What's the weirdest thing in english?

Submitted ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨nerdhd@lemmy.world⁩ to ⁨[deleted]⁩

Is it the definite article?

So, to reiterate, when it comes to when to use the “the”, the only universal rule is this:

Some rules (such as the two you’ve given) might hold 95%+ of the time, but unfortunately there may be weird and arbitrary exceptions that you’ll just have to learn.

Source: ell.stackexchange.com/questions/365074/…/365083#3…

Is it capitalization?

A cursory look at the Wikipedia page for capitalization also reveals that capitalization is not without its quirks.

For example:

planets and other celestial bodies: “Jupiter”, “the Crab Nebula”; and “the Earth”, “the Sun”, or “the Moon” should be capitalized according to the International Astronomical Union based on its manual of style, but style guides may suggest differently.[19]

Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalization_in_English

Please tell me your thoughts.

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Comments

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No_Money_Just_Change@feddit.org ⁨53⁩ ⁨seconds⁩ ago
Dearest creature in creation, The weirdest part is pronunciation…

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Dookieman12@piefed.social ⁨53⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago
IMO, the weirdest thing about English is something every speaker does but probably never thinks about.

Whenever multiple adjectives describe a single noun, there’s a particular order in which they must go. If you have big tractor that’s also green, you would call it a “big green tractor” but you would never call it a “green big tractor”. Not only does it sound wrong, it’s grammatically incorrect.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/one-weird-trick-for-adjective-order

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- pwnicholson@lemmy.world ⁨22⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago
  100% this. No one is ever taught it as a rule in school. You’re never tested over it. But all native English speakers intuitively know it.
  
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Diddlydee@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
Pronunciation of same letters differently.

Rough. Bough. Cough. Sough. Lough. Dough. Though. Tough.

I also think the way we insert curse words is abso-fucking-lutely unique.

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palordrolap@fedia.io ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
I don't think articles, definite or indefinite are the weirdest things about English, if only because other languages have the same features.

There have to be weirder things that are specific to this one language, but it's hard to find something that isn't shared by any other language, especially not the closely related ones. German goes one step further with the whole capitalisation thing, for example, where all nouns are capitalised, not just those that are names.

Perhaps we could go for how vowels all become, or at least move towards schwa in unstressed positions. That's the vowel at the end of "the" when unstressed and before a consonant. (German has some of this with final -e (and to some extent, the same with older French pronunciation), but it's not necessarily the same thing going on there.)

Consonant aspiration might be another oddity. Aspiration depends on position in a word in English and doesn't hold any semantic or grammatical meaning, but in other languages, an aspirated consonant can completely change the meaning of a word. I think Korean is one such language. They even have different letters for the different sounds.

If you don't know what aspiration is, it's the burst of air that follows some consonants. English speakers generally don't even know they're doing it. The often-used example is "pin" versus "spin", where the leading "p" of "pin" has far more air after it than it does in "spin".

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Nibodhika@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
Probably spelling, but there’s one quirk in English that makes it so you can build the arguably weirdest sentence in any language. Here’s the short version and explanation for people unaware of the 3 meanings of the word (which I’ll use 3 different spellings to make it easier to understand):

Buffalo is a city in USA

a buffalo is another name for an animal also known as a bison

To BUFFALO means to bother, or bully.

So a Buffalo buffalo is a Bison from the city of Buffalo. If a Bison from Buffalo were to bother another Bison from Buffalo, you get the common example of this phrase which is Buffalo buffalo BUFFALO Buffalo buffalo which means Buffalo bison BOTHERS Buffalo bison. You can add an extra Buffalo at the start to make it a headline of a newspaper telling you where this happened, but that only gives you Buffalo, Buffalo buffalo BUFFALO Buffalo buffalo…

But we can make it better. See, in English you can add specifiers to a noun, the way we’re doing with Buffalo to specify this is a Bison from Buffalo, but the specification can be a full sentence. For example if we wanted to say that specify that the bison is known to bother other bisons you can call him a “bison bully” bison, or even if he’s from Buffalo and only bullies other bisons from Buffalo he’s a Buffalo “Buffalo bison bully” bison, or a Buffalo “Buffalo buffalo BUFFALO” buffalo.

Cool, so if a Bison from Buffalo known for bullying other bisons from Buffalo is bullying yet another Buffalo bison you can say that a “Buffalo Buffalo buffalo BUFFALO buffalo BUFFALO Buffalo buffalo”… But what if the bison it’s bullying is also known to bully other bisons from buffalo? Then Buffalo buffalo BUFFALO Buffalo buffalo BUFFALO Buffalo buffalo BUFFALO Buffalo buffalo

But our bison might actually EXCLUSIVELY bully bisons that bully other bisons, so he’s a Buffalo bison BULLY BULLY, and if he’s from the city of Buffalo he’s a Buffalo Buffalo buffalo BUFFALO BUFFALO. So if our heroic bison made a mistake and bullied another Bison who only bullies bullies then: Buffalo Buffalo buffalo BUFFALO BUFFALO buffalo BUFFALO Buffalo Buffalo buffalo BUFFALO BUFFALO

And you can keep making the sentence infinitely long by specifying that tach bison in the story is a Buffalo bison Bully bison.
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farmgineer@nord.pub ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I would say orthography and/or the great vowel shift. Or, further, that it’s very weird as Germanic languages go. Or, even further, the mix of old Norse and the various Saxon/jute/angle languages before the Normans came along (itself Norman french with old Norse admixture). Then throw various Celtic languages on that mess

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Nemo@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
Per formal linguistics, it’s “respectively”.

Like: Bob, Alicia, and Siobhan are a teacher, plumber, and electrician, respectively.

We know this means Bob is a teacher and Siobhan is an electrician, but trying to write rules for how English works that account for this usage is thorny.

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- Dookieman12@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago
  Let me try writing a rule for it.
  
  “Given two lists, the word “respectively” indicates the n-th item in each list corresponds to the n-th item in the other list.”
  
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- schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
  German has this too, “beziehungsweise”, but it replaces the “and” instead of being added to it. It is common enough that it’s usually abbreviated “bzw.”.
  
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luthis@lemmy.nz ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I vote for standardisation. So it’s ‘wierd.’ I before e. It’s more Germanic that way too. Food, moon, and good all pronounced the same way. Etc

The wierdest thing? That it’s used in so many places instead of good, solid, consistent Latin

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- zikzak025@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  English was screwed by the advent of the printing press.
  
  From the beginning of the renaissance up to the 1700’s, English underwent a vowel shift which saw a lot of words change pronunciation. When the printing press arrived in England in the late 1400’s, there was a push to set standard spelling. But because the printing press arrived while the vowel shift was still ongoing, the new pronunciation of some words was revised with updated spelling (consistent with other words at the time) but other words would receive new pronunciations after their spelling was already set in stone.
  
  If a language undergoes a vowel shift after its spelling is standardized, the phonetic rules remain mostly intact because they will trend towards changing consistently. If a language completes a vowel shift before its spelling is standardized, then the new spelling will just reflect its current phonetics. English was unlucky enough to be locked in time during its blunder years.
  
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TabbsTheBat@pawb.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

Is it the fact the way something is written almost has no bearing on how it’s pronounced?

For me as someone who speaks english as a 2nd language this is definitely a big one

Though on the topic of the definite article, as a kid I found articles in general to be weird as my native language has none, so there were just these “untranslatable” words in front of some nouns for some reason

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- nerdhd@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  
  Though on the topic of the definite article, as a kid I found articles in general to be weird as my native language has none, so there were just these “untranslatable” words in front of some nouns for some reason
  
  Funny you mention this, cuz I have been trying to learn japanese lately and it not having articles is a big obstacle for me.
  
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  - TabbsTheBat@pawb.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    You know, I never thought about the opposite being a problem lol.
    
    It’s mildly interesting to think about
    
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Canopyflyer@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Gallagher on the English Language.

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