Quirks of English

[Tyre Smoke]

SGirl said:

The hard bit is the way in which they bunch up their verbs at the end of sentences, so you have to read to the end to know what they're on about. And the way they make adjectives out of clauses.

Could you give us an English sentence example please? Or would it simply be nonsense?

[Mr Snrub]

Tyre Smoke said:

SGirl said:

The hard bit is the way in which they bunch up their verbs at the end of sentences, so you have to read to the end to know what they're on about. And the way they make adjectives out of clauses.

Could you give us an English sentence example please? Or would it simply be nonsense?

Going off on a tangent, this is something I've always found difficult. I'd like to think my standard of written English is quite high, and I will always do my utmost to ensure that what I write flows properly and is grammatically correct. But I honestly couldn't tell you what an adverb, pronoun, clause etc is. Should I be feeling bad about this, or is it more a case of you not needing to know how a machine works in order to use it?

[Kermit power]

Strela said:

Not intending to offend forum etiquette here, but I wrote a little book on the reasons for apparent quirks of English a few years ago. I only mention it as it may be of interest to those who are interested. It was a fairly niche book and I never expected it to pay for my Kahn Laboratories Roller. Had to find another way of financing that. It may actually be out of print these days, but I have a stash in the attic and would be happy to disperse them free for educational purposes. Probably better suited to more mature students, as shown by this short article by a rather better known writer on language:

http://blog.inkyfool.com/2013/01/ayoni.html

Ooh! I'd quite like a copy if you have one going! I love quirks of language.

[SGirl]

Tyre Smoke said:

Could you give us an English sentence example please? Or would it simply be nonsense?

It wouldn't make a lot of sense in English - the right words would all be there, but in the wrong order for English.

I can give you an example from a text I'm working on at the moment, with a couple of details removed so as not to identify the company:

The unit describes an extended concept for appliances in the possession of XXX which in the data centre of the partner to availability placed will be must.

Or, in sensible English:

The unit describes an extended concept for appliances owned by XXX which must be made available to the partner's data centre.

This is a very simple example though, it gets a lot worse than this.

[HarryFlatters]

Why don't pork and fork rhyme?

Why is there a D in fridge, but not in refrigerator?

Why doesn't phonetic begin with an F?

It goes on and on...

[EnglishTony]

Pork and fork do rhyme

[HarryFlatters]

EnglishTony said:

Pork and fork do rhyme

They don't in Scotland.

[Kermit power]

HarryFlatters said:

EnglishTony said:

Pork and fork do rhyme

They don't in Scotland.

Foreigners create all sorts of extra quirks over and above those which are truly native to English though. We'd be here all year if we started trying to get into those as well!

[xRIEx]

HarryFlatters said:

Why doesn't phonetic begin with an F?

Generally, (I believe) words with a Greek root will have 'ph' for an 'f' sound, and words with a Latin (or other) root will have an 'f'. I would guess the root of 'phonetic' is 'phonos' meaning sound or voice (not to be confused with 'phonos', which means slaughter or murder; that would be embarrassing - someone might say 'telephone' and you think they mean 'sniper rifle').