English is Crazy

[adrian]

I am sure many of you here will appreciate this:

Sorry, can someone move this to pub?

[horst]

.. to the Pub?

[DaveP]

This one will do your head in - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghoti

[pwired]

The joker making fun of english by putting it into logic is hurting my ears.

You can never learn it logically 100 % from a book because English is based on a very rich history

and living culture. Watch for example both new and old movies or read new and old books and learn

how rich and elegant one can express him self in spoken and written english.

[Joss]

The poem was originally by Richard Krogh

The Oxford English Dictionary was started at Mill Hill School in a shed in the grounds (just by where I was brought up)

And the reasons that it seems so confused is actually quite intentional. When the language was first rationalised, like many languages there were lots of very different spellings of the same word, depending on the origin of the writer (not the word) or the local dialect distortion or just a thousand spelling errors.

The compilers had a choice - set a spelling style in stone and thus alienate huge numbers of writers, or look for evidence of the most common spelling in each case.

They chose the latter, so bough and cow may sound the same despite different spellings, but they reflect what was most used in each case and not bloody mindedness of the dictionary editor or even the strict lineage of the word.

Just to confuse things a little more, English has the largest vocabulary of any language in the world - by miles! It is also one of the most concise (by syllable count and grammar and therefore sentence length),  though the Scandinavians on here will no doubt point out that their languages can be shorter.

However, this is probably a direct result of them having a thousand words for "can we hurry this up and get inside; I am bloody freezing!"

Such is the effect of climate on language......

(PS: Surprisingly, the British do not have a thousand words for rain, but we do have a thousand ways of complaining about it)

[Soma]

You don't know swiss-german. That is crazy.

[Joss]

Good point, Soma

And I will not even attempt at dipping a toe into that whosstupidideawasittobaseanalreadycomplicatedlanguageonhungarian langluage Finnish.

[bwakad]

That was a enjoyable video!

Things that do or don't make sence.

Try to translate a dutch expression "jij bent in de boot genomen" and tell me what you think.

[MindFull]

English confused me so much, that I when I finally made heads and tails of it, I had forgotten my native language 

[pwired]

Things that do or don't make sence.

Try to translate a dutch expression "jij bent in de boot genomen" and tell me what you think.

Again, trying to apply the same logic on 2 different languages with different history and culture

and then making jokes why it doesn't work. By the way it's sense not sence.

Put the line "jij bent in de boot genomen" first in the english history and culture and translate

it from there. Then you will get "someone took you for a ride" or more simple (less rich):

"You have been set up"

For example, in your country's history and culture you have:

"jij bent in de boot genomen" and "jij bent in de maling genomen"