Jan

22

Say What?

Posted by Christopher Waldrop

January 22, 2007 |

How does anyone learn English? This language has such a long and bizarre history that even the simplest, smallest word can cause a lot of confusion. Take, for instance, the simple word “to”. It’s a preposition or part of an infinitive or a conjunction or an adverb–just under these uses it gets 22 definitions in the Oxford English Dictionary. Now add another “o” to it and you get “too”, which sounds like “to” but is just an adverb, and has only 6 definitions in the OED. Now take the first “o” and replace it with a “w” and you get “two”, which is a number. Move the “w” to the end and it’s “tow”, which is either a noun or a verb and is pronounced like “no”. If you take “no” and add a “w” to it you get “now”, which is pronounced differently from “tow”. To get “now” to sound like “tow” you have to put a “k” in front of it so you get “know”, and to make “no” sound like “to” you have to replace the “o” with “ew” so you have “new”, and if you stick a “k” in front of that you still have “knew”. Now it gets really tricky because “no” sounds like “so”. If you want “so” to sound like “to” you have to replace the “o” with “ue” so you have “sue”. Or you can make “so” sound like “no” if you replace the “o” with “ew”, so you have “sew”, which doesn’t sound anything like “new”. And if you take “so” and add a “w” to it so you have “sow” the pronunciation depends on whether it’s a noun or a verb. What are we to dew? I mean due…I mean do. I don’t know. Whatever it is it’s going to take a lot of doe. I mean dough.


Comments

5 Comments so far

  1. maureen on January 22, 2007 8:13 pm

    It gets confusing! I lived in a place called Knebworth, pornounced nebworth before coming to the States where I spelled colour, color and neighbour,neighbor. For the life of me I cannot remember how to spell doughnuts now!!

  2. glenn on January 23, 2007 1:04 am

    …..but, oh, what a glorious language!
    Nice post.

  3. Christopher Waldrop on January 25, 2007 4:49 pm

    It is a glorious language. I love other languages even though I’ve never learned enough to become fluent in any, not even Latin which I slogged through for several years in high school and college, but English is amazing.

  4. heather on February 3, 2007 7:07 am

    And is it irony or just torture to the millions (billions?) of non-native English speakers around the globe who need/want to get a handle on this particular language full of phonological folly? At least some will get a kick out of this examination. I’m going to share it with my English as a Second Language students. If they read my comments we can then discuss idioms such as “get a handle on” and “get a kick out of”, unless of course you’d like to TACKLE than one too!

  5. heather on February 3, 2007 7:08 am

    You might also mention that “that” is spelled “that” and not “than.” It’s uber-early. Apologies.

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