The English Language.

[Hector]

Here's one for all you English teachers:
The English Language

I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough;
Others may stumble, but not you,
On hiccough, thorough, laugh and through.
Well done!  And now you wish, perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps.

Beware of heard – a dreadful word -
That looks like beard and sounds like bird;
And dead: its said like bed and not like bead -
For goodness sake don't call it deed!
Watch out for meat and great and threat,
They rhyme with suite and straight and debt.

A moth is not a moth in mother,
Nor both in bother, broth in brother;
And here is not a match for there,
Nor dear and fear for bear and pear.
And then there's dose and rose and lose -
Just look them up – and goose and choose,
And cork and work and cord and ward,
And font and front and word and sword
And do and go and thwart and cart.

Come, come, I've hardly made a start!
A dreadful language? Man alive,
I'd mastered when I was five!

[Eagle 3]

.

[Hector]

Good one!

[Roger]

Very good Hector and Eagle - it really IS complicated.

However do we get the hang of it?

[Hector]

By listening, imitation and repetition - somethings the Thais when learning English don't do.  Knowing grammar and how to parse a sentence doesn't help with speaking and understanding.

[Eagle 3]

I posted this before, but it's fitting to post it here:

What's Up With Up?

Lovers of the English language might enjoy this. It is yet another example of why people learning English have trouble with the language. Learning the nuances of English makes it a difficult language. (But then, that's probably true of many languages.)

There is a two-letter word in English that perhaps has more meanings than any other two-letter word, and that word is'UP.' It is listed in the dictionary as being used as an [adv], [prep], [adj], [n] or [v].

It's easy to understand UP, meaning toward the sky or at the top of the list, but when we awaken in the morning, why do we wake UP?

At a meeting, why does a topic come UP? Why do we speak UP, and why are the officers UP for election and why is it UP to the secretary to write UP a report? We call UP our friends and we use it to brighten UP a room, polish UP the silver, we warm UP the leftovers and clean UP the kitchen. We lock UP the house and some guys fix UP the old car.

At other times the little word has a real special meaning. People stir UP trouble, line UP for tickets, work UP an appetite, and think UP excuses.

To be dressed is one thing but to be dressed UP is special.

And this up is confusing: A drain must be opened UP because it is stopped UP.

We open UP a store in the morning but we close it UP at night. We seem to be pretty mixed UP about UP!

To be knowledgeable about the proper uses of UP, look the word UP in the dictionary. In a desk-sized dictionary, it takes UP almost 1/4 of the page and can add UP to about thirty definitions.

If you are UP to it, you might try building UP a list of the many ways UP is used. It will take UP a lot of your time, but if you don't give UP, you may wind UP with a hundred or more. 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 wets UP the earth. When it does not rain for awhile, things dry UP.

One could go on & on, but I'll wrap it UP, for now. My time is UP.

Oh ... one more thing: What is the first thing you do in the morning & the last thing you do at night?

U P

Don't screw up. Send this on to everyone you look up in your address book. Now I'll shut up.

[Alfie]

^ Which segues beautifully into this ....

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZkb4TPI-Lo" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZkb4TPI-Lo</a>

Enjoy.