I think I figured it out. It hit me like a bolt of lightening, or more like, an hour show on ABC, yesterday.
My plan to get 'amn't' (am not) put into the English language has still not come to fruition (and that's 'frew-ish-shon' not 'fruit-ion', go figure) but one that perplexed me yesterday was 'lose' and 'loose' when you consider 'chose' and 'choose'.
That's 'lewse', as in 'not tight', and that's 'chewse'. I know, does my fucken head in too.
Anyway back to that show. I think Blackadder did the best rip off of Samuel Johnson (Dr Johnson to his friends, or now, Dr Cock, to me). It seems after watching that show yesterday Rowan Atkinson was more spot on than anyone realised.
Samuel Johnson wrote the Dictionary in 1755. Well, it was published then, after nine years of writing, and setting his wig on fire with candles cause he was almost blind. True. Dr Cock was almost blind, he had Tourets, he wrote it in the dark, was morbidly obese, and was born in the early 1700's.
THAT, my friends, explains A LOT about our language.
See Naut, finger on the pulse.
How come 'everything' is one word, and 'every time' isn't?. Hmmmm?.
Sunday, 5 April 2009
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'Everything' makes a single item out of all objects collectively, and in fact is just the long way of saying 'all'.
ReplyDelete'Every time' refers to each instance of time, individually.
Also, 'ryth' is easier to pronounce than 'ry tah' so it's easier to slur the two words in 'everything'. Ergo, we spell it like we say it.
Naturally, this is all horseshit (I prefer one word.)
Yes it's full of all those little anomalies...probably something to do with the fact that so many other languages went into the formation of it combined with the peculiar regionalities that shaped our words as it spread in usage. What I love about language is it's a fluid thing...when one word goes out of fashion another will gradually form in it's place. Gotta love urbandictionary.com!
ReplyDeleteThat's what we expect from you Moko, always asking the important questions, thinking important thoughts and showing important youtube clips!
ReplyDeleteHe drank heaps though - can't be all bad!
ReplyDeletei get pissed with right and right, left and left, weight and wait, here and hear, eight and ate - all the words that sound the same and mean different things.
ReplyDeleteno(know)wonder it takes people so long to (two, too) learn english
yeah umada like bow (ship) bough (tree) and bow (etiquette)
ReplyDeleteWhich which is which?
programme? why not just spell it programmmme same thing. the yanks have that write with program and color.
Phonetics is the go (we should spell it fonetics)
phone = fone
limb = lim
yacht = yot
knight = nite = night
etiquette = etiket (bloody frenchy words!)
people = peeple
Russia = Rusha
Australian = Ozzie
right = rite
eight = ate
etc
The comedian Dave O'Neil once asked:
ReplyDeleteWhy are Oranages called Oranages and Bananas not called Yellow? How are our newly arrived Immigrants supposed to manage?
The word SET has the most definitions of any word in the English language. SET has 464 definitions in the Oxford English Dictionary. Here's how the others stack up:
ReplyDeleteRUN - 396
GO - 368
TAKE - 343
STAND - 334
GET - 289
TURN - 288
PUT - 268
FALL - 264
STRIKE - 250