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BabaRa
20th September 2013, 01:54
Someone sent this to me recently. I thought it was fun

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 or French fries in France . Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat. 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..

It made me wonder.... who came up with these words that were such paradoxes and why?

I'm sure there are many more, if one is compelled to add to the list.

Seikou-Kishi
20th September 2013, 03:00
It really is. Though as somebody who speaks the English variety rather than the American, I've always thought "eggplant" was a stupid name for aubergine lol. I've never seen a purple egg lol. When it comes to words like pineapple, the word from which we get the word apple (æppel) was used to refer to the fruit of the apple tree, but it was a much more general term than it is today and referred to fruit in general terms. The term "fruit" didn't exist in old English (it comes from Latin fructum and means "a thing enjoyed"; compare French produit from productum). The process which took the general term and applied it in a stricter and less general sense until it became the word for the fruit of the apple tree only is called semantic narrowing.

The same process happened to the words meat and bread. Originally the word meat meant food of any kind, not just animal flesh, although the food had to be generally solid. As for bread, it meant a crumb or morsel. The reason both are called sweet is that the word sweet far precedes the recent obsession with sugar, and so sweet meant not too salty or bitter, and so on. It really meant mildly- or pleasantly-flavoured — in fact, some of these meanings are retained in some uses of the word. The "flavour" aspect was nowhere near as important as the pleasing aspect, and we see this still today with kids who refer to something they like as "sweet".

The word pineapple is today applied to the fruit of a bromeliad family, but it too appeared long before English-speakers had ever encountered pineapples. It originally referred to the pinecone, being the "fruit" of conifers, or pines. As the word was replaced by pinecone in that usage, it began to be applied to the fruit we think of as pineapples by analogy, because of the similarities in shape and the spikes on the pineapple resembling the "scales" of a pinecone.

So the answer is when the words first appeared they were perfectly logical words. We have these sorts of things today. By the botanical definition, a tomato is a fruit but by the culinary definition it is a vegetable. If we came back in a hundred years and found that the botanical description had won out, people would wonder how stupid we were to ever think that a tomato might be a vegetable. Just look at French, where potatoes are called pommes de terre, or "earth apples". The French don't believe that potatoes are a boring kind of savoury apple that just happens to grow underground. The French word "pomme" means apple in the strict sense, but originally it meant any kind of fruit exactly paralleling the word "apple" in English. It's not so hard to see why English turned æppel, meaning fruit, into the word apple while French turned pômum, meaning fruit, into the word for apple too when apples are the predominant fruit in both lands — at least historically.

Calabash
20th September 2013, 06:23
English is influenced greatly by so many other languages - Latin, German, French etc, (probably due to invasion originally and now immigration) and also that it is always evolving. Once you add the buzzwords (like "bad" and "wicked" etc - and "buzzword" itself :)), plus the exponential growth we are experiencing in all things now (not just language), you can see that in the next 50 years the English of today will seem much like Shakespeare to the modern generation. Logically, the same thing must happen to all languages, not just English. So theoretically, in a few year's time when you return from your annual two week holiday to Andromeda, your native language could be completely different to when you went away.

To the student trying to understand English is also the burden of the same sounding word but with different meanings and spellings, (like their-there, bare-bear, steel-steal, stair-stare, etc.)

My daughter meets a lot of Korean people, who visit England for a year to learn English. Many of them are being taught idioms rather than basic language and she gets asked questions like "what does 'cost an arm and a leg' mean?" Linguists certainly have their work cut out.

Calz
20th September 2013, 06:29
Has not language ... in particular the English variety ... been shown to be a vehicle for bringing down or at least providing massive problems for our society as a whole???

Or ... pffft ... perhaps I missed the boat???


STOP ...

... and consider ...


real telepathy such that we really know what is being thought as opposed to what is being said.


what ... exactly ... do you think that would do for the world as a whole???

Calabash
20th September 2013, 06:48
. . .real telepathy such that we really know what is being thought as opposed to what is being said.


what ... exactly ... do you think that would do for the world as a whole???

Caramba Calz-what a bombshell you have dropped. The last thing I would want is for everyone to be able to read my thoughts. Damn, most of them aren't even formulated properly, let alone sensible.

Calz
20th September 2013, 06:52
Caramba Calz-what a bombshell you have dropped. The last thing I would want is for everyone to be able to read my thoughts. Damn, most of them aren't even formulated properly, let alone sensible.

That is the path forward for us all ... unless you prefer the jackboot of the elite forever at your throat???

777
20th September 2013, 08:36
I've said this before but........."I thought that the throroughfare through Loughborough had been thoroughly finished though?"

Morning. :tea:

john parslow
20th September 2013, 08:48
Hi Calz and all

It is my understanding that during Telepathy, messages are "sent and received" as a complete thought package where the meaning is grasped without need for complicating anything by the use of language. We all do it now to a greater or lesser degree when watching a foreign language film especially when emotions or emotive music is involved. Think how much human time and effort is wasted learning our native language, even more so when other languages are taken on board. I personally like the construction of language but can't wait to be telepathic - it will certainly save much time in future communication! Bring it on ... JP

Calabash
20th September 2013, 11:40
That is the path forward for us all ... unless you prefer the jackboot of the elite forever at your throat???

what's to stop them reading them as well ?

BabaRa
20th September 2013, 19:33
These must really confuse foreigners who are reading our language!

1) The bandage was wound around the wound.
2) The farm was used to produce produce.

3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.

4) We must polish the Polish furniture..

5) He could lead if he would get the lead out.

6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert..
7) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.
8) A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.

9) When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.

10) I did not object to the object.
11) The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
12) There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.

BabaRa
20th September 2013, 19:42
It really is. Though as somebody who speaks the English variety rather than the American,


Why can't the English learn to speak! I love when he says: "Why in America they haven't spoken it in years!".... and I can't dispute that.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAYUuspQ6BY

Calabash
20th September 2013, 19:49
Just to be exact, in England we say dived and not "dove" Ba-ba-ra . . . .

Seikou-Kishi
20th September 2013, 20:04
Just to be exact, in England we say dived and not "dove" Ba-ba-ra . . . .

Weak verb inflections such as "dived" have always historically been more American than English, however in this case "dove" is not actually the original. There are some words where both strong and weak inflections are possible, and choosing the "wrong" one, as the man in BabaRa's video fumes, can be enough to mark a man out as "uncouth".

And sometimes even whether or not the verb changes at all is telling: in English we say "I forgot" and "I have forgotten", but "I got" and "I have got", where the Americans say "I have gotten". Still, if we all spoke the same way, English and American strangers would have next to nothing to use for poking fun at each other lol :D

Tribe
20th September 2013, 20:15
Why English Is So Hard

We'll begin with a box,
and the plural is boxes.
But the plural of ox should be oxen,
not oxes.

Then one fowl is goose,
but two are called geese.
Yet the plural of moose
should never be meese.

You may find a lone mouse
or a whole lot of mice.
But the plural of house is houses,
not hice.

If the plural of man
is always called men,
Why shouldn't the plural of pan
be called pen?

The cow in a plural
may be cows or kine,
But the plural of vow is vows,
not vine.

And I speak of foot,
and you show me your feet,
But I give you a boot ...
would a pair be called beet ?

If one is a tooth
and the whole set are teeth,
Why shouldn't the plural of booth
be called beeth ?

If the singular is this
and the plural is these,
Should the plural of kiss
be nicknamed kese ?

Then one may be that,
and three may be those,
Yet the plural of hat
would never be hose.

We speak of a brother,
and also of brethern,
But though we say mother,
we never say methern .

The masculine pronouns are
he, his and him,
But imagine the feminine
she, shis and shim!

So our English,
I think you'll all agree,
Is the trickiest language
you ever did see.

Tribe
20th September 2013, 20:18
Loving the hydrangeas BabaRa ;) x

KosmicKat
21st September 2013, 01:37
Beefburger is a term worth hating
Both fraudulent and frust(er)ating
Implying with shoddy flim and flam
That hamburgers are made of ham.
(Ogden Nash)

Eelco
21st September 2013, 09:24
There was a dutch poet who was also an english teacher who combined both langueges in poems..

For instance.....
-----------------------------------------
There once was a young man called Peter,
Who sprinkled his bed with a geeter.
His father got woest
took hold of a knoest
and gave him a pack on his meter.
------------------------------------------
A Geeter or Gieter is a watering can.
Woest is enraged
Knoest litteraly is knob, but here used as a piece of wood with knobs..
An a pack on his meter would translate to being on the recieving end of a spanking in the parent/child relation

with love
Eelco

lovelypeace
21st September 2013, 20:57
Yeah - You have one foot, but two feet; two mice, but only one mouse.

It's kind of fun living close to the border because the Canadians have hybrid of British English and American English and that throws you off if you aren't expecting it.

BabaRa
22nd September 2013, 00:06
Here is George Carlin's take on politicians and words. Begins around 11:00


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fx21zEdhlPQ