a nightmare to master with all of its inconsistencies and illogic. Different ways to make past tenses, different ways to pronounce the same letter combinations in different words, silent letters, exceptions to rules: these are just some of the offenses that English commits against common sense and logic. We can't change those facts, but we can ask "Why?"
Briefly, English is much more of a hybrid language than, say, Chinese or Spanish. That means that modern English is composed of many languages: primarily, ancient Celtic, Latin, Old German and Dutch, Old Scandinavian, and Old French.
England has been conquered by outsiders many times in its thousands of years of history, but unlike some languages that try to keep themselves pure, English has always evolved and grown by welcoming into itself the languages of its occupiers. Thus, in English, we get all the different spellings, pronunciations, vocabularies, and grammars of the conquerors' languages mixed up with the original languages of the native English peoples.
So, what we have to learn is not one language but many diverse ones. Quite challenging and stressful, for sure. But, looking on the bright side, the result of all this blending is that English is now one of the most versatile and expressive languages in the world. If you can master all of its illogic, you will be able to say things better and more precisely in English than you can in any other language. No pain, no gain?
nightmare: TONGUE TWISTER This is supposed to be the hardest English sentence to say fast and repeatedly: The sixth sick sheik's sixth sheep's sick. (FYI: a sheik is an Arab prince.)
It doesn't make much sense, but it is nearly impossible to say rapidly twice in a row. Good luck!
nightmare: ENGLISH SPEAKING DEMONS Someone should apologize to the generations of English second-language learners for the incoherent horrors of English spelling and pronunciation. Let me boldly speak for my fellow native English speakers in offering that apology now, even though none of us is guilty of the punishment that second-language English learning is.
One case in point: the letter combination “-ough.” Logic and decency tell us that there should be one way (and only one!) to pronounce a particular combination like “-ough.”
But, remember, this is English we are talking about, a language that is often illogical and, as a result, indecently hard to learn! Thus, second-language students must master: ought and thought (“-awt”); though and dough (“-owe”); tough and slough (“-uff”); bough (“take a bow”), as well as through (“threw”) and cough ("-off"). Are you kidding?
This sort of insanity must be some sort of violation of human rights or, at the very least, some sort of student abuse. So...SORRY! And, jya you!
fact: URBAN LEGEND Urban legend says that the modern English word “crap,” both the noun and verb meanings, owe their existence to Mr. Thomas Crapper of 19th century London, who was among the first to sell indoor, flush toilets. The theory sounds right, given the name and the professional association with human waste removal.
If this fact were true, we could only begin to imagine the Crapper family’s shame through the years. How would anyone like to have his name be a synonym for “poop” and the action of creating it?
Unfortunately, the legend is not true. In fact, the word “crap,” in its modern senses was already in use in London when young Tommy Crapper was just an elementary student. And, the words themselves are ancient—dating to the 15th century, and having the meanings of “trash; garbage; assorted unwanted waste of all types.”
So, we need not feel sorry for wealthy Mr. Thomas Crapper of Thomas Crapper and Co., London—at least not in the way we first thought. His family name did not become a slightly less vulgar substitute for the “s” word. But, maybe, we should pity poor Master Tommy Crapper in grade school. Kids can be so cruel. (Just ask my old student, another Thomas with the family name of “Gay”; he hated roll calls!) One can even speculate if young TC were pushed in the direction of the toilet profession by some subconscious desire to flush away all that schoolyard pain.
nightmare: IF YOU CAN PRONOUNCE this dialogue correctly on the first try, thank your English teacher!
“Did you read that, even though wounded and fighting the wind, the lead sled dog led them, on the trail that wound by the river, to the lead mine?”
“Yes, I read that and also, that the dour four later celebrated with sour-toe cocktails but still remembered to wind the clock.”