literal English, English is just so WEIRD sometimes, or the Jerry Seinfeld thread of what's the deal with Ovaltine?!

spinoff of the paperclip trombone thread, this thread is for pointing out how weird English is or how literal English is or how cool English is

for example a manhole, it's a HOLE big enough for a MAN to fit through!! it's not a hole that's found in a man.

although "manhole porn" About 415,000 results (0.18 seconds)

a seaman isn't a man who comes from the sea...a seaman is a sailor!!

what was the gist of jerry's routine about ovaltine?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0qm0KUPeD8

ahaha, thank you

How about how "goodbye" comes from the phrase "God be with ye"?

lol

PEANUTS ARE COMICS ABOUT A BALD BOY NOT PEAS NOR NUTS

How about how "goodbye" comes from the phrase "God be with ye"?

― corey, Sunday, May 1, 2011 11:30 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

wow did not know this. Though it was only a few weeks ago that I realized "maybe" just comes from usages of people saying "it may be this, etc.).

An orange is called an orange because it's orange. They couldn't come up with anything more creative?

Films are called movies because they're moving pictures.

An orange is called an orange because it's orange

I think that the colour is called orange because that's the colour of oranges rather than the other way round.

I am smitten with all the "be-" forms of words in English, most of which are living a hole-and-corner existence in a few archaic phrases that refuse to die, like beloved or betrothed. There are many hundreds of others that are rarely used or heard. Beslobbered. Benighted. Belabored.

I like a lot of archaisms. Breadstuff. Lovelorn. Bosomy. Tattletale. Vexed. Sorely. Losing them, we lose riches untold.

btw, I think the oval in ovaltine had something to do with an oval trademark.

Many of these inkhorn coinages were used only once and gained no currency at all among other writers. Others gained some brief acceptance but then vanished again. Some examples of words which never made it into the modern language:

•anacephalize: to recapitulate
•adnichilate: reduce to nothing, annihilate
•eximious: excellent, distinguished, eminent.
•exolete: disused, obsolete; effete, insipid; faded
•fatigate: to fatigue
•illecebrous: alluring, enticing, attractive.
•ingent: immense, very great.
•obtestate: to bear witness, call upon as witness

flammable and INflammable mean the SAME THING

every time i think it's really hard learning another language i remember the kind of shit that non-english speakers are up against:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heteronym_%28linguistics%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homograph
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homonym

"watta country!"

well, i was thinking isn't every other word in some chinese languages a pun due to tones, etc?

every time i think it's really hard learning another language i remember the kind of shit that non-english speakers are up against

Yes! When I was getting certified to teach ESL these sort of things would dawn on me all the time esp when trying to explain them to people and realizing that so much just doesn't make sense.

it's pretty much the arbitrariest language ever. all of present-day english might as well be one huge disgusting idiom.

none of the stuff on this thread is really weird, guys.

ime none of these "weird" expressions have anything on (haha) phrasal verbs, which are ubiquitous and so hard to memorize
there are a zillion shittily designed websites dedicated to this stuff too

none of the stuff on this thread is really weird, guys.

there are a zillion shittily designed websites dedicated to this stuff too

sorry, go comic sans yourselves up the ass then, you fools.

phrasal verbs

Oh God yes. When I was in school our English teacher made us memorize some song to the tune of the Battle Hymn of the Republic only I could never remember the song and always got in trouble for not being able to sing it. :(

flammable and INflammable mean the SAME THING

― tInA-yOtHeRs (donna rouge), Sunday, May 1, 2011 1:54 PM (44 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

For a long time, I, based on this logic, thought "definitely" and "indefinitely" meant the same thing.

indubitably

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_fhu5JzMftCk/SiWXxeZrOvI/AAAAAAAAFNk/7EHpf-bZb3A/s400/dr.nick_pic1.jpg

it has always weirded me out that quixotic is pronounced the way it is and the title of the book is generally pronounced correctly

wtfffffffffffff the first google hit for "how to pronounce quixotic" is an ilx thead

I generally pronounce the book "Don Quicksote." Is that wrong?

lol

do you want people to pronounce "umbrella" as "um-bray-ah"? does anyone else remember that early-mid nineties era snl sketch?

its not abt what I want, it just weirded me out is all

I have no demands when it comes to language

I generally pronounce the book "Don Quicksote." Is that wrong?

― SteakNique (®2011 Ulillillia) (Phil D.), Sunday, May 1, 2011 12:50 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark

yah

don key hoe tey

In the film Jude, Kate Winslet mispronounces Don Quixote ("Quicksote"), which always niggled me. Neither Winslet nor Michael Winterbottom knew the correct pronunciation?

The phrase "hello" came into being one morning after its creator, Frederick Finglefeather, tripped while getting out of bed and exclaimed "hell!" as he fell to the floor. While on the floor he noticed some loose change on the ground and said, "oh!"

That same day, Finglefeather had lunch with his friend Alexander Graham Bell. Finglefeather vividly reenacted the incident that morning for Bell, who was taken by Finglefeather's delivery of "hell...oh!" He had just patented the telephone, and was searching for a marketable greeting to use with the device. With "hell-o" he had hit paydirt. "Freddy, you're a genius!" Bell cried. The rest is history.

The two later co-authored a pamphlet advocating eugenics, and Finglefeather later blew all his "hello" money on gambling, drink, prostitutes and his fossil coprolite collection, but that's another story.

her character doesn't know it

xpost

but really who gives a shit, the pronunciation police are a nightmare

Y ISN'T 'THROUGH' PRONOUNCED 'THRUFF'?

words like "entrance" are crazy to me, where they have a totally different meaning depending on how you pronounce them: -
"enTRANCE" under a spell; "ENtrance" an opening
(lol or N-trance the terrible 90's dance group)

Uh, isn't Quicksote the traditional English pronunciation of the book? And since Jude the Obscure came out in the 19th century the characters would have pronounced it that way.

preemptively asking nobody to make the "Quick sott" vs "Key hoe tee" thread

making no promises.

quixote would have been pronounced "kee-shot-ay" in medieval spain iirc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LY3bEyQ9J2E

I guess all I was sayin is that the quixotic/Quixote thing is weird to me because both are pronounced differently in English because of what I assume is laziness/racism

'if we pronounce this word wrong enough, these immigrants will go back to their home country'

also just fyi when I speak of english in this thread I only mean american english due to laziness/racism

pretty sure "Quicks-oat" was standard 19th century pronunciation in England and seem to recall seeing mad phonetic spellings of it in some old books

"show" also used to be "shew" in British English at least until WWI

did Ed Sullivan invent Queen's English?

Even in the 40s some guy called Mr Hitler was getting spelt "Adolph" in British publications a lot iirc

(xposts)

There are some French names I've never or only rarely heard pronounced out loud, and I'm never sure how Anglicised the standard Britisher pronunciation is, so I'm scared that if I try to refer to them in conversation I'll either out myself as a terrible philistine or get the response "Derri-daa? ooh, la-di-da"

(was thinking of a prime example of this in the past fortnight and nearly asked ILX but have completely forgotten who it was now)

it's "Peh-pay luh P-yew"

...apparently I should get myself to the "always get those two mixed up" thread re Pepé le Pew and Gaston Lagaffe

Thanks for the Don Juan clarification woof. I usually defer to Paxo on these things. He always gets his Irish pronunciations wrong though. I once heard him pronounce Cú Chulainn as Cooshalane. The idiot.

fwiw just for minor pedantry re Don Juan I don't think it rhymes with 'ruin' for him - the 2nd vowel's an 'oh' or an 'uh' (not 100% sure now I look at his rhyme choices a bit more), not an 'ih'.

xps - lol no probs. I live in terror of pronouncing Irish words, names and placenames in front of Irish friends who are fluent as gaeilge. I either just go for carefree wrongness ('I shall visit the gailtact'), or we end up in an embarrassingly childish ecoutez-repetez session.

I have on one occasion in Ireland walked a block or two to a more pronounceable street name before ringing for a taxi. (sheepish)

You're not even safe if you're from Ireland. I get stick from my friends for pronouncing things in the Donegal way e.g. pronouncing Róisín as Rawsheen rather than Rowsheen

fyi Melvyn Bragg says don quicksott, "as the English have always pronounced it". Don't know if they discuss the issue further in this radio prog about it: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p003hydl

Y ISN'T 'THROUGH' PRONOUNCED 'THRUFF'?

Why isn't "rough" pronounced "roux"?

I pronounce it "Kee-Yote-tee". Now if you'd excuse me, I have that damn Kershaw song in my head...

when i was a little kid, my parents laughed at me for pronouncing that greek dude's name 'so crates'

i'll get them back someday

So which one are you then?

http://elder-geek.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/600full-bill-teds-excellent-adventure-photo.jpg

I remember roundly mocking my little brother for pronouncing Caesar as Kaysar. I have little doubt he's still planning his revenge.

whoa

Kaiser and Caesar have the same root, so he wasn't far off.

Looks like i was the fool all along

x-post yep

see also Tsar/Czar

I am actually aware of the words common root, although i wasn't then. Perhaps i should go apologize.

several years ago i worked with a group making foreign-language training programs, which involved me testing a lot of things. (this was particularly difficult because some of them had voice-recognition software, so i had to be able to say things correctly and incorrectly).

it was confusing because we were working on several different languages at once. but i was struck by how many words -- from russian to greek to arabic to japanese -- were similar and were either borrowed or derived from the same root.

it's so weird that we send our kids to 'kindergarten'

Nursery Narc woudn't have quite the same ring to it.

Neither would 'Nursery Narc Cop'

ehm, nevermind

when i was a little kid, my parents laughed at me for pronouncing that greek dude's name 'so crates'

i'll get them back someday

I had a Beetle Bailey anthology as a kid and I pronounced the character Plato's name as though it were the Spanish word for plate. My brother shamed me for that. Ow.

Oh- and there was a male strip club om Bourbon Street called Cajundales (a play on Chippendales) I talked to my BF about it, pronouncing it in Spanish (cahoonDAHles).

Jesse, the original greek philosopher Plato apparently acquired that nickname because he was a wrestler when he was a young man, and his build was short and broad-backed -- plato meaning "broad", cognate with "plate" in english or "plato" in spanish. So, throw that in your brother's face when next you see him. Hah!

See also: Cicero, which means "chickpea", because the end of his nose looked like a chickpea, rounded with a shallow crease.

yeah, and Tacitus was really shy iirc

Well you just learn the damndest things every day.

I'm betting Socrates had a lot of throat infections and treated them with these

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_pLdjmN81Y54/SsNEtJPbxGI/AAAAAAAABOk/T1gDFphPHis/s400/sucrets.jpg

Backwards, frontwards forwards, sidewards sideways. Last week a Spanish guy at work started talking about the backside of something. We gently informed him it was downside - or drawback.

man I had no idea 'w' is called double-u because it used to represent uu

thank you trombone thread

also 'z' used to be pronounced 'izzard

getting slizzard

cloud computing!

how crazy is that!

u_u

to weigh in on topic x.

first of all, that to weigh is suddenly active, something you do.
second of all, that what you do is "weigh in," i.e. check your weight to make sure you're in the right class for a boxing match.
third of all, that this somehow means "offer your opinion"

Boxers can be quite persuasive (which isn't like the 'sau' in "sauve")

i used to use "action verbs" like "tackle" instead of "oversee" or "manage" in job applications because i thought they were livelier, then one day i realized they didn't fit and probably made me look a little psychotic.

weigh in on is a good one.

not very weird individually, but wake, awake, wake up, and awaken are kind of a mess collectively.

Those are phrasal verbs FYI

This thread inspired me to do a comic about a phrasal verb.

one thing that's been driving me crazy is noticing how much meanings change depending on whether a verb is used passively or actively

Well, weigh in on and wake up are

Also please send me your phrasal verb comic so that I can use it on my final exam review!

Ha it's really not going to be pedagogically helpful, sorry.

No, just as a funny haha tension reliever. Plus I'd like to see it!

Two I like:

disease literally meaning dis ease

and misfit literally meaning mis fit.

Similar to when you're a kid and you realise what breakfast means. Although perhaps everyone already realised those first two and I am a slow idiot.

dis ease is awesome!

dis eazy

suggest and gestate share the same root

gestate ban