The Weird, Wacky, World of the English Language

[Gordian Knot]

I feel for people who are trying to learn English as a second language. Where a word can mean one thing AND the opposite of that same thing.

Example: Vintage (aside from the references to wine).

1. representative of the best and most typical: vintage Shakespeare.
2. of lasting interest and importance; venerable; classic: vintage films.
3. old-fashioned; dated.

Normally versions 1 & 2 are what I think of, but I got version 3 when I brought in my 2007 iMac for repairs recently. Turns out a major part is probably dead, and the tech told me it probably was not worth the expense of repairing as in a few months it was due to go "vintage".

Upon my questioning look he told me that after a computer goes vintage, Apple will no longer repair it. They won't even look at it.

The twist to the story. Vintage Macs have a fair value! People who repair old Macs need parts and they are no longer able to order them. The only source is for people like me to put them up for sale listing it as "for parts".

Apparently it isn't just Apple. My friend took her non-Mac smart phone to be repaired. She was told it was vintage!

 

[hopewrites]

vintage gamers will tell you that 1 and 2 are what make 3 cool. among gamers they are a unique clique in that they have the respect but not always the admiration of the rest of the gaming community, because they often have to repair their own equipment, crack or rewrite code for newer technology, and in general know more about how games and systems work than those who do not indulge in 8bit graphics and games that are more about timing and problem solving in their hacking and slashing than the more modern ones. Admiration for the level of knowledge and skill necessary to enjoy that medium, but sometimes this admiration is coupled with disdain that that knowledge and skill is being "wasted" on out dated and dying technology.

One of my bigest struggles are homonyms. Contextually different words that are spelled and/or pronounced the same. I still have to read a sentance twice that has "read" in it to know if it should be read as "read" or "red". (and yes that applies doubly so to the sentence I just wrote.)

 

[nixie]

You mean like here sits the heir playing with his hair. Certain he heard a herd of cattle outside the window.

How on earth did we ever learn to read and write.

 

[chrispenycate]

Or like "cleave"

To split apart, separate (as in cleavage, cloven)

To cling together, adhere, unite. (as in the marriage ceremony). Both a little archaic – apart, possibly for "cleavage" – and could be considered linguistically vintage.

 

[Metryq]

Other English fun: The alarm went off.

Or how about words like hapless. One learns that placing "-less" at the end of a word means "without," as in childless, or penniless, but when was the last time you heard someone say, "That guy has a lot of hap"?

 

[Gramm838]

What about the word "mine"!

"There's a mine over there but it's not mine; and there's a different sort of mine over here which is mine - the mine which is mine can fit inside that mine, but that mine can't fit inside the mine which is mine"...

Mine - a hole in the ground from which coal comes...
Mine - a possessive word...
mine - a thing planted in the ground but which will blow up...

LOL

 

[nightdreamer]

Or how "vulnerable" and "invulnerable" mean the opposite but "flammable" and "inflammable" mean the same.

I also like the word "woman." (I like real women, too.) To make the plural, you turn the "a" to an "e" but change the pronunciation of the "o".

I read that there were something like 57 definitions for "run" in the OED. Don't quote me on that number.

 

[chrispenycate]

I believe the word with the maximum number of different meanings in English is "pitch". Some may well be related, but a cricket pitch and a baseball pitch aren't, and a sales pitch might go with the baseball. Perfect pitch would be different for a player of either of the two sports, for a musician, a manufacturer of screws, a roofer (although he'd have to decide if he was adjusting the angle of a roof or waterproofing it), or a salesman, and then we have all the forms of the verb…

 

[Ursa major]

...but "flammable" and "inflammable" mean the same.

This isn't a problem with English, but goes at least as far back as the Latin:

• inflammare is the present infinitive of inflammo = to set on fire/ignite;
• flammare is the present infinitive of flammo = (amongst other things) to set on fire.

I believe the word with the maximum number of different meanings in English is "pitch".

I've heard it said that the word, set, has the most meanings. (Pitch occupies nearly 13 columns in my 1933-ish version of the OED; set occupies 69 columns.) I've got one of those four-pages-to-a-page photo reduced versions of the complete OED. The print's too small for counting up all the meanings (and deciding how different they are) at this time of night.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

I read somewhere that it's rose.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

... but "flammable" and "inflammable" mean the same.

There's a great episode of The Simpsons where Dr Riviera makes this very point.

 

[Abernovo]

As someone who occasionally has to explain English words and letters, the worst is not a word, as such, but a combination of letters. Bulgarian has ONE sound for ONE letter. Apart from a couple of minor deviations, the letter then always sounds the same, so you can sound the word out. Simple.

So trying to explain how o-u-g-h sound in different combinations (or worse trying to explain why when I don't know the answer myself) is a nightmare.

Though
Thought
Cough
Hiccough (yes, boys and girls, that is the other way to spell hiccup)

There are more words, but that's an example. You can see why it confuses anyone trying to learn it as a foreign language.

 

[Ursa major]

Sounds like the pronunciation of 'ough' words hasn't been thoroughly thought through. It must be rough on those who are learning English as a second language. (Or should we let them... er... bough down to the magic of English and take their dough.)

 

[Gramm838]

and of course there is this:

How do you pronounce the word "GHOTI"

Answer tomorrow if you haven't seen it before!

By the way one of the best words in English is rotavator because it's the longest one word palindrome in the English language...although I have heard Danny Baker on BBC Radio 5 Live say a sentence which was a palindrome!

 

[Ursa major]

I'll be having some ghoti and chips this evening. (Just as well that the word, ghoti, is... er... cod English....)


There's the famous palindome that most of us probably know: "A man, a plan, a canal: Panama."

 

[Gramm838]

Correct Ursa...GHOTI is 'fish':


enough
women
initiative

and there's this:

Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteres are at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a tatol mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by itslef but the wrod as a wlohe.

 

[Ursa major]

That's true, but it has had to be removed from the official list of excuses for badly spelt manuscripts, as slushpile readers were getting it in the neck from their employers when they acted on it and asked for a full.