Poking fun at the English language

[postitlord]

I have a peeve. Lots of peeves. English is soup of other languages, fine, but could someone of thought of better words than:

grapefruit
Okay, this piece of food, which is not a grape, has FRUIT in it's name.
It's redundant like saying I drive a folks wagon automobile to work every day. Sheesh.

table
A table is usually a wooden object to eat food off of, not an imaginary rectangle to organize words into categories! (You know how long it took me to understand "table of contents" when I was little!?)

I know I have others, but they elude me now. Please! Add to the list! :D And politely include for the daft among us (me) a summary explanation.

[scoutt]

ok how about parkway and driveway.

you park in a driveway and drive in a parkway.

[postitlord]

Great one Scoutt! :rofl:

@
Did we really need to shorten a 2 letter word, to 1? Both take practically an identical amount of time to write, and the extra curve around the a takes up about as much ink as the t. And this "shorthand" was invented years before email...

[Pegasus]

*lol* PL, I'm not even going to *try* to list my pet peeves on Internet language. There isn't enough room on the forum!

However, in English... *wg*

Being that I play a lot of D&D, I do have some words that drive me nuts.

chaos - My name has a CH in it and it isn't pronounced as a K! So why should something like this be pronounced that way? Sheesh! And when you consider that I'm easily confused anyway....

sword - Why put a W in there if you're not going to use it? It only makes it hard to read out loud. Sheesh.

But my favourite English word? *eg*

Ghoti. We used to have half a dozen of them. The kids thought they were neat.

Peg

[quietstorm]

Originally posted by Pegasus


Ghoti.

Fish. I was just going to bring that up.

laugh="f"
women="i"
nation="sh"

[Pegasus]

Originally posted by quietstorm

Fish. I was just going to bring that up.

Yuppers. *g* I find it hard to even think of that word and still keep a straight face some days.

I wonder how many other words there are like that?

Peg

[Android]

When an S and an I and an O and an U and an X on the end spell SIOUX ,
And an E and a Y and an E spell EYE , what is a speller to do?
When an S and an I and a G and an H and an ED on the end spell SIGHED ,
There is nothing for a speller to do but commit SIOUXEYESIGHED .

Anon.

[Pegasus]

*lol* I hadn't thought of that, Android.

Hmmm...

If werds wer horsez that we cuud ried
I wunder how fast weed go if we tried?
If awl uv owr Inglish wuz spelt just thuh saym,
Then klasez in Inglish wuud seem rathr taym.
No ruuls too reemembr, no xsepshuns too theez
Eye kan think uv sum teechrs hoo wuudn't bee pleezd.

An sins dooing this poem iz geting queyet ruff
Eyel tayk pity awn yuu an say 'that's enuff'!

Peg

[Android]

*lol lol lol* Now that's good, Peg!
I might print that out for my office wall (or are there copyright issues ;).
Is the New English going to replace the New Math that they've been pushing the last few years?
It seems that with the plethora (my 25¢ word of the day) of computers and calculators in the classroom, do we even need to teach an english language class (lower case on the english intended!)? Maybe it should be an elective or moved to the dead (or comatose) languages department!

Great thread....

[spaz109ca]

I figure the reason they shortened at to @, is because they neede a symbol for the email thing...think about it...would you like your email to look like spaz109caatyahoo.ca or spaz109ca@yahoo.ca?

[Pegasus]

*lol* Help yourself, Android. It took me longer to figure out the spelling than it did to write that bit of doggerel.

Hmmm....

You know, you might be onto something there. Let's toss English into the "specialized courses" category. You know, like classes in C++ and Java and so on.

*eg* You see, if my computer acts up, I go fetch a specialist to fix it. 9 times out of 10, it's a glitch in a programme. So, if we make English a specialized field, all us wannabe writers have a stab at making gazillions of dollars without having to slave over a hot tripewriter for years. ;)

Peg

[cfhosting]

hasnt the @ cymbal bin around bee four computer daze?

[scoutt]

Originally posted by spaz109ca
I figure the reason they shortened at to @, is because they neede a symbol for the email thing...think about it...would you like your email to look like spaz109caatyahoo.ca or spaz109ca@yahoo.ca?
that is not true Spaz. the @ symbol is shorthand and it has been around for years, way before email was invented. but I think it has been said already in this thread a couple of times.

[Android]

Yeah, I seem to remember '@' being part of an emoticon for W. C. Fields, so I guess it's been around for ages. Consider "Here's lookin' @ you kid", and "Casey at the B@" and "Cat in the H@", etc.......

[Pegasus]

According to the story I heard years ago, the @ symbol was the result of sloppy handwriting.

It seems that a grocer used to write so poorly that the cross of his "t" ended up almost circling the "a" when he wrote "Cucumbers at 50¢ each". It ended up looking like "Cucumbers @ 50¢ each".

One of his new stockboys didn't realize what had been written, copied the figure exactly and thus was born the "@" sign.

But when that was, I'm not sure. I'd have to go back and find the URL.

It ended up on the tripewriters of the day and the Internet uses it in the same manner it uses smilies and all manner of other "shortcuts". And I won't post my thoughts on *that* kind of nonsense. ;)

Peg

[Jason]

Originally posted by scoutt
ok how about parkway and driveway.

you park in a driveway and drive in a parkway.

This is not without reason, it's really more of a cultural change that makes it sound silly. When driveways were named, they usually belonged to large estates or manors. They were quite long and required a fair drive down them to reach the house, but it could not be called a road since it was private.

Parkways were still limited, and they were usually surrounded with lush parks and greenery.

The real stumper is why shipment is by car and cargo is by ship :p

Sorry for this post, not trying to sound like a smart:censored::censored::censored:

[Pegasus]

So that's why! *g* Neat!

Hmmm.... the shipment/cargo question is a bit easier, I think.

Like "driveway", "shipment" is a holdover from the days when most transportation was by water. The word "ship", it is believed, comes from the prehistoric Germanic word "skipam", possibly referring to a hollowed out log or dugout.

"Cargo" on the other hand, comes from the same root as "charge", meaning "load" or "burden". It's from the Latin word for "two-wheeled cart" - carrus.

I think the confusion arises when people don't use the words properly. I have been known to wait for a "shipment" of "cargo", regardless of the means of transportation.

I'm not sure how to put it, exactly. "Cargo" is a concrete noun. You can touch it. "Shipment", I think, is more of an intangible noun - like "excitement" is an intangible noun. Technically, you can't touch it because it's not a *thing* is a state of being.

Does that make sense to you?

Peg

[turner2000]

Why English is the hardest language to learn

1, The bandage was wound around the wound.

2, The farm was used to produce produce.

3, The dump was so full it had to refuse more refuse.

4, There is no time like the present, so he thought he would present
the present.

5, When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.

6, He did not object to the object.

7, The insurance was invalid for the invalid.

8,The oarsmen had a row about how to row.

9, he was too close to the door to close it.

10, A stag does strange things when the does are present.

11, After a number of injections my jaw became number.

12, The artist saw a tear in his painting and shed a tear.

13,She had to subject the subject to a series of tests.

14, An army chef decided to desert his dessert in the desert.

There are no eggs in an eggplant, no apple or pine in pineapple.

Quicksand works slowly.
Boxing rings are square.
Guinea pigs are neither from Guinea or are pigs.
Writers write but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce and hammers
don't ham.
If a vegetarian eats veg, what does an humanitarian eat?
A slim chance and a fat chance are similar.
So are quite a lot and quite a few.
But overlook and oversee are very different.
You fill in a form to fill it out.
An alarm goes off by going on.
when the stars are out, you see their light but when the lights are
out you see nothing.


And as you say English is a soup of other languages, check this out:

The Euro Language

The European Commission has just announced an agreement
whereby English will be the official language of the EU
rather than German which was the other possibility. As part
of the negotiations, Her Majesty's Government conceded that
English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted
a 5 year phase-in plan that would be known as "Euro-English".

In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c". Sertainly,
this will make the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard "c"
will be dropped in favour of the"k". This should klear up
konfusion and keyboards kan have 1 less letter.

There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year,
when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced with "f". This
will make words like "fotograf" 20% shorter.

In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be
ekspekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes
are possible. Governments will enkorage the removal of double
letters, which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling.
Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of the silent "e"s in
the language is disgraseful, and they should go away.

By the fourth year, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as
replasing "th" with "z" and "w" with "v". During ze fifz year,
ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou" and
similar changes vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of
leters.

After zis fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer
vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi
to understand ech ozer. Ze drem vil finali kum tru! And zen
ve vil tak over ze world!


-turner 2000!

[Savizzaviz]

:rofl:
Those are great turner... Where did you get them?

The last part would actually make sense and be much easier to use if you left out the "th" to "z" and the "w" to "v", though it does make the joke.

I have never sent anything like that via e-mail before, but I think I will have to now. It sure made my day. :P

[turner2000]

hehe, glad you liked them. :D I used to receive a joke every day through my email and when I read this thread I remembered these jokes and went back through my emails to find them. :P

-turner2000