This week we’re talking about English language oddities.
What’s odd… unusual… and strange about the language.
One reader points out that in the word “unusual”, the letter “u” is pronounced three different ways.
That is odd!
And English is the only language that has spelling competitions.
Is that true?
Schools don’t have spelling contests in your country?
I never knew that.
So interesting!
Another reader noticed that the stuff you brush your teeth with is, in fact, not called “teethpaste.”
I never thought about that either…
And have you ever noticed this?
When someone wants to call you in the future, they’ll say, “What’s your number?”
But we’ve got many numbers — not just one!
What else?
Join the discussion!
Share your observations in the comments section below.
In Hungary, there are spelling competitions on a regional and national basis in the native language, despite Hungarian being largely phonetic.
In english YOU is one person and also a lot of people. How can you manage?
Are you talking to me or to us?
There are a lot of different oddities in the English language. For example the word “priceless”. To use the rules for creating words the meaning should be “without price/value. Because “homeless” is a person without a home.
A strange situation was happening when I read a somewhere coments that said “only man is capable…..”
Aha, I thought, but the woman..??
Later I found that we say “man ” for human being and I translated it like “boy” .
we use same word for he and she. It is equal with man and woman.
I wonder why speed is in plural, speeds for example in Anki there is a sentence:
When Bob refused to pull over, the police ______ him down the highway at slow speeds.
We think and speak depending on the context. În the first stage of our life we just talk. Much later we associate speech with the way we are talking. Over time, speaking and writing influence each other, so conventions may change…
“What’s your phone number?”
You can discover the beauty of a language only when you try to express a feeling (for ex, to miss someone) and you realise that you don’t feel the same when you say it in English than when you say it in Romanian. When you think in the language you speak, you also feel in that language. That’s the charm. Someone said that: when you speak two languages, you are two people. I can love in English and I can love in Romanian. Is not the same.