As far as I know the verb "to read" was supposed to change into "red" in the past tense etc. similarly how "to lead" goes into "led". However, some professors thought that people would cofuse it with the colour, so yeah, now we have what we have.
Funny, I used guffaw once. I needed a word to describe the laughter of an orkish creature, but laughter was too human and "long", chuckle didn't make much sense and it was too short. I wanted a powerful, short, brutal, and mocking laughter. So I wrote, "cruel guffaw". Mocking laughter would have worked, but meh.
Most synonyms have different nuances and I'm not sure any two words mean exactly the same. Well, there are some that mean the same but whose origin is different, for example, one is germanic and the other french. Lord and Liege mean the same, but Liege is more restricted and has a french/medieval aura which is very useful if you are writing about a feudal setting. Ghost is nice, but phantom is more... classy (it's french, so you know it's good). 'The phantom menace' sounds ominous -like the Phantom of the Opera- but "The ghost(ly) threat"* sounds too literal or stupid, like a Chinese knock-off of Ghost Busters.
*In Spanish, for example, threat and menace would be translated with the same word: Amenaza, like in "La Amenaza Fantasma". Threat and ghost are germanic, so there is no close equivalent, I think.
I thought of another example of the hodgepodge randomness that is pronunciation in English:
"Yesterday I read the newspaper. I think I will read it again today. I saw an article that I might have read before. I will read it all again. In a few days, I will have read everything about it. I do read most things. I love to have read things. I might read some more later. Actually, now I'm almost sure I had read this particular article before, but I'd better read it again, so I can be completely sure I have read it. Hmm, I *had* read it!"
If you can pronounce correctly the verb "to read" everywhere in that paragraph, without even hesitating or thinking about it, then you're probably fluent in English.
*sheepishly raises hand*
It's not that random. There's only two ways to pronounce it: "reed" and "red". "Reed" being present and future-tense, while "red" is strictly past-tense. So long as you're talking about an action that took place in the past, you refer to past-tense. But if you're talking about an action that you will do or are already doing, then you're talking future and present-tense.
But I'm fluent in English, and an English major, and a writer. Sooooo...
@Nonnahswriter , well, I did say I had thought of "another" example, implying, I thought, one more of many. The point is that the diphthong "ea" can be pronounced as in "bead" or as in "instead". There's no rule that I know of as to which way to pronounce it from word to word. Native speakers just know, similarly to how speakers of languages with grammatical gender just know the genders of the nouns. There's no particular rhyme or reason to it.
I see your point that one can use knowledge of verb tenses to figure it out in the example I constructed. I'm not sure a non-fluent speaker would be able to do so easily or quickly, however. A native speaker or a fluent speaker-as-a-second-language would be able to read the paragraph naturally, with very little or no thought about what tense was being used.
A guffaw is a loud, energetic laugh. A chortle is more like a breathing laugh. Actually the sound of the word sounds a bit like the sound of the laugh they describe.
Haberdashery is a weird word. It sound vastly more esoteric than a place that sells buttons.
A guffaw is a loud, energetic laugh. A chortle is more like a breathing laugh. Actually the sound of the word sounds a bit like the sound of the laugh they describe.
There is a word for those sorts of words: onomatopoeia.
Onomatopoeia, itself, is not in the class of self-referential words such as "short" or "pentasyllabic".
I've always been amused by the really long words, such as floccinaucinihilipilification, pseudopseudohypoparathyroidism and pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.
I like archaic slang and expressions: Land sakes! Gadzooks! I can jive with the hep-cats!
My biggest language pet peeve is the misuse of words, especially by people who should know better. Every time I hear a reporter use decimate as a synonym for annihilate, I figuratively want to kill every tenth newscaster.
@Shandyr Decimation was a Roman (I think) tactic to enforce morale that involved singling out every tenth man and getting the other nine tenths of the men to beat him to death.
And the stress on figuratively is because people frequently say things like "I'm literally dying here" when they aren't dying but they want to make it sound worse, what they should say is "i'm figuratively dying here"
My biggest language pet peeve is the misuse of words, especially by people who should know better. Every time I hear a reporter use decimate as a synonym for annihilate, I figuratively want to kill every tenth newscaster.
Uhm, would someone please explain this for non-native English speakers?
Decimate means reduce by 1/10 but no one ever uses it that way. It's always used as "the town was decimated by the brutal civil war" when it was probably really rude end by 9/10 or something. Or "I decimated that cake" and you actually ate the entire thing. A while ago people started using literally for emphasis. "I will literally kill my self" or "This is literally the best book I ever read" when it actually wasn't. Of course it wasn't. The lord of the rings was. The use of literally in that way is usually associated with teenage girls. I don't know if there's a German equivalent but I'm sure you guys have slang that's reserved for teenagers.
@BillyYank , thanks for pointing out the literally/figuratively problem. I cringe every time I hear somebody misuse the word "literally", which is probably around 90% of the time the word is spoken or written.
Often the newscaster, "talking head", television personality, or writer, throws a "literally" into a sentence that doesn't even need an adverb. They'd be communicating more concisely and clearly to leave out the word altogether.
No adverb is needed in most hyperbole. Saying, "If I hear somebody misuse "literally" one more time, I am going to kill myself!" is clearly use of hyperbole, and there is no need to insert an unnecessary adverb to mark it as such.
Word definitions absolutely change with time; and sometimes, being too well read just gets really annoying.
The decimation case is one where the meaning has simply changed. The funny thing is, taking 10% casualties is often the baseline of a SUCCESSFUL military operation. Roman decimation was extreme because it was punishment inflicted on one's own military for an operational failure. But the word simply has nothing to do with "tenths" anymore. It's come to mean disastrous destruction.
The literally/figuratively is even more annoying because "literally" is coming to mean something radically different than its denotative meaning. That one I may not be so tolerant of. But apparently all that means is, I'm old... And literate...
@atcDave , What bothers me so much about "literally", is that the non-literate speakers are trying to make it mean exactly the opposite of what it actually means.
If someone says something like "This job has literally driven me insane!", I want to reply with "I'm sorry. I'll dial 911 and call for an ambulance to get you to the psych hospital. They should be able to help you with medications."
On the other hand, I think sometimes I've seen instances of people calling things figurative when they aren't. If someone says, "he devoured a book," that's literal because that's one of the definitions of "devour."
Comments
It was a 90s thing...
Also known as modern style word processing/ e-doc production... What's on the screen is what comes out of the printer.
Most synonyms have different nuances and I'm not sure any two words mean exactly the same. Well, there are some that mean the same but whose origin is different, for example, one is germanic and the other french. Lord and Liege mean the same, but Liege is more restricted and has a french/medieval aura which is very useful if you are writing about a feudal setting. Ghost is nice, but phantom is more... classy (it's french, so you know it's good). 'The phantom menace' sounds ominous -like the Phantom of the Opera- but "The ghost(ly) threat"* sounds too literal or stupid, like a Chinese knock-off of Ghost Busters.
*In Spanish, for example, threat and menace would be translated with the same word: Amenaza, like in "La Amenaza Fantasma". Threat and ghost are germanic, so there is no close equivalent, I think.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_words_with_dual_French_and_Anglo-Saxon_variations
It's not that random. There's only two ways to pronounce it: "reed" and "red". "Reed" being present and future-tense, while "red" is strictly past-tense. So long as you're talking about an action that took place in the past, you refer to past-tense. But if you're talking about an action that you will do or are already doing, then you're talking future and present-tense.
But I'm fluent in English, and an English major, and a writer. Sooooo...
Though
Through
Trough
Thorough
Thought
I see your point that one can use knowledge of verb tenses to figure it out in the example I constructed. I'm not sure a non-fluent speaker would be able to do so easily or quickly, however. A native speaker or a fluent speaker-as-a-second-language would be able to read the paragraph naturally, with very little or no thought about what tense was being used.
"I thought it through thoroughly, though, and it was tough!"
It's kind of amazing how easily a sentence like that flows off the tongue of a fluent English speaker.
(I couldn't figure out how to work "trough" into the sentence.)
Trough is just a long narrow box (usually filled with water).
Haberdashery is a weird word. It sound vastly more esoteric than a place that sells buttons.
...
I think I need to stay out of this thread...
I do feel the need to quote Oz from Buffy though in saying
"hootenanny, well, it's chock full of hoot, just a little bit of nanny."
Another one that I have trouble with is obsequious.
Onomatopoeia, itself, is not in the class of self-referential words such as "short" or "pentasyllabic".
Land sakes!
Gadzooks!
I can jive with the hep-cats!
My biggest language pet peeve is the misuse of words, especially by people who should know better. Every time I hear a reporter use decimate as a synonym for annihilate, I figuratively want to kill every tenth newscaster.
And the stress on figuratively is because people frequently say things like "I'm literally dying here" when they aren't dying but they want to make it sound worse, what they should say is "i'm figuratively dying here"
A while ago people started using literally for emphasis. "I will literally kill my self" or "This is literally the best book I ever read" when it actually wasn't. Of course it wasn't. The lord of the rings was.
The use of literally in that way is usually associated with teenage girls. I don't know if there's a German equivalent but I'm sure you guys have slang that's reserved for teenagers.
On figuratively/literally:
http://www.snorgtees.com/misuse-of-literally-makes-me-figuratively-insane
Often the newscaster, "talking head", television personality, or writer, throws a "literally" into a sentence that doesn't even need an adverb. They'd be communicating more concisely and clearly to leave out the word altogether.
No adverb is needed in most hyperbole. Saying, "If I hear somebody misuse "literally" one more time, I am going to kill myself!" is clearly use of hyperbole, and there is no need to insert an unnecessary adverb to mark it as such.
And I like getting my English lessons from the oatmeal.
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/literally
The decimation case is one where the meaning has simply changed. The funny thing is, taking 10% casualties is often the baseline of a SUCCESSFUL military operation. Roman decimation was extreme because it was punishment inflicted on one's own military for an operational failure. But the word simply has nothing to do with "tenths" anymore. It's come to mean disastrous destruction.
The literally/figuratively is even more annoying because "literally" is coming to mean something radically different than its denotative meaning. That one I may not be so tolerant of. But apparently all that means is, I'm old... And literate...
If someone says something like "This job has literally driven me insane!", I want to reply with "I'm sorry. I'll dial 911 and call for an ambulance to get you to the psych hospital. They should be able to help you with medications."