Saturday, August 25, 2007

Junk words and language - English


English is considered to be one of the more challenging languages to learn as a second language, even more so if you're just learning it as an adult. Here are my pet peeves and fascinations with the english language:

Pet peeves:
  • When to add a suffix, or prefix.
    For example, you can be disgruntled, but not grunlted. Huh?

    Another one, information and formation have completely different meanings? Why?

    However, you can be extraordinary one day, and ordinary the next.

  • Words spelled the same way or pronounced similarly have different meanings.
    In other words, read is the past tense of read. (Think about it) But they're spelled the same way.

    "Yesterday I read time magazine" as opposed to " Tomorrow I am going to read newsweek"

    See vs Sea.
    You can see through your eyes but you cannot sea through your binoculars.
    You fish in the sea but cannot swim with the dolphins in the see. Why not? I want hangout with my friends by the seeside. (lol)
How really sat down and coined the diction, and spelling etc of english terms and words. Whoever is responsible must have had a lot of time on their hands because they surely succeeded in making it complicated.

How am Important but not PORTANT!!!! I just don't get it! But one can be both impotent and POTENT. Sigh..

Some fun words that are spelled the same way backwards as they are forwards:

racecar (actually two words), deed, level, pip, rotor, civic, madam, eye, nun and toot.
"A Toyota! Race fast, safe car. A Toyota" - spell that backwards and see what you get.

These words and phrases are known as Palindromes

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I always wondered what those things were called bro

zooms said...

your blog is so interesting. am having a sneaky peak right now as i think i have used up all my 'sitting at the computer talking to other people' time as far as T is concerned. as to the language, i'm busy trying to unlearn my english and learn 'we' english, instead.i'll be back.
zooms