Latest Breaking News On - Richard lederer - Page 10 : comparemela.com
Illustration by W. Vasconcelos
A CERTAIN genre of books about English extols the language s supposed difficulty and idiosyncrasy. “Crazy English”, by an American folk-linguist, Richard Lederer, asks “how is it that your nose can run and your feet can smell?”. Bill Bryson s “Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way” says that “English is full of booby traps for the unwary foreigner…Imagine being a foreigner and having to learn that in English one tells
a lie but
the truth.”
Such books are usually harmless, if slightly fact-challenged. You tell “a” lie but “the” truth in many languages, partly because many lies exist but truth is rather more definite. It may be natural to think that your own tongue is complex and mysterious. But English is pretty simple: verbs hardly conjugate; nouns pluralise easily (just add “s”, mostly) and there are no genders to remember.
Australia
United-states
Bilker
Ankara
Turkey
Kwaio
Solomon-islands-general
Solomon-islands
China
South-africa
Portugal
Russia
pateras.
The oldest languages, Sumerian and Egyptian, began about 3200 B.C. with Chinese following in 1500 B.C. English started in the fifth century A.D. with three phases since: Old English until the Norman Conquest in 1066; Middle English until Shakespeare’s classic writing period when Modern English began in 1600s.
English-speakers 200 years ago used one-tenth of the words we use today. Many words change drastically making our language different year after year.
Does English baffle you? It does me, but my curiosity wins. Words have drawn from 350 other languages, according to Richard Nordquist on ThoughtCo. Since the fifth century, English totals about 1,022,000 words with 1,000 to 5,000 more added each year. The language includes different forms, such as archaic words unused today.
Germany
Egypt
Netherlands
Rome
Lazio
Italy
China
France
Spain
Greece
Greek
French