# Post Something Interesting About English **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [March 23, 2017, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-something-interesting-about-english/782836 "2017-03-23T15:46:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 10
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2017, 1:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-something-interesting-about-english/782836/181 "2017-03-29T01:30:35Z")
Interesting English Fact: With English borrowing so many words from so many other languages derived from the ancient proto-indo-european tongue, English uses about 50% of the words found in Sanskrit. [sub]or so claims “The History of English” podcast[/sub] ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2017, 1:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-something-interesting-about-english/782836/182 "2017-03-29T01:41:43Z")
> [@Ignatz](#): > > So why is English a spinning motion given to a bowling or billiard or other ball? > > (Please pardon if this was covered in earlier pages some of which I have not read.) “English” derives from the Anglen region in what is now Schleswig-Holstein, just south of Denmark. Thence, “Anglo-Saxon”. The spin on a billiard ball is properly known as “Angular Momentum”. It is all about the Angles. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2017, 5:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-something-interesting-about-english/782836/183 "2017-03-29T05:50:16Z")
> [@Chefguy](#): > > > [@eschereal](#): > > > > If you are using more than two adjectives at a time, you are probably [doing it wrong](http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/495945-when-you-catch-an-adjective-kill-it-no-i-don-t). > > I assume you mean “wrongly”. I’m reminded of those who “feel badly” about things. Someone is correctly described as “feeling badly” if he’s trying to feel up his date and is doing a terrible job of it. But if you feel bad or sad due to some misfortune, “feel” is not an action verb here but a description of a state of being; it’s technically a linking verb called a copula or copulative verb that links the descriptor back to the subject, and the adjective form is called for. Having said that, this is different! “Wrong” is both an adjective and an adverb, and in this case is doing honorable duty as an adverb following an actual action verb. Thus, in the unfortunate dating situation cited above, the accosted female would be correct in saying “You’re doing this very **badly** ”. Why don’t we say “you’re doing it wrongly”, which is also correct? We could, but common usage has relegated “wrongly” to generally formal contexts, which is why it would sound a little odd to most of us and why we tend to associate it with legal usage, like “wrongly convicted”. Yes, I know, I should have said “such as” instead of “like”. Suck it up. 🙂 – A few more random little things that may be of interest. At this point someone might say – especially in spoken conversation – “Well, did you think that was informative?” or “So, does anyone have anything else to add?”. So, why do we do this? What’s with the "well"s and the "so"s sprinkled like decoration all over our sentences? I must admit that some people do it so often (especially with “so”) that it’s annoying, but (within reason) it’s neither wrong nor redundant in common speech. Try omitting it and see what you sound like. The words are a lead-in, a softening, an acknowledgement of the other person that creates a less formal and more amicable mood in the conversation. To a linguist, they would be examples of [pragmatic markers](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781405198431.wbeal0929/abstract), words or phrases whose value is modal (literally, “expressing mood”) rather than semantic. They add no meaning, but they enhance interactive discourse. The final thing I’ll throw in here is a couple of comments about the uses and abuses of “I” versus “me”, the first of which is a rehash from another thread. Most of us cringe at the hypercorrected wrongness of “between you and I”, but what about “I wish everyone was more like I”? Most of us would say “I wish everyone was more like me”, even though the subject case seems the right one because of the implied “am”: “… more like I _ **am** _”. Turns out, we’re not the only ones who like the object form here. As Mark Liberman [points out](http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1599), so did Shakespeare in _Romeo and Juliet_: “Doting like me, and like me banished”. Jonathan Swift, in _The Lady’s Dressing Room_: “He soon would learn to think like me”. Robert Southey, in his poem _To Lycon_: “And train the future race to live and act like me.” Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop: “… he told me about my mother, and how she once looked and spoke just like me.” As Liberman discusses, “like” takes a noun-phrase complement (“handles like a shopping cart with a wobbly wheel”), so as all these writers instinctively knew, the object case is the one consistent with this usage. Then we have the interesting case of “Jane and me went to the store”, for which the teenage perp would likely get his knuckles rapped by an English teacher. I prefer “Jane and I” in this case, but Steven Pinker raises an interesting point. Forget about “I” vs “me” for a moment and change the tense, and you get “Jane and me _ **are** _ going to the store”. For the sticklers who insist we would never say “Me is going to the store”, one can point out that we would also never say “Me are going to the store”, yet here we are happily using the plural form when everything inside the phrase is singular. The moral of the story is that the pronouns inside a conjunction phrase should be able to have a different case from the case of the phrase itself, just like the phrase can have a different grammatical number from the pronouns inside it. All of this can be cheerfully acknowledged while still deploring abominations like the figurative use of “literally”. Don’t get me started – not in this thread, anyway. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2017, 6:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-something-interesting-about-english/782836/184 "2017-03-29T06:05:44Z")
“Literally” is well on the way to becoming a contranym, which will literally, eventually, carry both opposite meanings. As for “doing it wrong” being incorrect, one could, possibly parse it as another of those compound verbs where the subject gets interleaved. The verb could be seen as “to do wrong”, which is normally intransitive, but in its transitive form, the subject (“it”) gets inserted into the middle of the verb. Hence, the sentence would mean that profligate adjective use is a harm or insult to “it” (good writing, or the language in general). But probably not. ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2017, 6:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-something-interesting-about-english/782836/185 "2017-03-29T06:24:48Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > Forget about “I” vs “me” for a moment and change the tense, and you get “Jane and me _ **are** _ going to the store”. For the sticklers who insist we would never say “Me is going to the store”, one can point out that we would also never say “Me are going to the store”, yet here we are happily using the plural form when everything inside the phrase is singular. No. Each individual thing inside the phrase is singular, but the totality of all within the phrase is plural. That’s what “and” means. Would you say “Joe and Ben is going”, just because Joe and Ben are single individuals? The phrase describes two people. Plural. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2017, 7:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-something-interesting-about-english/782836/186 "2017-03-29T07:03:26Z")
> [@eschereal](#): > > “Literally” is well on the way to becoming a contranym, which will literally, eventually, carry both opposite meanings. Actually I would acknowledge that it’s been a well established contronym for a long time. But it’s still an exceptionally stupid one. Most contronyms are actually words with related meanings that share a common etymology that carry connotations better described as “related” rather than directly opposite. For instance, the word “go” is sometimes cited, because allegedly it can mean either to fail or to succeed bigly, as in “the badly stressed dam is starting to go” and “his business is really starting to go”, but the common thread is that in both cases it means that whatever the thing may have been about to do, it’s starting to do it now. “Quantum” is another, supposedly meaning both very big or very small. No, it means a discrete state, and by extension, a “quantum leap” is a transition to a qualitatively different condition and not just an incremental one. Housewives who dust their houses and bone their chickens are engaging in activities so commonplace and well understood that the negating prefix was dropped as a matter of convenience. Or take the word “fast”, which is supposed to mean both “quick” and “stuck or fixed”. It has its origins in the Old English faest, “firmly fixed, steadfast”. This evolved in Middle English to the adverbial sense of “strongly” and “vigorously” and later to the now archaic “fast by” meaning “close” or “immediate” and later to the adjectival sense of rapid movement. This sequence of evolutionary transitions has now given it several different meanings that could be contrived to be “opposites” of a sort, but they aren’t, really. At no point in the evolution of English has “fast” ever meant “slow”. “Literally” as a figurative expression is fairly uniquely in a class of stupid all by itself. > [@panache45](#): > > No. Each individual thing inside the phrase is singular, but the totality of all within the phrase is plural. That’s what “and” means. Would you say “Joe and Ben is going”, just because Joe and Ben are single individuals? The phrase describes two people. Plural. I’m not sure what you’re saying “no” to exactly. Yes, the totality of the phrase is plural. Pinker’s argument is that exactly the same principle can be used to claim that the totality of the phrase is in the subject case without requiring that each pronoun in it also conform to the subject case. This is Pinker’s argument, not mine, but I’m willing to concede it and not get my shorts in a knot over “Jane and me are going to the store” as I do with some other things. But frankly I think it’s a weaker argument than Liberman’s in the other example. “Everyone should think like me”, not “think like I”, and no, I would not recommend “correcting” Shakespeare to say “Doting like I, and like I banished”. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2017, 7:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-something-interesting-about-english/782836/187 "2017-03-29T07:11:18Z")
> [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](#): > > Interesting English Fact: > > With English borrowing so many words from so many other languages derived from the ancient proto-indo-european tongue, English uses about 50% of the words found in Sanskrit. > > [sub]or so claims “The History of English” podcast[/sub] I’d be surprised of there are any Latin words that English hasn’t borrowed, either directly or through a related word. My fun fact: **like** can be used as 7 of the traditional 8 parts of speech. The exception is pronoun, and it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if someone found a way to use it as one of those. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2017, 7:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-something-interesting-about-english/782836/188 "2017-03-29T07:18:18Z")
> [@dtilque](#): > > My fun fact: **like** can be used as 7 of the traditional 8 parts of speech. The exception is pronoun, and it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if someone found a way to use it as one of those. If anyone does, it will totally be, like, a teenager, right? P.S.- LOL. ---
**Author:** ![rat\_avatar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rat_avatar/32/255_2.png) [@rat\_avatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rat_avatar)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2017, 7:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-something-interesting-about-english/782836/189 "2017-03-29T07:57:31Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > This is Pinker’s argument, not mine, but I’m willing to concede it and not get my shorts in a knot over “Jane and me are going to the store” as I do with some other things. But frankly I think it’s a weaker argument than Liberman’s in the other example. “Everyone should think like me”, not “think like I”, and no, I would not recommend “correcting” Shakespeare to say “Doting like I, and like I banished”. 😃 As a light hearted bit of fun, I had to go copy down that stanza from the First folio, I took pity on everyone and changed the long ſ to s…but the rest is as the earliest copies have it. \*Pro tip: U and V are interchangeable. \* > [@](#): > > ROMEO. Thou can’st not speake of that y dost not feele, > Wert thous as young as Iuliet my Loue: > An houre but married, Tybalt murdered, > Doting like me, and like me banished, > Then mightest thous speake > Then mightest thou teare thy hayre, > And fall vpon the ground as I doe now, > Taking the measure of an vnmade graue. And because it took me so long to come back and edit I found another part to add. > [@](#): > > ROMEO. Let me be tane, let me be put to death, > I am content, so thou wilt haue it so. > Ile say yon gray is not the mornings eye, > ’Tis but the pale reflexe of Cinthias brow. > Nor that is not Larke whose noates do beate > The vaulty heauen so high aboue our heads, > I haue more care to stay, then will to go; > Come death and welcome, Iuliet wills it so. > How ist my soule, lets talke, it is not day. > > JULIET. It is, it is, hie hence be gone away: > It is the Larke that sings so out of tune, > Straining harsh Discords, and vnpleasing > Sharpes. > Some say the Larke makes sweete Diuision; > This doth not so: for she diuideth vs. > Some say, the Larke and loathed Toad change > eyes, > O now I would they had chang’d voyces too: > Since arme from arme that voyce doth vs affray, > Hunting thee hence, with Hunts-vp to the day, > O now be gone, more light and it light growes. > > ROMEO. More light & light, more darke & darke our woes. I am sorry to those who will find this painful, but I wanted to share the earliest known pre-prescriptive grammar version. ---
**Author:** ![Sangahyando](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f14d63/32.png) [@Sangahyando](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sangahyando)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2017, 8:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-something-interesting-about-english/782836/190 "2017-03-29T08:28:09Z")
> [@Sangahyando](#): > > So anyway, it seems we’re now up to eleven “possibles” – though a few of them are maybe pushing the envelope a bit. > [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](#): > > So let’s make a coherent sentence out of as many of them as we can. > > **The tough cough and hiccough as they plough through the borough’s dough.** A measly 7 used there. > > Let’s see what others can come up with. **Gough** [1] **wrought thorough roughness, though – houghing and hiccoughing through Slough** [2] **'s sloughs and loughs.** [1] Surname – pronounced “Goff” [2] the town – pronounced to rhyme with “cow” It gets all eleven, and sort-of makes sense… ---
**Author:** ![Enright3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/enright3/32/2897_2.png) [@Enright3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enright3)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2017, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-something-interesting-about-english/782836/191 "2017-03-29T16:11:54Z")
abecedarian (plural abecedarians) - Someone who is learning the alphabet. - An elementary student, a novice; one in the early steps of learning. - (archaic) Someone engaged in teaching the alphabet; an elementary teacher; one that teaches the methods and principles of learning. - (rhetoric) A work which uses words or lines in alphabetical order. What I think is cool about this word is that word was created from the definition itself. abecedarian = A-B-C-darian. [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/abecedarian](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/abecedarian) ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2017, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-something-interesting-about-english/782836/192 "2017-03-29T16:13:20Z")
Finally I have a word to describe my academic accomplishments! ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2017, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-something-interesting-about-english/782836/193 "2017-03-29T16:35:49Z")
> [@rat\_avatar](#): > > As a light hearted bit of fun, I had to go copy down that stanza from the First folio, I took pity on everyone and changed the long ſ to s…but the rest is as the earliest copies have it. > > \*Pro tip: U and V are interchangeable. > \* > And because it took me so long to come back and edit I found another part to add. > > I am sorry to those who will find this painful, but I wanted to share the earliest known pre-prescriptive grammar version. In that situation, “like” is in the role of a preposition. Prepositions do not take a subject-form pronoun. Try a different pronoun: “banished like they” or “banished like we” does not scan, unless you add a verb, turning “like” into a conjunction. ---
**Author:** ![Yllaria](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yllaria/32/3452_2.png) [@Yllaria](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yllaria)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2017, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-something-interesting-about-english/782836/194 "2017-03-29T18:08:28Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > . . . A few more random little things that may be of interest. At this point someone might say – especially in spoken conversation – “Well, did you think that was informative?” or “So, does anyone have anything else to add?”. So, why do we do this? What’s with the "well"s and the "so"s sprinkled like decoration all over our sentences?. . . Conversations, by convention, go back and forth. Pauses may be taken as a signal that your turn is over and someone else can start talking. Soooooo, in conversations, these words take up time, allowing us to maintain our turn while we think for half a second about what we want to say next. It’s not accidental that they tend to crop up at the beginning of a sentence. They’re not needed in public speaking, where the audience is not supposed to take a turn. It takes concentration and practice to trust your pauses and not use these crutch words. ---
**Author:** ![swampspruce](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/swampspruce/32/261_2.png) [@swampspruce](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/swampspruce)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2017, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-something-interesting-about-english/782836/195 "2017-03-29T18:49:56Z")
If GH can stand for P as in Hiccough If OUGH stands for O as in Dough If PHTH stands for T as in Phthisis If EIGH stands for A as in Neighbour If TTE stands for T as in Gazette If EAU stands for O as in Plateau Then the right way to spell POTATO should be: GHOUGHPHTHEIGHTTEEAU ---
**Author:** ![ZipperJJ](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zipperjj/32/211_2.png) [@ZipperJJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZipperJJ)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2017, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-something-interesting-about-english/782836/196 "2017-03-29T19:28:02Z")
Slogging back to the angry/hungry/pedigree “discussion” (I’m late to this thread because I predicted the same as \*\*RobDog \*\*did), I’ve decided that the Yorkshire accent would perhaps pronounce those words different. An-greh Hun-greh Ped-eh-greeeeeeee Good on Yorkshire, they consistently pronounce \*everything \*different 🙂 This is KIND OF in line with **Darren** ’s clip of the guy saying “angry” but not really (he would have been able to explain it better if he meant “an-greh”) but since he’s from SC and not Yorkshire I still don’t know what he’s talking about 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Doctor\_Jackson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doctor_jackson/32/32_2.png) [@Doctor\_Jackson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doctor_Jackson)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2017, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-something-interesting-about-english/782836/197 "2017-03-29T19:50:38Z")
“Cede” and “concede” are synonyms, as are “flammable” and “inflammable”. That just doesn’t seem right… ---
**Author:** ![harmonicamoon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/65b543/32.png) [@harmonicamoon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/harmonicamoon)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2017, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-something-interesting-about-english/782836/198 "2017-03-29T19:55:22Z")
“i” before “e”, except after “c” ---
**Author:** ![EinsteinsHund](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/einsteinshund/32/8400_2.png) [@EinsteinsHund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EinsteinsHund)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2017, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-something-interesting-about-english/782836/199 "2017-03-29T20:00:54Z")
> [@ZipperJJ](#): > > Slogging back to the angry/hungry/pedigree “discussion” (I’m late to this thread because I predicted the same as \*\*RobDog \*\*did), I’ve decided that the Yorkshire accent would perhaps pronounce those words different. > > An-greh > Hun-greh > Ped-eh-greeeeeeee > > Good on Yorkshire, they consistently pronounce \*everything \*different 🙂 > > This is KIND OF in line with **Darren** ’s clip of the guy saying “angry” but not really (he would have been able to explain it better if he meant “an-greh”) but since he’s from SC and not Yorkshire I still don’t know what he’s talking about 🙂 I’m probably out of my depth here, not being a native speaker, but this whole discussion reminded me of the way Elvis Costello pronounces “angry” on [_I’m Not Angry_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uff0h-zHuao), which sounds to my German ears like an-greh and distinctly different than I would pronounce “pedigree”. ---
**Author:** ![Rick\_Kitchen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rick_kitchen/32/522_2.png) [@Rick\_Kitchen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rick_Kitchen)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2017, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-something-interesting-about-english/782836/200 "2017-03-29T20:13:26Z")
> [@harmonicamoon](#): > > “i” before “e”, except after “c” Or sounded as “a” as in neighbor and weigh. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-something-interesting-about-english/782836.md?page=9) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-something-interesting-about-english/782836.md?page=11)