You Think English Is Easy? (don't miss this)

[edlittlefield]

I wish to intimate this to my most intimate friends.

I wound a bandage around the wound and taped the ends because I scraped my arm at where I work; on a farm where they produce Produce. I did it when I took the trash to the dump. Unfortunately, the dump was full and they had to refuse the refuse. To help with planting, a farmer could teach his Sow to sow.

Anybody could lead if he will just get the lead out, and as long as he doesn’t desert his people as if in the desert. If he does he will get his just dessert.

Some Polish soldiers like to the polish their rifle stocks so since there is no time like the present, he can present it like a present at the time of inspection. This might cause a row among the other soldiers in the row though, because they may be jealous that it isn’t their time to row. Their gripe is invalid because they are not an invalid.

The other hunters did not object when I shot at the Dove, as it dove into the bushes. It was the object of my hunting that day. A buck does funny things when the does are present. If they are too close, the hunter won’t be able to close in on it for a shot. He must subject the subject to a series of tests before he shoots.

The Sewer dropped the needle into the sewer because the wind was too strong for her to wind the thread. If she sees the tear in the cloth she will shed a tear. The drummer painted a Bass on the head of the bass drum.

Is there an egg in eggplant, or ham in hamburger, or apple and pine in a pineapple? Why were English muffins not invented in England or French fries in France. How can sweetmeats be candies and not meat while sweetbreads aren't sweet at all. Boxing rings are square and guinea pigs are neither from Guinea nor are they pigs. And why do Writers write but fingers don't fing? Grocers do not groce and hammers do not ham. The plural of tooth is teeth, but the plural of booth is not beeth. There is one goose and two geese but one moose is not two meese and there is one index but two indices. How come you can make amends but not one amend? If there is a bunch of odds & ends but what do you call it if you get rid of all but one?

Teachers are taught but preachers aren’t praught. A vegetarian eats vegetables; what do humanitarians eat? Sometimes people recite at a play but they play at a recital. Why do you ship by truck but send cargo by ship? Some have a nose that runs and their feet smell. Isn’t “a slim chance” and “a fat chance” contradictory instead of the same, yet a wise guy and a wise man are opposites. A house can burn up as it burns down, and you fill in a form by filling it out, and an alarm goes off by going on. Why do they refer to us as the human race, when it is not a race at all; and when you can see the stars they are said to have “come out,” but when the electric lights go off they are said to be “gone out?” Why doesn't 'Buick' rhyme with 'quick' ?

“UP” usually means toward the sky or at the top of the hill, but we also wake UP, topics come UP at a meetings where they speak UP if an officer is UP for election. It is UP to the secretary to write UP a report and we call UP our friends which normally brightens us UP. Our presence might brighten UP a room. Silver and gold can be polished UP and we warm UP leftovers, after which we clean UP the kitchen. We also lock UP the house and some people fix UP old cars. People can stir us UP or stir UP trouble. They line UP to buy things, work UP their appetite, and think UP excuses. We dress UP, a plugged UP drain must be opened UP, and they open UP the store in the morning and close it UP at night.

If you are UP to it, to understand the proper uses of UP you might look the word UP in the dictionary where, in a desk-sized dictionary, it takes UP nearly a quarter page of about thirty definitions. It can add UP to a lot if you try building UP a list of the many ways UP is used. It will certainly take UP a lot of your time, but if you don't give UP, you may wind UP with a hundred or more uses of the word UP.

When it threatens to rain, we say it is clouding UP; when the sun comes out we say it is clearing UP; When it rains, it often messes things UP; when it doesn't rain for awhile, things dry UP. One could go on and on, if we don’t finally wrap it UP. For now my time is UP, so........it is time for me to shut UP! Now I’ll leave it all UP to you. … contributed by Kasi; reformatted and recomposed by Ed L.

The Grammar Lesson by Steve Kowit

A “noun's” a thing. A “verb's” the thing it does.

An “adjective” is what describes the noun.

In "The can of beets … is filled with purple fuzz"

“Of” and “with” are prepositions. “The's” an article, a can's a noun,

a “noun's” a thing. A “verb's” the thing it does.

A “can” can roll - or not. What “isn't” was

or might be, might meaning not yet known.

"Our can of beets is filled with purple fuzz"

is present tense. While words like “our” and “us” are pronouns –

i.e. it is moldy, they are icky brown.

A noun's a thing; a verb's the thing it does.

“Is” is a helping verb. It helps because “filled” isn't a full verb.

“Can” is what our owns

in "our can of beets is filled with purple fuzz."

See! There's almost nothing to it. Just

memorize these rules...or write them down!

A noun's a thing, a verb's the thing it does.

The can of beets is filled with purple fuzz.

[Simon17]

I suppose we do have some homonyms, but this happens sometimes when you don't have every single word being a different character like the Chineese! Also, I'd much rather the rough spelling of English than deal with the needless difficulties of most other languages having major conjugation issues with all their verb tenses and the annoyance of gender for everyday words!

[trottigy]

Try Asian languages - typically no conjugation and no gender for nouns. They also don't have tenses (past, present, future).

This is why so many Asians have trouble with this also. "I go to store" is common - just say when -> yesterday, today, tomorrow or right now.

[Spydar]

English is the funniest language to speak, sometimes I start laughing at how we speak our broken english,

Proper English- Hello, How are you?

Trinidadian English- Hey, wah is de scene boy/girl? how things?

Proper English- Could you move that please?

Trinidadian English- eh, move dis for meh nah

Proper English- Are you Jehovah's Witnesses?

Trinidadian English- alyuh is Ge-ho-ve-yah?

And I could just go on and on LOL

I think I will start a post like this.

[NSSewer]

Very nice Brother Ed. It hurts my ears and sometimes makes me want to cry when I hear someone especially news people do without the indefinite article an and use a instead.

[retroHelen]

Plenty of folks used to visit our congregation coming on the Lake District tourist trail and a couple of older brothers used to talk with thick Northern dialects and visitors could not understand them at all. I thought this only happened when people tried to understand Glaswegians (West Scots Dialect from Glasgow - very difficult). Apparently because of the Viking heritage here, those with a strong Northern dialect can be understood to some extent in parts of Scandanavia.

After the meeting conversation: "Thoo gang yam?" Answer "Aye is. Is thoo gang miway or ovver yon tae yam?" Answer: "Arrz gang ovver sem yon as thoo, lets gang tegither eh?.- ????!!! (Are you going home the same way as myself? Then shall we go together?) Took a bit of getting used to when we moved just 50 miles up the coast in 1973. I was known as a Furriner (Foreigner) at school at first - Coming from 50 miles away, was about as ethnically diverse as it got back then!! Difficult enough for me, as well as being the first JW they'd ever had at the school!

Later I met a woman who had married a French man. The local greeting here is "How's thoo garn on Marra?" (Marra is a dialect word for Mate,friend).Someone said it to him so he went home and found an English dictionary and found Marrow - large long round green vegetable and was not impressed!!

2 ladies from Southern England went into one of our local cafes and ordered "Latte". They were given a small teapot for one and 2 small cups and saucers. The Waitress thought they'd asked for "Laal tea" ( Laal is dialect word for 'little' around here!! ) They thought it hilarious and wrote about it to their newspaper.

[edlittlefield]

Language can be very funny at times. Sometimes you have to listen real close and then interpret it.

I use to be a charter bus driver for Greyhound and I dealt with people from all over the world. There was one blunder I made when I had a group from Ohio and we were touring Rocky Mountain National Park out of Estes Park, Colorado. I noticed that on the inside of the road the opposite side from the sheer cliff on my left side, the state had built a stone retaining wall. It seemed to me it should have been between me and the cliff, not the opposite side. That didn't make sense to me. So, sticking my foot in my mouth I exclaimed, ... BOY, WHOEVER BUILT THAT WALL MUST BE POLISH! There was a sudden hush that came over the bus as I realized that many Polish people come from Ohio (and they were on my bus). Actually the wall was for snow drifts and not for keeping somebody from going over the cliff. After a few minutes things got back to normal and they became jovial again.

Another group I picked up in Denver when they flew there from Atlanta, GA. All of these people were from rural Georgia and believe me, those people talk very peculiar at times. They have the tendency not to sound out the "R" within a word. For instance, instead of saying Georgia, they say "Jaw-jah." And some of their towns are called something different than what the rest of the world calls it. For instance, I once lived in CAIRO, GA. They call it "KAYRO."

When we were in Jackson Hole, Wyoming the tour guide asked me to take them out for an evening drive, to see the area. I said "sure!" After a while touring the Jenny Lake area I spoke up and said,... Now folks, tomorrow morning when you get on the bus, all you swimmers sit on the right side and you non-swimmers on the left.

Now, if you will look at the window next to you, you'll see that there is a bar that says "in case of emergency pull up on this bar." If you do that the window will swing open so you can get out in an emergency.

Now remember, tomorrow morning, all you swimmers sit on the right side of the bus and you non-swimmers on the left. That's because tomorrow morning as we are leaving this area we will come to a very old "one-lane" bridge that spans over a ravine, about a hundred feet in the air, over the river that runs under the bridge.

Now, when we get onto that bridge, IF IT BREAKS,... when we get down into the water, you swimmers lift up on that bar and you swim on out of there. All you others,... THANKS FOR GOING GREYHOUND!."

Don't ask me how this relates to language,... it is just something I remembered and wanted to share with you. Hope you enjoy it.

Ed L

[retroHelen]

You are so right about language being funny at times.

We came to New York on holiday from England. We arrived at the airport to get our transfer bus to the hotel. We told the driver our address - a Hotel on Pearl Street. He looked a bit puzzled and drove to lower Manhattan. He drove around asking passersby where Pearl Street was and no one knew. He asked some guys mending a hole in the road and they didn't know either. Then he asked a Policeman. The Policeman said "You got British tourists on your bus?" He said: "Yes" and the Policeman laughed and said with his New York/Brooklyn accent "It's Poil Street you're looking for!"(that's how they pronounce it there!). The driver then knew where he was taking us. We had actually been driving down it all along! ::oWe arrived at the airport in New Jersey, but the driver called it 'Noo Joisee' - so we have called it that ever since!

As the saying goes: 'You live and learn!

[Samberr74]

Reminds me when my cousins from North Carolina came to visit us in California

The asked us to take them To San "Joesy" instead of San Jose

And they LOVED the shopping in Valley Joe instead of Vallejo (Vuh-lay-oh)

[edlittlefield]

A family of our relatives from Missouri came to Denver to visit family. While in the mall one of the boys spied out the escalator and exclaimed to his mon,... "Mama, I think them stairs is movin." His mom replied,... "yes son, I thank they call that an escarater." ...

[edlittlefield]

Hey, don't laugh; I was raised "back-woods" too. I was 21 before I realized someone's naval was not their "nabal." And I thought that to use the word "isn;t" was snobby. Once my aunt asked me if I had "eaten" yet. All I ever heard before was ... "You et yet?" And my grandmother never used the word "are," rather she would say "aire,' as in "are you busy" or the like. Some of the old western movies depict that sort of vocabulary as of the common folks then. A good example of it would be "Festus Hagan of Gunsmoke." Some of the Gary Cooper movies also illustrated the same. And this illustrates to us today how far language has come through education.

This has been one very important and precious things Jehovah, through the publications, has done for us over the years, by giving us words to research so as to improved our speech. I feel this would be one of the reason it has been said that... "reading the Watchtower and Awake regularly for ten years or more is equivalent to a two year college education." Our publications teach us much more than the subject of what were are focusing on in them. We all need to go back and review some of the suttle things we have learned through them, such as proper grammar and extemporaneous speaking to others, even crowds. Even more-so has the Theocratic Ministry School elevated our grammar and ability to speak with confidence, plus with our regular participation in the public ministry and our applying what we've been taught, we have become greater orators and have learned to get past the fear of public speaking. Did you know that public speaking is one of the most anxious things a person can do? And yet, since that is our common purpose as a worshipper of the True God, we take it for granted and assume that we are less than the others, when in fact, we are much to the advantage. As the scriptures mentioned in Isaiah this week,... we are of "the taught one" of Jehovah. Never should we feel that educationally we are sub-serviant to anyone else. Be proud of who you are as one of Jehovah's Witnesses and utilize every element offered to us through our organization. BE SURE TO BE AN ACTIVE PART OF THE MINISTRY SCHOOL! Just think,... all the worldly education only enhances our spiritual education. This being so, DO NOT EVER THINK OF YOURSELF AS UN EDUCATED, as "unlettered and untaught." YOU ARE SOME OF THE MOST EDUCATED PEOPLE IN THE WORLD TODAY. ..... BE PROUD OF IT AND USE IT FOR BUILDING UP YOURSELF, YOUR FAMILIES AND WORSHIPPING JEHOVAH. We truly are a blessed people!

Ed L

edited at Eds request

[Wren]

I would love to be able to hear English with the ear of a non native speaker, I've thought that for ages.

You're right Ed we get the best education from Jehovah, I remember saying "nabal" instead of naval as a young kid but it was kiddy speak more than anything I think.

Keston and Helen I would love to hear more of your local colloquial English, it is really delightful.

[Spydar]

Keston and Helen I would love to hear more of your local colloquial English, it is really delightful.

Check the link below, I posted it after commenting on this post. Hope you have fun.

http://www.jwtalk.net/forum/read.php?48,78636

[retroHelen]

Rennie - Have a gander (look) at what I did wi' Keston's Trinadad phrases on t' other thread he put up! 'ave yersen a guid laff lass!!