First off, this is very thorough. Great job – you’ve got everything here a language needs to be not only functional, but allow for nuance, tone, even connotation.
I do have some concerns, though.
The first is there seem to be some important words missing. Example: There’s an entire entertainment industry built off of enjoying other people’s misfortune and humiliation, yet there’s no word for it. Hans, in the language he wrote, came up with “Schadenfreude.” Yes, I know the words and spelling in Hans’ language are kind of over the top and occasionally hilarious, but he has words for everything.
Second, is that your language seems a little scattershot with the rules. To be honest, most of them. It seems like there are very few rules without exceptions. Example: this “i before e” thing. “I before e” – clear enough; “except after c” – why? Is there some purpose? So, fine you learn that – but then there are fourteen exceptions to this already unnecessarily complex rule? Don’t just make things complicated to make it seem more sophisticated. It’s just confusing
Then there’s things like “affect” and “effect”. I can’t see a point to having two different words here. Maybe you can explain the need?
Similarly, there’s food. You raise a cow, a pig, a chicken. But when you eat them, you eat beef, pork, and poultry. Why would you not just “eat cow” for dinner?
Which brings me directly to another point. And I want to be clear: I’m not accusing you of anything.
English: The “KFC Bowls” of languages.
Beef, pork, and poultry are pretty clearly taken from Pierre’s project language, where the animals are “boeuf,” “porque,” and “poulet,” respectively. And this isn’t isolated. To be honest, much of what you’ve done here seems like you just took a bunch of elements of other students’ work and mashed it together. Greek. French. Latin. Norse.
Now, I’m not accusing you of plagiarism, per se. It just seems like you could have spent a little more time constructing clear, consistent rules and a little less time picking this and that from the others.
Also – and your punctuation is fine, I guess – but how come Miguel is the only one who thought putting exclamation and question marks at the start of the sentence as well as at the end?
Anyway, an impressive effort, but needlessly confusing, and riddled with inconsistencies. Perhaps a revision?
C
The Byronic Man 
July 25, 2013 at 3:18 am
oh wow excellent points specially the cow and beef one.
and while we are it I have a question. What is this fuss about white and red meat. why would you call a meat white? what, it didn’t have enough blood or was sucked dry by a vampire before it was cooked for human consumption??
July 25, 2013 at 12:12 pm
Perhaps “Meat-colored Meat” grossed people out?
July 25, 2013 at 3:28 am
My favorite non-English word is “backpfengesicht”: a face that cries out for a fist in it. English needs a word like that.
July 25, 2013 at 5:10 am
Oh my, I love this.
July 25, 2013 at 12:14 pm
And you know exactly what the word means, too, don’t you? Like, not a jerk, or someone mouthing off… there are just those faces…
July 25, 2013 at 3:53 am
And just don’t get me started on the pronuntiation… Do you know how confusing it is for foreign people? Never knowing if you are pronouncing a word correctly, always fighting with the spelling… Exhausting! But the grammar is great: simple and direct (sight of relief!)
Byronic, you always make my days better, thanks! 🙂
July 25, 2013 at 12:23 pm
And we have so many words for words (or parts of words) that look the same but are pronounced differently, that even those are hard to keep track of.
Heteronyms (“It’s hard to wind my watch in this wind”) (and there’s multiple kinds of heteronyms…)
Capitonyms (“It seems like August is such an august month.”)
Homonyms (“Can you aid my aide with the lemonade?”)
Oronyms [a string of words that sound the same]: “The good can decay many ways” vs. “The good candy came anyways”)
And my favorite…
Autoantonyms – words that are the opposite of themselves! (buckle; bound; left; etc…)
July 25, 2013 at 4:41 pm
I grew up speaking English so I never took notice of how strange and arbitrary our pronunciation rules are. It was only when I started learning French that I realised how much simpler it could have been. In French the pronunciation is the same as the spelling so you can more or less know the pronunciation just by reading the words.
That said, I wouldn’t have English any other way. Great post Mr (Lord?) Byron. I look forward to reading more of your work.
July 26, 2013 at 8:02 am
Spanish, too. It may win the award for “Here are the rules. Follow them and you’ll be fine” award.
July 27, 2013 at 5:55 pm
No. In French, something spelled “Sioux” or even “Sault” is pronounced “Su.” I can see Spanish being called uniform, but French?
July 25, 2013 at 4:06 am
Also, you need to decide what sound “ough” represents. I found cough, though, through, bough, thorough, rough and ought. This shows a lack of attention to detail and consistency.
July 25, 2013 at 12:24 pm
On the filp side, it’s a great way to capture enemy spies. Make them read all those words and one, do it right; and two, not flip out how stupid it is.
July 25, 2013 at 4:06 am
Reblogged this on Χώρος του χρήστη Ioannhs.
July 25, 2013 at 4:25 am
When I got married, I took my wife’s name. What is my old surname? I’m not a maiden so, clearly, it’s not my maiden name. They need to invent a new word to describe my old surname. [As an aside, I sat at the kitchen table practicing my new signature over and over, wondered when I became a girl.]
July 25, 2013 at 12:26 pm
Did you put hearts around the names?
I guess it could be your… knight name? Esquire name? Stag name? Name 1.0? That’s a toughie.
July 25, 2013 at 1:05 pm
How about “mandom name”? (And also, good on you for bucking tradition and taking your wife’s name. We, like many others, hyphenated. I do wonder what’s going to happen when two hyphenated kids get married. Quadruple-barrelled surnames might be a bit much.)
July 25, 2013 at 2:36 pm
I know women have been doing it for centuries but had I known how complicated it was I wouldn’t have. I thought you tell the receptionist and she blabs it to everyone. Not the case.
No hearts, wise guy. Happy faces. Hearts are for the unevolved.
July 26, 2013 at 8:04 am
Many moons ago friend of mine took his wife’s name. His initials became “JAP.” It was a problem when we’d go play video games at this vintage arcade and he did well…
July 25, 2013 at 4:58 pm
“Sirname”
July 25, 2013 at 5:18 pm
We have a winner! Took 13 years for that. I’ll send you $2.00.
July 26, 2013 at 8:04 am
Nice.
July 25, 2013 at 4:39 am
Is it wrong that I experienced Schadenfreude while reading this? I derive great pleasure from watching people struggle with our needlessly confusing language.
That science picture is just great. The rest of the post, though… Hmm. B-.
😀
July 25, 2013 at 12:28 pm
Omigod, Mrs. Jules Go is SUCH a hard grader. She, like, totally hates me.
July 25, 2013 at 5:04 am
I find silent letters particularly nefarious, you know what I mean?
July 25, 2013 at 12:28 pm
I add them periodically, where they shouldn’t be, just for fun. For example, this site is pronounced, “He Bronc Ma”.
July 26, 2013 at 12:57 pm
🙂
July 25, 2013 at 5:22 am
And then there’s punctuation. In some countries they use periods between numbers where we would normally use a comma. Potential for major confusion there, especially if you’re referring to big numbers.
July 25, 2013 at 12:29 pm
And a world summit on whether it should be day/month/year or month/day/year wouldn’t be out of order.
July 25, 2013 at 5:25 am
Haha, loved this. And that’s not even the half of it. Seriously the most confusing, unclear, pointless language ever. It’s a wonder any of us manage to learn it.
July 25, 2013 at 12:31 pm
At least we don’t give objects genders. Talk about needlessly confusing.
July 25, 2013 at 5:39 pm
That’s true, but it’s actually not as confusing as you’d think… 😀
July 26, 2013 at 8:07 am
Still drove me nuts in language class.
“Mon stylo es sur le table.”
“LA table.”
“YOU KNOW WHAT I MEANT. DO YOU KNOW WHERE MY PEN IS? DO YOU KNOW IT’S ON THE STUPID, WOMANLY TABLE? WELL THEN, LANGUAGE ACCOMPLISHED.”
July 26, 2013 at 11:37 am
Lol…womanly table…you crack me up, B-Man.
July 25, 2013 at 5:38 am
The joys of grammar…. affect is a verb, effect is a noun.
What I dislike is when my spell check insists my British grammar is wrong when I know it’s not.
July 25, 2013 at 12:30 pm
True, but it seems very, very, very rare that you get someone who can write the proper form without stopping and consciously figuring out if it’s being used as a verb or noun.
July 26, 2013 at 1:36 am
Unless you happen to be my husband who’s hobby is learning the fundamentals of language….. I feel very stupid around him at times
July 25, 2013 at 5:44 am
Excellent and hilarious points all. English truly is the ragout of languages. (And that’s being generous. Your KFC bowl might be more accurate)
July 25, 2013 at 12:32 pm
After posting that picture, it was hard not to abandon the post and just put a link to Patton Oswalt’s routine about KFC Bowls.
July 25, 2013 at 1:11 pm
Oh jeez. We have the KFC Double Down which I thought was gross enough, but after googling KFC Bowl (which we don’t have) I can see that things could be so much worse… It’s almost as ridiculous as the hot-dog-stuffed-crust pizza…
July 26, 2013 at 6:11 am
Patton Oswalt is the world’s funniest man — and that bit once nearly caused me to get into a car accident! I was listening to it on the radio and was laughing so hard my eyes welled up with tears and I nearly drove into the back of a truck!
July 26, 2013 at 8:09 am
I almost did too, once! It was a bit from his “222” album, where he describes playing Alvin & The Chipmunks records at slow speed. I even thought “I’m going to wreck. I can’t see. I have to stop laughing or my life may be in danger.”
July 26, 2013 at 9:06 am
I haven’t heard that bit, darling, but will be sure to look up “222”.
Maria Bamford also makes me pee my pants.
July 25, 2013 at 5:48 am
Screw it. Let’s all just start speaking Spanish. We’re probably going to end up that way soon enough anyway.
July 25, 2013 at 12:32 pm
That’s why I’m working on Mandarin. Also Dutch. Oh, you’ll see… you’ll see…
July 25, 2013 at 5:55 am
Thank you for helping me with my dieting today. That pic of food put me off food.
July 25, 2013 at 3:55 pm
I wonder if opening a health food/weight-loss store next door to a KFC or Arby’s would be effective. “I’ll have the KFC Bowl. Oh. Oh, God. I have to change my life.”
July 25, 2013 at 6:20 am
This is why I hate group projects.
July 25, 2013 at 4:12 pm
You know one kid put together all the grammar and core rules and verb tenses, then the other 2 just asked the other groups what they were doing, and can I copy?
July 25, 2013 at 6:27 am
Good post, but I just want to pick up on this bit you said ‘Similarly, there’s food. You raise a cow, a pig, a chicken. But when you eat them, you eat beef, pork, and poultry’. I agree abut the cow and pig, but really? You call it poultry when you eat it do you? Because I call it chicken and so does everyone else I know! Is it called Kentucky Fried Poultry? No! I think that proves my point…
July 25, 2013 at 4:18 pm
I thought about leaving that off, because people do call it chicken now, but left it in partly out of consistency, and also because on the cooking end it seems to still be generally regarded, recipe-wise and such, as “poultry.”
July 26, 2013 at 12:10 am
Ok, I’ll live with it then 😉 Maybe ‘poultry’ is more of a US word. I don’t really hear it being used here in the UK, not at the eating end anyway.
July 26, 2013 at 3:07 am
Which end of the chicken is the eating end? 😉
July 26, 2013 at 3:20 am
Haha! Well, depends which part of the world you come from I guess, in some countries, any end can be eaten!
July 26, 2013 at 8:10 am
No, no – a valid objection. I was being thorough at the expense of colloquial accuracy. I’m docking this post 5 points.
July 25, 2013 at 6:50 am
If the English language wasn’t confusing, red pen manufacturers would be out of business. I give it an A- for supporting the economy.
July 25, 2013 at 4:13 pm
Those red pen fat cats have been living large for too long!
July 25, 2013 at 7:35 am
The food thing is completely confounding!
I served bacon for the breakfast the other day and my daughter asked if she was eating “pig?” I said “No, you’re eating bacon.” She replied with a confused look on her face, “but, but, . . .”
I told her not to worry about it for now. Just wait till you start learning French–a language whose rules clearly make sense.
July 25, 2013 at 4:14 pm
Apparently it dates back to Puritan times-ish. Feeling squeamish about the kids knowing that we were eating the animal they’d played with earlier, so people started calling them by the French. I remember hearing that, but I’m not looking it up, so don’t hold me to that.
July 25, 2013 at 5:34 pm
Thanks for the context. Makes sense. Kids cannot reconcile little piggies to the crisp strips of meat laying on their plates. No matter what century they’re in.
July 27, 2013 at 5:47 am
P.S. – Brainrants added an explanation that makes way more sense than mine. That it comes from the Norman invasion in 1066, when the French basically said, “Your language is crude and gross. Try our language. No really, try it or we’ll kill you.”
July 25, 2013 at 8:03 am
Wow that KFC bowl, I can’t decide if I want to eat it or barf. I remember having a similar conversation with my Italian grandparents (about English not KFC) and they brought up some similar points that made English really freaking annoying to learn. Every other language follows a pattern and has a reason for what it does….English? Our only reason is “Cuz I felt like it.” Well, welcome to America: we do what we want!
July 25, 2013 at 1:48 pm
“Cuz I felt like it,” is a perfectly cromulent reason for wording.
July 25, 2013 at 4:14 pm
Bonus points for the use of “cromulent.”
July 25, 2013 at 7:38 pm
Totally agree! Ten points to Gryffindor! What a fabulous word!
July 25, 2013 at 4:16 pm
Why did American English drop the U’s and reverse the “re’s”? To show those stupid Brit’s that they’re not the boss of us! Yeeaahhh!! U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!
July 25, 2013 at 5:02 pm
Go Amurrica!
July 25, 2013 at 10:06 pm
As in “U are not the boss of R language!”?
July 25, 2013 at 9:23 am
Yeah, me too.
July 25, 2013 at 3:14 pm
Okay, seriously, this Atkins-like detox is killing me. I did a double-take when I saw the picture of the KFC bowl because it looked edible– deception at it’s finest– and I nearly licked my phone. Yeah, I think my friend is right: the juice diet makes you lose your mind. KFC? That is disgusting.
July 25, 2013 at 4:19 pm
I remember doing a fast once, and a day in my dog’s face looked exactly like a chocolate-chip cream cheese muffin from Starbucks. I even accidentally called him “Muffin.” His name’s Casper.
July 25, 2013 at 4:37 pm
I have already planned my first real meal. It will consist of exactly zero leafy greens, carrots, cucumbers, or celery. It will be aforementioned burrito, a six-pack, a chocolate sundae, a macha green tea latte, a blueberry muffin, lots of tootsie rolls, and a double-helping of guilt.
July 25, 2013 at 4:39 pm
Sorry… aforementioned here: http://soiwentundercover.wordpress.com/2013/07/25/juice-diet-it-is-sure-hot-in-hell/
July 25, 2013 at 11:17 am
Don’t even get me started on those homonyms. Whole/hole? Seriously?
July 27, 2013 at 5:51 am
I was mentioning to someone else about Auto-antonyms. Words that are opposites of themselves (bound; buckle, left…). How simple would that seem, when you’re making a language? “Words should probably only mean one thing, not two diametrically opposing things.”
July 25, 2013 at 3:22 pm
In his next draft, can you please have him ban “verbization” (or verb icicle as I prefer to think of it). The latest one I read, in a NEWS story no less, is”orgasm.” Use it in a sentence, you ask?
It wasn’t rape because he didn’t orgasm.
July 27, 2013 at 5:53 am
Oh, verbing. Of course, in some cases, Like “access”, it’s taken over, and you sound verbose if you insist on using it properly, as in, “I would like to gain access to a club about beat the person who made that rape argument about the skull.”
July 27, 2013 at 5:56 am
Drives me crazy. I blame the Democrats for this one, though. Bill Clinton was always talking about how he would “grow” the economy. Grrrrrrr
July 25, 2013 at 5:00 pm
The cow vs. beef thing comes from the social split after the Norman invasion of England by William in 1066. However, nobody has made the ‘affect’ versus ‘effect’ totally clear to me. And fuck i, especially after c, unless you’re e.
July 26, 2013 at 8:13 am
Oh, that makes sense. Way more sense than what I thought, because what I’d heard wouldn’t explain the Brits use the terms, too.
And as for “affect/effect” even when my students ask, I say, “here’s the important thing: no one cares. But here’s the rule…”
July 25, 2013 at 5:01 pm
And then you have Australian English, American English and British English. Words spelt and pronounced differently just to mess with your head a bit more.
July 27, 2013 at 6:19 am
And the rest of us suspect much of Australian is just a prank.
July 25, 2013 at 5:16 pm
I just dug a couple of poems for you off the internet that I hope you will like and appreciate. I know I do! 🙂
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,
Then 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 three 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? And if people from Poland are called Poles
Then people from Holland should be Holes
And the Germans, Germs. And let’s not forget the Americans, who changed s to z, but that’s another story.
July 27, 2013 at 6:21 am
Wow. That is seriously impressive. Depressing, but impressive.
July 27, 2013 at 2:02 pm
I love these!
July 27, 2013 at 3:10 pm
Great, aren’t they! I saw another one that was pretty awesome, too. Here it is for you -= quite long, but really great to read if you like English. Which I do!
If you can pronounce correctly every word in this poem, you will be speaking English better than 90% of the native English speakers in the world.
After trying the verses, a Frenchman said he’d prefer six months of hard labour to reading six lines aloud.
Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.
Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it’s written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.
Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.
Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation’s OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.
Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.
Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Fe0ffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.
Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.
Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.
Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.
Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.
Pronunciation (think of Psyche!)
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won’t it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It’s a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.
Finally, which rhymes with enough,
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!
English Pronunciation by G. Nolst Trenité
July 27, 2013 at 6:05 pm
Did it!
July 28, 2013 at 5:49 am
That is brilliant! I am going to have to use all of these.
Now…add into the mix that I am Canadian and you will come up against some things like: neighbour , flavour , colour , honour, glamour , labour , rumour , sabre, kilometre , metre , centre , parlour , liquour all spelled differently.
July 28, 2013 at 10:24 am
Aussie here, so same problem. Not to mention the whole s/ z thing, too….
July 25, 2013 at 6:27 pm
English might also be a burrito type of language: enigmatic, portable and by all means, foreign, yet familiar.
July 27, 2013 at 6:20 am
That’s true – and burritos are pretty great. But don’t let the “Let’s build a wall on the Mexican border” crowd here that analogy.
July 27, 2013 at 6:06 pm
Of course, burrito means “small donkey,” but that’s some other language’s problem, surely!
July 28, 2013 at 6:53 pm
Crowd: if you`re reading this, be cool and let our Mexican brothers and sisters catch a break. Thankyou.
July 25, 2013 at 7:43 pm
This post is FILLED with winning! Seriously, when a book the size of The Chicago Manual of Style (edition SIXTEEN) has to exist just to point out the rules of our language, there may be a problem. It’s maddening when you realize that even that hallowed tome doesn’t even address all of them! **facesmash**
July 25, 2013 at 9:12 pm
i before e except after c…weird.
July 25, 2013 at 10:10 pm
And on the side note, the teacher couldn’t read Ibrahim’s, Natasha’s and Sunil’s assignments, so they’ll just get an A for their assignments anyway.
July 25, 2013 at 11:40 pm
ROFLMAO. Or words to that effect.
July 26, 2013 at 12:52 am
You’re right. English is so wierd. I mean, weird.
July 26, 2013 at 4:07 am
Reblogged this on Literary Brambles and commented:
Weekend Writer Reblog! Once a week (every Friday) I will be reblogging a favorite blog post from throughout the week for your enjoyment! These can be from blogs I follow, blogs that are Freshly Pressed, blogs that I stumble upon of my own accord or , the way I’d PREFER it to be, blogs that YOU GUYS recommend! So please, if you see something, SAY something! If it’s about writing, publishing or books, I’ll consider it for sure!
July 26, 2013 at 4:38 am
This post makes me want to eat cow.
The affect/effect thing kills me. I will never get it. I do think most of these ‘rules’ were made up by people busy taking hits off a bong. “hey, duuuude!” (releases cloud of smoke) “I know! Let’s say ‘except after C’! yeah!”
July 26, 2013 at 7:16 am
Has anyone else noticed that photo? Should the caption have read ‘the KFC bowels’ of languages? It seems more apt …
July 26, 2013 at 3:04 pm
The English language is what happens if you let other countries invade you for a couple of thousand years…they leave all their insanitary habits lying around…
July 26, 2013 at 9:45 pm
I honestly clicked on this link because I knew immediately the picture was the KFC potato bowl. And it’s midnight. And I’m really hungry. Nice post, nonetheless. (hey 3 words in one.)
July 27, 2013 at 11:40 am
I hope you weren’t too disappointed. I’m sure you were reading thinking, “Get to the damn food!”
July 27, 2013 at 9:59 am
English does indeed like to plagiarize. I’ve caught it copying off the romantic languages frequently, even stealing some of their answers. It’s lazy sometimes, and other times, way too dedicated to itself. I think a revision is a splendid idea.
July 27, 2013 at 2:01 pm
I think the revisions are in the “Urban Dictionary”. You are right though, the rules can get pretty messy.
July 27, 2013 at 5:58 pm
Ah yes. English. Degenerated Latin with German grammar and French vocabulary, and with as little to do with Russian as possible.
July 30, 2013 at 7:59 am
Oh, English. How ridiculous you are.
In related news, I think this guy gets pretty much everything right: