Confusion in the English Language

I recently received an e-mail from a fellow blogger that confirmed my hypothesis that English is an extremely complex and confusing language.  Anybody studying the language of Shakespeare will probably agree with me.

Below is what my fellow blogger sent me which confirmed my theory about English.  Be prepared to be baffled by the content of this e-mail.  Here we go.

ENGLISH

We’ll begin with a box, and the plural is boxes,
But the plural of ox becomes oxen, not oxes.
One fowl is a goose, but two are called geese,
Yet the plural of moose should never be meese.
You may find a lone mouse or a nest full of mice,
Yet the plural of house is houses, not hice.

If the plural of man is always called men,
Why shouldn’t the plural of pan be called pen?
If I speak of my foot and show you my feet,
And I give you a boot, would a pair be called beet?
If one is a tooth and a whole set are teeth,
Why shouldn’t the plural of booth be called beeth?

Then one may be that, and there would be those,
Yet hat in the plural would never be hose,
And the plural of cat is cats, not cose.
We speak of a brother and also of brethren,
But though we say mother, we never say methren.
Then the masculine pronouns are he, his and him,
But imagine the feminine: she, shis and shim!

Let’s face it – English is a crazy language.
There is no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger;
Neither apple nor pine in pineapple.
English muffins weren’t invented in England.

We take English for granted, but if we explore its paradoxes,
We find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square,
And a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.
And why is it that writers write, but fingers don’t fing,
Grocers don’t groce and hammers don’t ham?

Doesn’t it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend?
If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them,
What do you call it?

If teachers taught, why didn’t preachers praught?
If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?

Sometimes I think all the folks who grew up speaking English

Should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane.
In what other language do people recite at a play and play at a recital?

We ship by truck but send cargo by ship…
We have noses that run and feet that smell.
We park in a driveway and drive in a parkway.
And how can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same,
While a wise man and a wise guy are opposites?

You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language
In which your house can burn up as it burns down,
In which you fill in a form by filling it out,
And in which an alarm goes off by going on.

And in closing……….

If Father is Pop, how come Mother’s not Mop.???

If you got this far, it means you are really a zealot of the English language and probably have a large smile on your face.  Good Day.

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Inside The English Maze

Credit: James Foley

Thanks to a collaboration from Richard, a fellow blogger, author of “One More Good Adventure”, I was able to partly clear some confusion I had about several English words.  He sent me an e-mail with an article explaining the difference between word-pairs easily confused, even by English-speaking persons.  The difference between them is very subtle and it requires concentration to notice the difference between them.

The name of the article sent by my friend is, “Shades of Meaning:  Five Commonly Confused Word-Pairs” written by William B. Bradshaw, author of “The Big Ten of Grammar:  Identifying and Fixing the Ten Most Frequent Grammatical Errors”.  If English is your second language, reading this article will be highly beneficial in polishing up the language.  Reading the book will further consolidate the understanding of the difficult language of William Shakespeare.

“Most of the world’s prominent grammarians have reached consensus for the appropriate uses of many often-confused word pairs. I explore the details of many of these grammatical errors in The Big Ten of Grammar and am sharing the grammarian’s official verdict on the usage of five commonly confused word-pairs.

These are the five word-pairs selected by William B. Bradshaw:

1. “Sure” and “Certain”
2. “Less” and Fewer”
3. “Further and “Farther”
4. “Big” and “Large”
5. “Often” and “Frequently”

Bradshaw offers a comprehensive distinction between the often confused English word-pairs.  Even though I’ve read his explanation of items 4 and 5, I still feel confused as to the proper usage of the terms.  I’ll keep my ears close to the ground to see how they are used by recognized authors.  In the meantime, I’m still inside the English maze trying to find my way out.

Source:  “Shades of Meaning:  Five Commonly Confused Word-Pairs” penned by William B. Bradshaw

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The Origins of the Rule of the Dangling Preposition

Every civilized society has a clearly defined set of rules to regulate the lives of its inhabitants.  Lack of rules would mean absolute chaos.  Legal rules discussed in Congress are called laws and rules originated by other social organizations are just called rules.  Such is the case of English grammar rules.  As an example let’s discuss the rule about dangling prepositions.

It’s wrong to end a sentence with a preposition.  Proper English grammar dictates that English sentences should not end in prepositions.  A dangling preposition is a preposition that is the last word of a sentence or clause like,  “What are you thinking about?” According to true English grammar purists, one should never end a sentence or a clause with a preposition.  It’s a sin to do so raged the English purists.

“Who are you going with?”

“Which box did you put it in?”

“Who’s the letter addressed to?”

Do the above sound perfectly correct to you?  Well, grammatically speaking they’re not.  They’re certainly accepted in everyday speech, and it’s fine if your coworkers, relatives and friends talk that way.  But each of the above is technically incorrect, because each one ends with a preposition devoid of its object.  In short, it “dangles.”

When using prepositions, they must always be followed by their objects.  They may not stand alone.  That is the rule which we should follow if we consider ourselves to write proper English.  Below is the correct way to write the three examples above:

“With whom are you going?”  (Preposition with followed by its object whom)

“In which box did you put it?”  (Preposition in followed by its object box)

“To whom is the letter addressed?”  (Preposition to followed by its object whom)

What is the reason for the rule of the dangling preposition?  Well, it dates back to the 17th century in Great Britain to a writer named John Dryden who is believed to be the first person to posit that English sentences should not end in prepositions because it was against the rules of Latin grammar.

Dryden created the prescription against preposition stranding in 1672 when he objected to Ben Johnson’s 1611 phrase, “the bodies that those souls were frightened from,” although he didn’t offer an explanation of the rationale that gave rise to his preference.  The real reason was a political one.  John Dryden was a writer representative of the Restoration movement in England after puritanical Oliver Cromwell and Parliament was defeated in 1660.

“Puritans” as the name given to the 16th century to an extreme group of Protestants within the Church of England who thought the English Reformation had not gone far enough in reforming the doctrines and structure of the church.  They wanted to purify their national church by eliminating every shred of Catholic influence.  In addition, they wanted the Church of England purified of any liturgy, ceremony or practices which were not found in the Scripture.  Thus the name “Puritans.”  The Bible was their sole authority, and they believed it applied to every area and level of life.

One of the main belief of the Puritans was that if you worked hard, you would get to heaven.  Pointless enjoyment was frowned upon.  Many inns and theaters were all closed down.  Most sports were banned.  Boys caught playing football on a Sunday could be shipped as a punishment.  In some districts bear-baiting, cock-fighting, horse-racing and wrestling were banned.  Betting and gambling were also forbidden.  Large numbers of ale-houses were closed.  Even theaters were closed.

The Puritans lost control after the Restoration in 1660.  The term “Restoration” is used to describe both the real event by which the monarchy was restored, and the several years afterwards in which a new political settlement was established.  Theaters reopened after having been closed and women were allowed to perform on stage for the first time.

In literature perhaps the most outstanding result of the Restoration was the reopening of the theaters, which had been closed since 1642, and a consequent great revival of the drama.  The drama of the period was marked by the brilliance of wit and licentiousness, which may have been a reflection of the freeness of court manners.  This historical period is vividly brought to life in the diaries of Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn, and in poetry the Restoration is distinguished by the work of John Dryden and a number of other poets.

It is a literature that include the hysterical attack on theaters from Jeremy Collier, and pioneering of literary criticism from John Dryden and John Dennis.  The English rule of the dangling preposition is a direct result of a reaction of the loose court manners of the new monarch Charles II.  English grammar is thus tainted by political events.

About ending a sentence with a preposition some English experts say that you shouldn’t take it too seriously.  “Forget about it.”  If ending a sentence with a preposition is more graceful than not, go ahead and do it. Clarity, simplicity, and grace are what good writing is all about.  I understand that the Columbia and Chicago style manuals agree on this matter.  We all know the famous Winston Churchill line about ending a sentence with a preposition: “That is the type of arrant pedantry up with which I shall not put.”  Some rules can be broken, as long as the communication is clear and graceful like a cloudless sky.

And now you know the controversial story behind the English grammar rule about dangling prepositions.  Good Day.

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What in the World is a Paraprosdokian?

Recently I received an email from a dear friend in David, depicting an explanation for a strange English word and several examples of how the term was used.  It was the first time I had seen such a word.  Initially I thought it was a Greek word, but never an English expression.

Since I’m a curious person, I Googled the word and found that it was indeed a legitimate English word.  The word is paraprosdokian.  What is its meaning you might ask?  This is what I found:

“A paraprosdokian, meaning ‘beyond’ and ‘expectation’ sentence, is a figure of speech in which the latter part of a sentence or phrase is surprising or unexpected in a way that causes the reader or listener to re-frame or reinterpret the first part. 

It is frequently used for humorous or dramatic effect, sometimes producing an anticlimax.  For this reason, it is extremely popular among comedians and satirists.” 

According to Wikipedia encyclopedia, “Paraprosdokian” comes from Greek “παρά“, meaning “against” and “προσδοκία“, meaning “expectation”. Canadian linguist and etymology author William Gordon Casselman argues that, while the word is now in wide circulation, “paraprosdokian” (or “paraprosdokia”) is not a term of classical (or medieval) Greek or Latin rhetoric, but a late 20th century neologism.  However, it occurs—with the same meaning—in Greek rhetorical writers of the 1st century BCE and the 1st and 2nd centuries CE.

Below are several examples of a paraprosdokian.  Oh, before I forget, Winston Churchill liked to use these humorous expressions quite often.   Here we go.

1. “Take my wife – please!” — Henry Youngman
2. “He was at his best when the going was good.” — Alistair Cooke in the Duke of Windsor
3. “You can always count on the Americans to do the right—after they have tried everything else.”  Winston Churchill
4. “On his feet he wore…blisters.” — Aristotle
5. “A modest man, who has much to be modest about.” — supposedly Winston Churchill, about Clement Attlee
6. “She was good as cooks go, and as cooks go she went.” — Saki
7. “I don’t belong to an organized political party. I’m a Democrat.” —Will Rogers
8. “If I could just say a few words… I’d be a better public speaker.” — Homer Simpson
9. Where there’s a will, I want to be in it.
10. The last thing I want to do is hurt you. But it’s still on my list.
11. Since light travels faster than sound, some people appear bright until you hear them speak.
12. If I agreed with you, we’d both be wrong.
13. War does not determine who is right – only who is left.
14. Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.
15. To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism. To steal from many is research.
16. I didn’t say it was your fault, I said I was blaming you.
17. Women will never be equal to men until they can walk down the street with a bald head and a beer gut, and still think they are sexy.
18. I used to be indecisive. Now I’m not so sure.
19. Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.
20. I’m supposed to respect my elders, but it’s getting harder and harder for me to find one now.
21. Do not argue with an idiot.  He will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience.
22. Light travels faster than sound.  This is why some people seem bright until you hear them speak.
23. Evening news is where they begin with ‘Good evening,’ and then try to tell you why it isn’t.
24. Always borrow money from a pessimist. He won’t expect it  back.
25. Hospitality:  making your guests feel like they’re at home, even if you wish they were.
26. Some cause happiness wherever they go. Others whenever they  go.
27. A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.
28. Money can’t buy happiness, but it sure makes misery easier to live with.
29. Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be.
30. A bus station is where a bus stops. A train station is where a train stops. My desk is a work station.

And now you know why I say that English is a tough cookie to learn.  Good Day.

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Quid Pro Quo

A phrase that made me pull my hair and grit my teeth was trying to understand the meaning of quid pro quo.  I thought it was not not even an  English word or proper use of formal English.

This is what I found out when I looked up the word in an Internet dictionary:  Quid pro quo is a favor or advantage granted in return for something.  For example:  “The pardon was a quid pro quo for their help in releasing hostages.”

English speakers often use the term to mean “a favor for a favor”—you scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours.  Another similar meaning is a more or less equal exchange for substitutions of goods or services.  Give and take, tit for tat, this for that.  The phrase was borrowed from Latin which means “this for that”.

Next time you bump into this peculiar expression there’s no reason to get angry—you already know what it means.  Lingua Franca is a quid pro quo for your continued comments and support of my daily blog posts.  Thank you and Good Day.

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Digging Deeper Into the English Language

During the last three years I’ve fallen deeply in love with the Enlisc language, also known as English.  I used to struggle with it for a long time, trying to understand the confusion underlying its words, grammar and pronunciation.  Now I’m finding the beauty of the language assisted by my blogger friends Richard and Linda.  Both of them are writers and masters in weaving words, if you know what I mean.

English is a Western Germanic language spoken originally in England, and is now the most widely used language in the world.  It is spoken as a first language by a majority of the inhabitants of several nations, including the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, and a number of Caribbean nations. It is the third most common native language in the world, after Mandarin Chinese and Spanish.  It is widely learned as a second language and is an official language of the European Union, many Commonwealth countries and the United Nations, as well as in many world organizations.

During the last month, I’m removing the layers of the language in an effort to understand how it started and how it expanded to rule most of the world, together with Mandarin and Spanish.  Richard suggested a book to help me in my linguistic quest.  The name of the book is dubbed, The Adventure of English by Melvyn Bragg.  It’s one of those books you don’t want to keep your eyes off the printed text or let it down for a while to take a pause.  You want to read it from beginning to end in one day.

Below is an excerpt from the aforementioned book.  Here we go.

“The American influence on English has been and continues to be crucially important and one of the lucky turns in the adventure is that it was English and not, as it just might have been, French or Spanish or German which adopted or was adopted by that new-found land—that engine of the new and modern world.  America has brought much treasure to the word-hoard but also, like the British Empire it succeeded, its English has caused casualties, and in both empires they are part of this story.

There had been luck but also cunning and the beginning of what was to become English’s most subtle and ruthless characteristic of all:  its capacity to absorb others.  Two brief examples of the linguistic osmosis are:

• Frisian:  Laam (lamb), goes (goose), bûter (butter), brea (bread), see (sea), stoarm (storm), boat (boat), rein (rain), and snie (snow).  Indoors, there’s miel (meal) and sliepe (sleep).
• Latin:  Planta (plant), win (wine), catte (cat), candel (candle), ancor (anchor), cest (chest), forca (fork), weall (wall), straet (street), mortere (mortar), spitula (letter), and rosa (rose).

The way in which a few tribal and local Germanic dialects spoken by a hundred and fifty thousand people grew into the English language spoken and understood by about one and a half billion people has all the characteristics of a tremendous adventure.

English like a living organism was seeded in England a little over fifteen hundred years ago.  England became its first home.  From the beginning it was exposed to rivalries, angers and threats:  there was an escape from extinction, the survival of an attempt at suffocation; and there are casualties.  It has often been a fierce war over words—whose language rules?—but also there were and are treasures:  literatures, unified governance, and today the possibility of a world conversation, in English

Only writing preserves a language.  Writing gives posterity the keys it needs.  It can cross al boundaries.  A written language brings precision, forces ideas into steady shapes, secures against loss.  Once the words are on the page they are to be challenged and embellished by those who come across them later.  Writing begins as the secondary arm but soon, for many, becomes the primary source, the guardian, the authority, the soul of language.

But who found the first words?  Who finds new words today?  We know that Shakespeare put into print at least two thousand new words, but the majority of words come out of the crowd.  An American frontiers-man like Davy Crockett can be as good a word spinner as a master of Trinity College, Cambridge.  Early words came from those who worked the land, those whose centuries of nose to the earth made them acquainted with the minutiae of nature and most likely it was they who, often out of necessity, had to name what they saw:  basic things, and creatures which might endanger or nourish them.  The giving of names could be called the most democratic communal effort in our history.  Language is the finest achievement of culture—and in my view, the English language is the most remarkable of the many contributions these islands have made to the world.”

If English is your second language, I encourage you to keep hanging in there making new discoveries and soon you will unwrap the beauty of the language.  I can’t emphasize enough how much I enjoy reading and learning abut this Lingua Franca of our times.  Good Day.

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The Collective Names of Animals

I don’t recall that our English teachers emphasized the different names of groups of animals during their classes.  Either I dozed during those tedious lessons, or they were never given to us.  I just can’t recall.  As I read books, magazines, newspapers and watched movies and videos, I picked some of them.  However, there are some groups of animals, I didn’t have the faintest clue existed.

Some of the most common ones I had no problems with are:

1. A school of fish.
2. A herd of cattle.
3. A flock of birds.
4. A swarm of bees.
5. A litter of cats

However, I had no idea the following terms existed in the English language.  But that’s nothing new, English as you all know, has been a tough cookie for me since I was six.

Are you familiar with the names of the following groups of animals?

1. A shrewdness of apes.
2. A sloth or sleuth of bears.
3. A tower of giraffes.
4. A band of gorillas.
5. A bloat of hippopotamuses.
6. A wake of buzzards.
7. A gulp of cormorants.
8. A sedge of cranes.
9. A bask of crocodiles.
10. A shoal of bass.

And the list goes on and on for mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, amphibians and invertebrates.  A dear friend recently sent me a link which includes a lengthy list of these unusual terms which I thought you could use as a reference website.  If you like to write in English, sooner or later, this site could be your deus-ex-machina.

And now you know the rest of the story of my experiences with the English language.  Good Day.

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The Evolution of the English Language

In some ways, the English language behaves like a living organism.  It seems to have a life of its own.  It’s in constant change triggered by new discoveries, trends, fashions, inventions and what have you.  As older generations hand over the baton to younger generations, the language renews itself.  Old becomes new, then old, and new again in a never-ending cycle.

For example, if somebody asked you to go to a department store and buy a grip or a hand grip.  I’ll bet you would be perplexed.  What is a grip?  Well, back in the good old days, that’s what they called a suitcase, for crying out loud.

Another example would be hiding an iPhone under a davenport.  What in the heck is that?  Well, during the forties a davenport was a couch or large sofa.   The word peaked in 1930 and early 1940 and dropped off very sharply after that.

A sheeny or sheenie was a derogatory word used to identify a Jew.  It was a contemptuous term for a Jewish person.  Its roots date back to 1810-1820.  The slur peaked shortly before the end of World War II and now is seldom used.

As a language evolves, words, phrases, and even whole tenses fall in and out of fashion. And then, every once in a while, a whole new way of expressing a particular thought will emerge seemingly out of nowhere and eventually win the day. That’s what happened over the course of the 19^th century with the “progressive passive,” which took on a construction known as the “passival” and muscled it completely out of the English language.

By progressive passage construction in English, you mean an action that continues in time.  It suggests an ongoingness; something in progress.  For example:  The house is being built.  It is not finished yet, it’s being built.  We understand that, and it is the proper way to say that an action is still in progress.  But in “Old English” it was not the civilized way to write.  The pure English grammar was the passival which a little bit confusing.  Charles Dickens would write it this way:  The street lamps were lighting.  Another correct use of the passival  construction is: The house is building, The house in on building, or The house is o’building. 

Enormous discussions took place between those who defended the passival against the emerging progressive passive English grammar.  With the passing of time the passival followed the way of the Dodo.

I learned these English lessons by listening to a podcast produced by Lexicon Valley property of  Slate Magazine, which was recently sent to me  by a dear friend.  The title of the podcast is “When Being Done Replaced Doing.”   The link provides twelve interesting English lessons which are a fun and exciting way to learn English, which is a tough cookie, as many of you well know.  I’ve been trying to break the code for most of my life, but still consider that there’s a lot of wood to chop.  Best of luck with your English lessons.  Good Day.

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Spanish Spelling in Red

The Spanish language is a very phonetic language.  The pronunciation of the vowels is always the same.  You no longer have to worry about long a’s or short e’s and a whole bunch of other vowel’s pronunciation.  In addition, the pronunciation of Spanish words is further aided through the use of orthographical accents known as “tildes“. Only the five vowels, (e.g., a, e, i, o, u are emphasized with tildes).  The use of orthographical accents are very useful to know which syllable should be emphasized when you pronounce a word.

The five vowels of the Spanish language are accentuated the following way:

1. á (carácter)
2. é (logré)
3. í  (leístes)
4. ó (apoteósico)
5. ú (único)

There are no such orthographical accents in the English language, making it more difficult to know how to pronounce a word.  Below are a couple of pictures with Spanish words using the tilde.  Since they are written in white with a red background, I decided to call this blog post, “Spanish Spelling in Red.”  Take a look.

Snapshot of three glass containers using Spanish words with orthographical accents, (e.g., té, azúcar and café). Photo by ©Omar Upegui R.

A closer view of the glass containers with Spanish words using the tildes or orthographical accents. Photo by ©Omar Upegui R.

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Hang Someone Out to Dry

English idiomatic expressions are very difficult to learn, specially if you don’t live in an English-speaking country.  For those of us who are learning the language through formal education, these expressions are not easily found.  You have to dig in to find them and understand their meaning.

One idiomatic expression commonly used is, “Hang someone out to dry.”  It means to defeat or punish someone.  To get someone into trouble, especially by making them take the blame for a bad situation.  An example would be:  “When the department got into difficulties, his bosses simple hung him out to dry.”  As you can see, this expression has nothing to do with the process of drying even though it alludes to hanging wet laundry on a clothesline.  (Slang 1960s).

Other similar expressions are:

1. Being left hung out to dry.
2. Left hanging out to dry.
3. Blowing in the wind.
4. Twisting slowly in the wind.

Since the allusion of the expression is hanging clothes to dry, I’ll take the opportunity to share with you how we hang our clothes to dry in Panama.  We don’t use electric dryers in this neck of the woods.  The sun is good enough, plus it’s free.

Below are a couple of pictures of clothes which have been left hanging out to dry—literally.  Here we go.

Snapshot taken from out kitchen window of clothes hanging out to dry the way it's done in this part of the world. Some clothes are on top of our neighbor's roof. Photo ©Omar Upegui R.

Snapshot of multicolored clothes hanging out to dry the way it's done in Panama. We don't use electric dryers because they are too expensive. The sun is a lot cheaper. ©Omar Upegui R.

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