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One weird thing that English does not have is tone--the use of pitch to distinguish meaning. In many Asian languages, changing the pitch you use on a certain phoneme changes the meaning of the word. So, "ma" in standard Mandarin has 5 distinct tones, and using any in place of the other will change the meaning of the word significantly. One can be a question particle, one can mean horse, while another can be part of the word for mother.
quite a lot... the "Đ" sound is considered quite usual along with "r". The word order isjust makes sense, rets of the more developed languages dont HAVE TO, since we can overcomplicate with pre--and suffixes.(saying this as a Hungarian)
A conversation with my Italian friend... "How do you say your alarm wakes you up in the morning?" "My alarm goes off.." "NO! Your alarm goes ON!" Gave me pause for thought.
@@danytalksmusic Technically you turn it on when you set the timer (or activate the smoke detector), and the alarm is the last thing it does before it gets turned off.
Perhaps the phrase "goes off" is like a rocket "goes/going off" its launchpad. Something IS happening within the mechanism of the alarm clock to keep it from ringing (launching) UNTIL its proper set time. The alarm sounds when the silencing mechanism "goes off".
As a Swede, I'm so jealous of your access to single words to describe certain bodily movements like "shrug", "squat", "frown", "nudge" and "poke". In Swedish, you often have to describe it with a whole sentence, like "sitting down in a crouched position" or "push someone gently with your elbow". A terrible waste of time for us..
But we can say "closing your eyes" and "opening your mouth" with just one word . And moving away from bodily movements, what about bädda=making the bed, diska=doing the dishes, cykla=ridning a bike?
@@katam6471 Well, we do have cycling, but not usually used in the same context. And the Brits have washing up (unless they've americanized that one, too). As for the first one, young men just don't bother, either with the words or the thing.
As a native Spanish speaker I can tell you that learning all the vowels sounds in English can be a nightmare for us. I think I intuitively picked them up over the years, but nobody explains it like you do in the beginning of this video. Thanks for that.
Yeah, learning Spanish made me realize how complicated and inconsistent some aspects of English are. Even when you make sentences that seem correct, you're often not making word choices that a native speaker would use.
Just know that, as native English speakers, we understand how this could be difficult. We admit that it makes absolutely no sense. For instance, I think there are four ways the "oo" sound is made in various English words (like "cook", "blood", "floor", "boot"). Even if you mispronounce those, our ears will understand the context you are attempting to say the word, and we will understand. Don't be afraid to mess up!
@@HereForTheBeer1987 Well, if you mispronounce "cook" like the other three would be pronounced, you get, in order, the following meanings: "[something vulgar]", "cork", and "kook", all which have wildly different meanings than "to prepare food with heat." I think I would do a double-take if I heard someone refer to a person used for sexual denial fetishes OR a wine stopper OR a crazy person used to mean that my food is being prepared. Edit: My linguistic perspective is Eastern U.S., both South-Atlantic and Mid-Atlantic (with some Colorado mixed in), so your mispronunciation results may vary. 😉
@bryede You are absolutely correct. I am a native English speaker. I learned Spanish many years ago. English is a nightmare, especially it's vowels. Spelling does not match pronunciation, mostly due to vowel shifts that occurred over a period of several centuries in England. I will tell you however that Spanish, while very logical and phonetic, loses it with all the dipthongs in verb changes. Unlike Portuguese or Italian, the verbs are much messier in Spanish.
The cambridge grammar of the english language argues that ·n't functions as a verbal suffix, that verbs negated this way are inflected for the negative (synthetic negation) and as such are not entirely equivalent to the "non-contracted" construction (analytic negation). They do acknowledge that ·n't was a contraction, that its etymology was of a reduced pronunciation of "not", but they argue that that's no longer the case. If you have access to the book, it's chapter 3, section 1.9
As a Frenchman (so not really objective on this one) I really loved that video. I even learnt some things about my "home words" which happens quite often with your videos Rob. There's obviously so much work behind all this !! Kudos for your accent !!
20:26 We should bring back overmorrow and ereyesterday into common usage, they could be pretty useful (although maybe change "ereyesterday" to sound better since it doesn't sound as nice as "overmorrow" to me).
I'm already using "overmorrow" and explaining to people what it is when they are confused. But "ereyesterday" indeed sounds too odd, I wish there would be some better alternative.
I use these, sometimes. Confuses the hell out of people. In fact, they were my choice to post as needed words. I tend to pronounce ereyesterday as just eresterday, I guess it seems more like a single word, rather than two words, ere and yesterday, mashed together.
The part about phrasal verbs reminds me of a joke that Victor Borge used to tell about how, in English, it is odd that you have to cut down a tree before you can cut it up.
Indefinite article in Dutch created the word 'Decoy'. It came from 'Eendekooi', duck cage (Eend = Duck), which was used to catch wild ducks by putting tame ducks in a cage. Wild ducks would flock with the tame ones making it easier to catch them. Anyway, it was wrongly assumed the 'Een' at the beginning was the indefinite article, thus 'Een dekooi' which turned into 'a decoy'.
@@SteveLFBO Yep. Also "a nadder" to "an adder", "a napron" to "an apron", "accord" to "a chord", and "alone (all one)" to "a lone" among several others.
That is a bit doubted, you had Eendekooi (modern spelling "eendenkooi"), but you had "de kooi" (the cage) too as a possible source of confusion, it may be that both misunderstandings played a role.
@@hankjeffries2596 A large amount of English is basically just borrowed/derived words, but that doesn't mean that those words aren't English. All it means is that those words didn't originate in English
Loved the "medieval RUclips" screen 😂 The little details like "brethren", "subscribeth", the video with the boar. That's quality: taking time to produce a result, even if that product is there for a few seconds.
Once I have came across a restaurant in Seoul, advertising it's services - "BREAKFAST, COFFEE JUICE". My Slavic-parsing mind (i.e. one used to proper grammar, as in "Romanes eunt domus", but I digress here) never noticed it, but my pal, a native English speaker, started to laugh the moment he saw it. And this, my children, is what happens to languages when they don't upkeep their grammar and let it disappear - a single coma becomes a life or death difference... ;-)
Fully acknowledging its weirdness and difficulty to learn, I quite like the chaotic nature of it. There’s beauty in the way English bears all of these clues and remnants of its convoluted journey through time and geography. It’s uniquely primed to accept new words all the time, too.
Most of the difficulty with English in relation to grammar is because of the fact that English took in Latin, and French without changing the spellings of words. You can adopt words, but you have to change the spelling. That is where English failed. German more often than not changed the spellings of the words to conform to their language or kept the spelling and changed the pronunciation. For example, the word "depot" should be spelled "depo" the word 'jalapeno" should either be spelled "halepenyo" or pronounced like it is written. The same is true of the word "marijuana" it should be spelled "marehuana." Etc, etc.... In German they use the word "balloons" which comes from French. In French you do not pronounce the "ns" in German you do. The French word for office "bureau" is used in German but it is written as "Büro" In English the word is also used but they kept the French spelling.......
We, who managed to learn english as a second language, thank you from the bottom of our hearts, Rob! You just validated a lot of struggles people had to come to terms with.
@@hankjeffries2596 Because it just is not a "cardinal rule" in English as it is actually spoken or written. It is a piece of nonsense invented by some pedantic grammarian trying to the rules of Latin onto English. We have may phrasal verbs as Rob points out. Regard the so-called "preposition" in these cases are being like the German separable and inseparable verbs. " To take on" is a different verb from "To take over " , or "to take down " or "To take off" or "to take up" and so on and ought each be treated a distinct verbs where the prepositional part may be separated from the main part but is not to be seen as a totally independent preposition but as part of the verb . Though good style may play a part too. Why do I prefer to end this note here rather than to end it up? Because the "up" here is totally superfluous.
The missing word I've been asked about several times by learners of English is the question word asking for an ordinal number. "Whichth wierdness was the pronouns?" - "The seventh." "Whichth president was Obama?" - "The forty-fourth." Thanks for the video!
I've had exactly that problem before and it's stumped me as I searched my brain for a method to explain exactly what I'm trying to ask. And I'm a native speaker. "In a chronological list of presidents, where does Obama fall?" seems such a mouthfull. We really need a "whichth" type word.
It doesn't sound like it would be technically correct, but I usually ask this as "which/what number". As in "What number in the list was the pronouns?" or "Which number president was Obama?"
Ironically we have it available for monarchs but as soon as you try to put it into a sentence you find it's redundant: Which reginal number did Henry the Eighth have?
It should also be showed to every bigoted person who throws a fit when they see a person in the US speaking a language other than English in public. I grew up speaking English and I'm impressed anyone can learn it as a 2nd or 3rd language because of all the weird quirks. I still have trouble some days myself!
@@corvidsRcool The worst part of english is pronunciation tbh. I mean it's satisfying if you're able to read/speak something in your amalgamation of english accents (it's my case; I target mostly northern american; I know there's more to it but idk) but it's also frustrating if you stumble upon something you didn't really say in your entire life or its grammatical structure makes it tongue twister for you
i mean "give up" kinda makes sense, like you're giving something abstract (hence losing it) to something higher or more powerful than yourself (almost "fate" in a way?) i might just be justifying my intuition unfoundedly
When you talked about the present tense, I thought you were going to mention (you almost did but didn't quite), the fact that we don't use the "present tense" as our present tense: "What are you doing?" "I am reading a book." We never ever say: "I read a book." The so-called "present progressive" has completely supplanted the present tense in our language.
I suppose you use it to show habit, 'On my way to work, I read a book', 'On Mondays, I visit my parents'. Also to state facts: 'The moon is Earth's satellite'.
Some of these conventions are needed to distinguish between heteronyms (words spelled the same but pronounced differently). For past tense, we write “I read a book.” We understand the pronunciation /rɛd/. For the present tense, we must write “I am reading a book.” The root there is pronounced /riːd/. Vocally there wouldn’t be a problem. It’s in the weird English spellings and phonics. There’s no such difficulty writing the past tense “led” and the present tense “lead”.
Irish has two present tenses for the verb "to be" (immediate & continuous) and so two present progressives. This has shaped how we speak English. So we would say in English: I read books I am reading books (now) I do be reading books (generally)
It's more subtle than that Eric. We have different present tenses for different situations. What you call the present tense, 'I read', is for habitual actions, usually qualified with an expression such as 'on Mondays' or 'if I'm sad'. 'I am reading' is the present tense for just saying what I am doing right now. 'I do read' is a now old fashioned and dialect present form which is mainly used for emphasis now, especially when contradicting a negative.
I love all your videos but I find this particularly meaningful since every non-English speaking friend has complained about English's "weirdness." This spells that out. Thanks!
Or do what we Irish do....never give a yes/no answer.. agree/disagree with the question with an "I didn't", or "I did", or if its obvious the action wasn't carried out just say say "I know"
“I before E, except after C, and in weird words like…WEIRD!” An aside: English speakers in Yorkshire are trying to eliminate definite articles: eg. “We went t’ut theater” where the the has been reduced to a single letter t (I guess it’s still there in the contraction!)
Native Afrikaans speaker here. I can attest to the fact that the "th" is *extremely* difficult to learn when learning English. This normally gets substituted by the "f" sound, but "At school I thought a lot" has somewhat of a different meaning than: "At school I fought a lot"
I thought it was only cockneys that said "f" when they meant "th." Some Brit in the RUclips world does that, and to me it feels like fingernails on a blackboard, just intolerable to listen to. Hearing a non-native English speaker do it is probably a lot less aggravating.
I do find that particular accent easy to understand myself, and clarification is usually simple if there's ever miscommunication. Bostonian accents though, those are impossible.
I like the use of definite articles. Sometimes when you are in a room with multiple things you are considering or not considering, you are better off being able to define just “the” or “that” one thing you desire.
It can sometimes be very useful: "I need the (specific) paper." "I need a (random) paper." "I need paper." (The material or sometimes the concept (subject or category) of something.)
@@Khorteka But you don't need it for specific examples, like "I need article 23" (aka referencing specific paper). "I need yesterday's paper". You don't need "the" or "a". Just like in this reply I took out all times I would have used "the" or "a" and it still sounds correct.
Yes!!! It's at 10:23 for those who want to go have another look. I could not stop laughing! (well, actually I did, but I'm about to start again just thinking about it) 🤣🤣🤣
Even the word "weird" is weird! Its etymology involves meanings such as "fate" and "to turn" and "to become". Not only that, I just found out that Shakespeare reintroduced the word into English! It had fallen out of use in Middle English, but came back through Macbeth's Weird Sisters. Your videos are so wonderfully jovial and witty, as well as deeply informative! Thanks so much 😊
another fun Shakespeare fact he used about 20 000 words in his writings meanwhile the great french playwrights used about 2 000 since the 16th century (the height of french theatre) there was a big push to "purify" the language removing all words that didn't have a distinct french, latin or greek origin as well as having a simplified language as the fad at the time was beauty in simplicity
i don't get it. i see that there are a bunch of "ow"/"own"s that are pronounced differently (seems like mostly 2 pronunciations).. but it seems like there must be more to it than that?
While texting on a phone, I want to eliminate words that make it take longer to say what I want to say and still be easily understood. It isn't difficult to shorten many sentences that would normally start with 'I am....." followed by a verb ending in 'ing', for example, 'going' 'eating' 'walking', 'reading' and so forth. I am walking... begins instead 'Walking'.
In context that works. If I were to receive a text out of the blue from someone that only read "walking" I'd be left to wonder exactly what they mean, as a response to a text from me asking "what's up?", however, it fully qualifies as a complete answer.
To be fair, saying "Walking" has an implied "I am", "We are", "They are" in front of it. English, in some ways, is very contextual. If you and your family are sitting down for dinner and someone asks what's for dinner, you say "Pizza". You don't say "We are having pizza" because the "we are" and the idea of "having" are all implied.
@@RoySATX English is a very high context language - as you pointed out. As was pointed out in the video we're commenting on, other languages are low context because their words already include context in them, like "Voy" means "I go" or "I am going". But it's one word. However, as has been pointed out by several other commenters, it's also possible that English has singular words for things that other languages require many words to say. For example, hailing a cab (taxi) only requires "TAXI!!", where as in Japanese, it requires 3 characters/words to do the same thing.
I would argue that the indefinite article serves an absolute purpose, in clarification. Such as, from Monty Python and the Holy Grail: "You got my note!" "Well, I got A note." It doesn't work the same without that indefinite article specifying that he doubts the note's authenticity.
Zactly. There are all sorts of aspects of language that are functionally redundant in _many_ cases as they can be inferred from context and probability, but there are still times when their correct usage provides a useful distinction or where their incorrect usage could create confusion.
I think it works. In Irish your example would be "Fuair tú mo nóta" - "Fuair mé nóta" (I got a note) instead of "Fuair me do nóta" (I got your note). If I leave out the "do" (your) intentionally it is the same statement as in the English example. Namely "don't know if it's YOUR note".
I can definitely understand where you're coming from with this in that it's good for emphasis of clarity, but in the case where there was no indefinite article then the very absence of the definite article is enough to provide that clarity. In your example, "You got my note!" "Well, I got note" would be understood to mean that the received note wouldn't necessarily (though still could) be the one indicated by the definitive article
@@CahiraOMalley Ah, yes, I had the video paused for a while before watching so your comments weren't there for me when I replied. My reply was for the original post, don't worry
In Australia, we use a word to negate a negative statement and we use it all the time. For example “Rob, you didn’t take the bins out again.” “Bullshit!”
The day after tomorrow used to be “overmorrow”, just like in German this is “übermorgen”, and the day before yesterday is “eresterday” (the German equivalent is “vorgestern”). These two words had vanished in between 1500 and 1600 but still these can be met in some modern books written by nowadays bizarre authors.
Tom Scott's short video about language features that don't exist in English was neat. Of those, clusivity is easily the most useful and I wish we (all) had it.
I speak Tok Pisin and I'm learning Te Reo Māori, both of which have clusivity. In my experience, clusivity is not as useful as you'd think. Cos how often do we find ourselves saying "Do mean 'you and me' or 'you and them'? I don't understand." BUT Tok Pisin is kinda fun cos it has singular, dual, trial, and plural clusivity! It all looks super confusing until you see the English etymology - eg, 'Yumitripela' comes from You-me-three-fellows. SINGULAR: Mi = I/me Yu = you Em = she/her/he/him/it DUAL: Mitupela = The two of us (but not you) Yumitupela = The two of us (including you) Yutupela = the two of you Tupela = the two of them TRIAL: Mitripela = The three of us (but not you) Yumitripela = The three of us (including you) Yutripela = the three of you Tripela = the three of them PLURAL: Mipela = Us (4 or more, but not you) Yumi = Us (4 or more, including you) Yupela = You (4 or more) Ol = Them (4 or more) But in practice, a lot of people drop the dual and trial. Eg, if you're about to leave a place with someone, they'll often just say 'yumi go' instead of 'yumitupela go'
@@ahorrell Good on ya for learning Te Reo Māori. Personally, I do find the clusivity of Te Reo useful and bemoan its lack in English - and I'm a "pasty white boy", so it's not a "my language is the best" thing. As an autistic person, I find myself confused when someone says "we are going to..." *more often than I care to remember* if there's enough people to make a "we" that doesn't include me. I constantly find myself wondering if only they're going or they mean me as well. I don't get that with "mātou" and "tātou".
@@ahorrell I don't understand. Is "mitupela" used in situation where there are 2 people or 3 people? If the first is the case why don't use "mi" for instance? I'd understand if a person wants to make them clear that it's not you but other than that it seems somewhat useless. I think plural ones are really neat tho PS. Didn't notice the thing you typed on a bottom bottom of a comment. I see why they drop it
@@bopmaster404 "tupela" is used in the case of a grouping of 2 people. "mitupela" signifies that the 2-person group includes me. For 3 people (me, you & another) it would be "yumitripela". Tok Pisin is intriguing ... think of "tupela" as "two fellas". So "mitupela" (or me-two fellas) = "two fellas including me". This clearly excludes you - as to include you would be "mi-YU-tupela" (me-YOU-two fellas). Same concept applies to 3 people (tri-pela), and likewise Plural. Hope that helps :)
Yes! This exists in Mandarin, although usage is not entirely strict. 我们 (wo men) can mean 'we' in all contexts. 咱们 (zan men) can only mean 'we' as in the people included in the conversation. Unfortunately, I am so used to my native English that I never use 咱们, since 我们 works just fine, and as many native Chinese speakers often neglect to use 咱们, I can't see that changing anytime soon! I do believe (though I may be wrong) that 咱们 is more often used up north, whereas I live in Shanghai, which is in the east.
@@davidioanhedges you have the same thing in English when you talk about children; mother, father and parent. If you don't know the gender just say "ägare" (owner).
In English these are "master" and "mistress" but the words have so many other uncomfortable connotations that most prefer to pretend we are their parents instead.
I often see hudad and humom used in pet related social media posts... In Dutch we have 'baas' or 'baasje' (boss, little boss) as non gender option over 'eigenaar/eigenaresse' (owner).
From what non English speakers tell me who have learned English, one of the best ways to learn it is via music and movies. That’s an overwhelming stance. I’m not sure why. I tried it the other way around with both mandarin and Japanese and it didn’t work for either of them.
(I) Love your videos, and always find it amusing to compare with my native Danish. My (English) grandchildren call me “morfar” (mother’s father) but in English I can distinguish between granddaughters and grandsons. In Danish they are all børnebørn (childrens’ children). When I studied Bahasa Indonesia, I discovered that you can do very well without the verb “to be”. (“I Danish” in stead of “I am Danish”). My teacher explained that “to be or not to be” had to be rendered as “hidup atau tidak hidup “ (alive or not alive). Languages are such fun.
I love that you accidentally wrote “in stead” instead of “instead.” 😂 But “in stead” is also technically correct, but a native English speaker would use “instead” every time … unless they were at a Renaissance Faire
The thing I think English really needs is an exclusive we/our. A simple way to indicate "[belonging to] the group of which I am a member, but you/they are not."
Te reo Maori has "maua" (s/he and I) and taua (you the listener and I) and also matou (3 or more people excluding the listener) and tatau (3 or more people including the listener)
A fun fact: in “Star Trek: Enterprise” they don’t use the definite article about the ship (eg. “We need to get back to Enterprise.”). In other Star Trek series, they do use it (eg. “We need to get back to the Enterprise.”).
I've always thought that there was a general difference between American and English on that topic - Nelson served on HMS Victory versus Kirk served on the USS Enterprise. It's not always like that - just usually.
In the film Titanic, they always referred to the vessel as simply Titanic. In my dialect, I say the Titanic - as I do for all large floating vessels. The Mayflower, the Golden Hind, the Flying Dutchman, the Bounty, etc, etc. Note that the 1960s British war film was "Sink the Bismark", not "Sink Bismark"
Even that is different per language/culture. In know for example in Japanese they make a sound akin to BIPUUU, because game show "wrong" sounds are usually two tones there. But I do think it's pretty universal that this only happens among close friends, when the other person makes this sound with their mouth. Surely you wouldn't literally always do it, like at a job interview or when speaking with the king 😀
I'm scottish, my wife mocks me for saying y'all. But it is an effective contraction that flows much more easily than "you all". I think it should be formally adopted as an acceptable word.
@@michelejones711 The problem is created by using "you" for both singular and plural subjects, so "you all" was, presumably, established organically as the plural version of "you," thus allowing for the bastardization into "y'all." However, in the southern US, "y'all" has come to be used for both singular and plural, and that has produced the relatively recent (at least in my experience) adoption of "all y'all" as the plural form of "y'all." Where does it end?
Gotta love, how as a Hungarian speaker learning English, a lot of these didn’t feel weird at all, like no genders, the clunky future tense and the definite/indefinite articles. Phrasal verbs too.
@@andrewcarson5850 It sure is an outlier in many more ways, I just find it strange and funny how, the first two languages I learned have some common elements that I assumed are the norm, when in fact they are pretty rare.
In French, we should also reverse the verb and subject for questions, but we don't, it's true. It often seems too formal. A-t'il regardé cette vidéo ? Il a regardé cette vidéo ? "Il a regardé cette vidéo" et "Il a regardé cette vidéo ? " It only differs on the intonation of the end of the sentence. Not the easiest I guess, for non-native speakers.
Rob - you just TOTALLY delight me. I really enjoy every one of your videos - and often refer them to folks. I've been teaching various forms of English in Germany for MANY years. In my university classes - one of my first statements to students is: "I'll be the first one to say: English sucks." or "English is stupid." HOWEVER - over the many years I've worked here, it's the pronunciations and the verb phrases and/or idioms that truly challenge non-native speakers. Once I give them tips on how to simplify and deal with such things - they are quite delighted with this "weird" language - as it can be quite quick to grasp because it DOESN'T have so many rules (I HATE der-die-das and all the tenses, for example). And my absolute favourite German word is "doch". I firmly believe it should be incorporated into English at all levels.
Native Chinese(Mandarin) speaker here. When we started to have English classes in 2nd grade, I noticed a whole lot of parallelism between Chinese and English, and it became ever more noticeable when I started to learn even more languages like French Japanese Hebrew and Spanish. I cannot explain the parallelism but it's fun to point out.
Both have SVO word order, lack of inflections of nouns and verbs, and Mandarin is in the process of developing the indefinite article as yige (一个). Chinese can drop pronouns but in practice uses them more often than, say, Japanese. The 3rd person singular (he/she/it) is pronounced identically (tā) but in the written form are different (他，她，它). They both have a sound that is like a retroflex r, especially in the Beijing dialect (zher 这儿).
@@kiga14 I found Japanese students would often miss a/the when speaking English, which since English is stressed-timed language ruins the sentence rhythm (and hurt my ears) - I got my revenge on the students by speaking Japanese and leaving out the "wa" 😊 after every subject noun.
I'm really enjoying your videos! Thank you so much for making them so thought provoking. As an English teacher, I realised that I only really started to learn it after I started teaching it to Spanish-speakers! I can't agree that English doesn't have a single word to disagree with a statement; we use words like: "rubbish!" "balderdash!", or its definition: "nonsense!", as well as many expletives that I won't mention here. As for what the language is missing; I'll have to ruminate on that for a while. Thanks again!
One can just say to wash the dishes and to dry the dishes . Up defines the end task. To do something up = to renovate or make something look better . It adds finality. Like to grow and to grow up. A start up defines the finality of the “start”… geddit? 😅😂
About grandparents our family traditionally call the father’s side ‘ grandpa and grandma’ and mother’s side ‘nanna and granddad’. Saves a lot of confusion. Love you show.
Does that get confusing between cross cousins? The grandchildren by your male children and the grandchildren by your female children would refer to you by different terms then
We used Mormor and Morfar for mother's mother and mother's father, as well as the inverse for the father's side of the family. But that originated from Danish after one sibling's exchange year in Denmark. It is vastly more clear as to who is being spoken about.
@@Aaron-hr5bbYeah, the Danish way works very well for danes, because our family-words are so short. Just stick ‘em all together to describe the relation: Mother’s brother? - Motherbrother (morbror) Father’s mother? - Fathermother (farmor) We even have brotherson/sisterdaughter to describe how we are related to our nephews and nieces, though it is quite outdated.
Except that only works in your context. It doesn't work if you try to explain to someone else who doesn't use "nanna". Like I have a Mima (often spelled Meemaw by others). But if I say that to someone else, they have no idea how that is.
@@Dyanosis That's all words though. If you speak english to someone who don't speak english, they don't know what you are talking about either. If you are with people who know what Mima means, then Mima is really useful to distinguish who you are talking about. If they don't know Mima, then don't use Mima.
A frequent annoyance to me is how the word next has become ambiguous when referring to future days. If today is Saturday and I say "Meet me here next Friday", most people will think that will be in six days but some will think it's the Friday of the week after. The closer we get to the Friday, the same phrase spoken that day makes more people think it's not the upcoming Friday but the Friday after. There's no clear agreement amongst us as to which week we're talking about.
French has a way to clarify this ("vendredi en huit" means Friday next week) but it's barely ever used. I suspect the need for this type of clarification isn't strong enough for people to worry about keeping such expressions alive.
Yes. This does require a bit of extra attention in English to avoid ambiguity. If it's Tuesday, and one tell you to meet them "next Friday" are they referring to three days from now? Or ten days from now? It's better to use "on Friday" instead of "next Friday" as that will be understood to mean Friday of this week. I often hear myself saying "this coming Friday" (clunky, sure, but it's unambiguous) or "Friday of next week," respectively.
I see the "do" in English and "si" in french having a similar purpose. It feels to me that they both respond to a said or unsaid "no". "You don't like coffee" "I do like coffee!" / "Si, j'aime le café!"
English used to have a yea/nay/yes/no system, where the former two were used literally and the latter two only as a response to negative sentences (yes like French si).
We do, sorta have a word for "day after tomorrow", "overmorrow". At least, I've heard it used and I have used it. Mostly it confuses people, but it's a word for "day after tomorrow". "Eresterday" or "Ereyesterday" is one I've heard used, and have used for "day before yesterday." Again, it mostly just confuses people. Note: Another archaic word, "yestereve", rather than "last evening" Near as I can tell, they are basically obsolete words that are no longer used. But I like them.
@@minuteman4199 I'm an American, but mostly in older movies and TV shows. I remember a old fellow from my childhood, back in the 80s, lol, using ereyesterday and yestereve. Overmorrow I probably picked up years ago from reading various things. (I used to pick up dictionaries and encyclopedias, just to read them.) I'm certain I've seen them in the dictionary of archaic words that some of the "Classics" novels you can get cheap have in them.
It is also a direct translation to the word we Scandinavians use for this exact thing - övermorgon is how we write it in Swedish. It's just the words we use for "over" and "morning" combined into one word. To get to our word for two days ago you could pretty much get there by translating "ereyesterday" as well, as long as you know that "ere" means before. We say "förrgår" for this, which either combines "förra" which means last or "före" which means "before" with "igår" which is yesterday. Or it could be that we use the prefix "för-", our equivalent to English "fore-" as in forefather. I actually don't know which it is, and it doesn't really matter since either of them make sense.
Thank you, @jamesmccrea4871, I came here to post the same thing. I have a taste for older literature, and these words pop up from time to time in the books I read. They are good words that deserve a return to daily usage.
I was searching RUclips for English history videos, and this channel popped up. So I clicked on it. This is now one of my top three favorite RUclips channels. Thanks for not only being educational, but also amusing.
You should try Norwegian where we do look stuff up, we beat it up, «slå opp», and that’s the same expression for breaking up with someone. And «slå seg ned» (Beat oneself down) means to settle or sit down, while «slå noen ned» (beat someone down) is to beat someone up (with the implication of them falling from the beating).
Omg that sounds made up! (No, i'm joking i just wanted to use one little phrasal verb 😂) That sounds also annoying to learn, but very interesting at the same time haha
Here are my entries for potential collective nouns for "aunts and uncles": 1. Eldrins - Combines "elders," indicating seniority or older generation, with a suffix "-ins," which adds the familiar touch. 2. Eldsiblings 3. Kinparents - family (or made family) that are in a parental role without directly being parents. 4. Elderkin 5. Eldrets - eld + rets, a creative contraction of relatives of how it may have shortened over time.
I like Elderkin as the collective noun. Furthermore in colloquial application it would likely be contracted as in this example: "Ah yes, let Eldkin Peter have that mug, he is Mum's Uncle after all".
my only weigh in would be to replace the eld with gran or grand so it fits in with general usage of grandparents that we already use. ive also heard "niblings" for collective nieces and nephews
For me it's your weird vowels and diphtongs. Your written vowels often have a different sound than other language's written vowels. For example, when you say the letter E, you make the sound that other languages typically would express with the letter I. And you pronounce other vowels as diphtongs, which other languages would use two vowels to express, if they do it at all. (In my language we don't use diphtongs, except for a few loan words and in some specific dialects.) Of course, this works well for English speakers speaking English, but it becomes a bit of a problem when native English speakers try to pronounce other languages. It isn't unusual at all for English speakers to see an A in a foreign word, for example, and automatically pronounce it as "ey" even though it makes it really weird, since it's a typical English pronunciation. Also, the vovel E at the end of a foreign word seems to create some sort of overload or something. :D I have heard three different pronunciations of it. The Japanese beverage "sake" often gets, to my ears, pronounced as "saki". And then we have the word "anime", which you pronounce as "animay". And I recently watched some reaction videos of the German show "Dark", where there's a character named "Helge". To my ears it sounded like many of the reactors pronounced this name as "Helga", which is the feminine form of "Helge". It's weird since all of these words have the same sound at the end in their original languages. I'm not sure how to transcribe it, but "eh" I guess would be the closest.
To be honest, "sake" is used for any alcoholic drink in general in Japanese. So it's weird that everybody else uses it for a single specific Japanese drink.
@@ajs41Because English doesn't have any words ending in that sound. While native Italian speakers have a tendency to add a final -e to their pronunciation of English words that end in a consonant, because in Italian those consonants would be followed by an -e.
Thank-you for this video. On the subject of articles, I think they do serve a purpose: they prepare your mind for what is coming. Yes, you can figure out what a non-native is saying, after they finish and you think about it. This preparation occurs in military marching commands also. "Left, face!", or "To the left, march!" both contain what are called a 'preparatory command' and a 'command of execution'. Since synchronized marching is not natural, the first command (the preparatory command) informs your mind of what direction (in this case) you need to be prepared to go; and the command of execution tells you when (now!) to do it. The particles synchronize the listener's brain with that of the person speaking in preparation for what will be referred to. This might not be necessary if the word order in English wasn't sometimes (but not always) backwards.
English lacks a good translation for the Dutch "gezellig". Cozy, which is what Google Translate tells me is the correct translation, doesn't cut it all. "Cozy" is drinking a hot chocolate while reading a book under a blanket, cuddling your cat while it's raining outside. "Gezellig" is hanging out with your mates. Going to the shops wouldn't be more "cozy" if my little brother decided to come along, it would be more "gezellig".
Many words in English when spoken suggests an emotion, or a feeling, and sometimes that alone is enough to hint what the word means. I don't know if it's the same for other languages but "gezellig" pronounced in my American/Texan accent doesn't suggest anything even remotely close to being cozy. Pardon my ignorance, but does it when said correctly?
Excellent Rob, thank you. I am sorry if you have already done this but I have a weird fascination with the word "up". Why do we use it it in so many and often contradictory ways? We get up, wake up, start up, open up, close up, break up, shut up, rev up, pick up, mess up, wind up, and on and on.... Maybe a short video explaining would clear it erm up?
That's because English is quick to adopt any such needed words; e.g. "schadenfreude" from recent German. Our history as a massive German/ French creole shows that this goes back centuries.
English is poor in so mAaaaany concepts ; homesickness ( NOSTALGIA for a person, nothing to do with HOME ) , kidnapping ( RAPIMENTO of a dog, nothing to do with KID ) , blackmailing ( RICATTO from a son to his mother ) nothing to do with MAIL etc. 😢😢 What annoys me most is BUTTERFLY 🦋🦋🦋 what the damn has BUTTER to do with this wonderful insect ??? 😅😊😅😊😊
@@mariapiazza-od8ibI can't attest for any English other than what I speak on the US east coast, but I don't use the words you describe in that way. Homesickness really is about one's home. It might be a physical house, but could also be about a hometown. If my parents moved away from my childhood home into an apartment, I'd never say I was homesick unless I meant the town I grew up in or my childhood home. Likewise, if I live alone and have been traveling for a month, I would say homesick to mean I miss my apartment, despite there being no one there. Kidnapping is most often used to describe the taking (napping?) of a child. Yes, it can be used for an adult, too, but it's usually a kid. I'd never use it for a dog. I'd probably just say someone stole the dog. Maybe I'd playfully say dognapped. Blackmail, to my knowledge, used to be done by mail, but yes, nowadays means any form of extortion. It means threatening someone with some action, often revealing a secret, if the victim doesn't pay money to the blackmailer. It doesn't really have to do with sons and mothers. Usually it's between non-family, and often enemies or work colleagues/adversaries. You got me with butterfly!
@@mariapiazza-od8ibI'm not really sure what you are saying in the first part. Are you trying to say the words are more restricted in their definitions than the Italian words you mention or that the etymology of them is strange. Blackmail for example comes from "mal" an old word for payment or rent. As to butterfly I quite like that each European language seems to have their own idiosyncratic word for butterflies: vlinder, schmetterling, mariposa, farfalla, papillon, sommerfugl, borboleta, leptir, motyl, fjäril. No two languages seem to have gone for the same origin
5:49 While english may be the only language to use the meaningless "do", danish uses the word "can" in the exact same meaningless way. "I do not like matcha" = "Jeg kan ikke lide matcha (da) / I can not like matcha (en)" "Do you like coffee?" = "Kan du lide kaffe? (da) / Can you like coffee? (en)" "Do you see how special it is?" = "Kan du se hvor specielt det er? (da) / Can you see how special it is? (en)"
Interesting. Points to a general desire in Germanic languages for a filler word. My personal assumption would be to simplify grammar by avoiding inflection for most verbs. And despite Rob's claims, German very much does have meaningless "do" ("tun") as well. It is simply considered "uneducated speech", but it has been resilient despite teachers railing against it for centuries and decades of mass media language standardization. Especially in the north, so there might be a Hanseatic aspect to its origin.
This confuses me as a Norwegian. Lide means suffering in Norwegian. I do not like matcha (En) Jeg kan ikke lide matcha (Da) Jeg liker ikke matcha" (No) The Danske way sounds like "I can't suffer matcha." Do you like coffee?" (En) Kan du lide kaffe? (Da) Liker du kaffe (No) The Dansk sounds like "Can you suffer coffee?"
We have a meaningless do in German as well. It's just that it's considered either dialect or childlike speaking and not considered proper Standard German. At least where I live a meaningless do is used very regularly in the local dialect.
I also find it weird the richness of vocabulary in English. Its extremely vast. Just pick up a Dickens or Shakespeare. I'm fluent in Polish and I find it interesting in how many synonyms exist in English relative to other languages. Rob, any comments (or a video) on this topic ?
Congrats!! As a person studying English as a foreign language for many years (trying to improve more and more) I find your channel very useful and interesting 👏🏻👏🏻
20:35 "We don't have a word to negate a negative statement." Well, it may be viewed as a bit rude, but some Americans just say *"wrong"* as a challenge, like Doch or Si.
@@stephanzielinski7922 True, however those would be perceived as being even more rude. Except for "Bologna", that's probably the nicest way of directly contradicting someone.
My comment to this was that I sometimes use *"not true"* as such a challenge, which is a bit less harsh than "wrong", but (as an American) I've probably said that as well. Granted, "not true" is two words but as I saw in another comment, _"untrue"_ also fits here.
I think a weirdness of the English language is the number of different things that are done through adding an 's' to a word (when you include tenses, contractions, possessiveness etc.) It must be very confusing for people learning English. Also, just the sheer quantity of sibilant sounds. To others, especially the French I believe, we just sound like a bunch of hissing geese. Maybe you could do an episode on that.
I had thought the expression "Do tell" was a request for someone to tell more of the shocking or scandalous or interesting information but a number of sources indicate that it simply an expression of surprise and not necessarily a request for more information.
Brilliant as always. Rob. You put so much into your videos in high production values, fun images, videos within your video, and so much research behind every episode. THANK YOU! 🙏
I so appreciate your videos! I'm teaching English in SEAsia. My students are smart but struggle so much with our very different - and sometimes weird- language. Particularly, in pronunciation, the variety of vowel sounds, the mismatch of spoken with written forms and many particular consonants- sh/s, v/f, that/three. At least they don't have to struggle with tones or gendered nouns and other declensions!
10. Clusivity. I wish we had a separate system for specifying whether “we” was including speaker and listener, speaker and a group but not listener, or all three
To my way of thinking, if context does not make it obvious, then it is the context that is the issue, not the speech. If you're using pronouns, you must first define them somehow, even if it isn't with speech. You can make gestures, etc.
Just yesterday I used the word “weird” and I immediately thought of this channel and wondered about the history/etymology of the word “weird” and if it has ever been covered here.
proto-indo-european *wert, meaning turn/twist, made its way to proto-germanic as “wurdiz” and then old english "wyrd" with the meaning of fate/destiny or an event thereof (out of the sense of a “turn/twist” of fate), later yielding the modern english “weird”
6:08 - Mind you, the reason why the Celtic languages do something vaguely like this is because we have question particles! "Useless do" might've entered English as a grammatical calque of this, so in a way, English does have a question particle. For those interested in how it looks, if I wanted to say "You understand", I'd say "tuigeann tú" (verb first), whereas if I were asking "do you understand?", I'd say "an dtuigeann tu?"
I personally think it even comes specifically from Welsh (Old Welsh/Brythonic), because of the sound and obvious proximity, Welsh first person pronoun "I do" / "'dw i" (although it's a shortened form of "rydw i") the dw sounds exactly like the English "do".
@@LeReubzRic Indo-European pronouns are pretty conservative, which is one of the ways that shows it's a family (other language families are similar with their pronouns). And English does have its cognate for the "tu" in other languages - it's "thou" (which would have been pronounced more like "thu" before the Great Vowel Shift), which was our original 2nd person singular until it was dropped for the more formal "you" in the 1600s.
@@johnfisk811 They didn't have to borrow but they certainly influenced the syntax and grammatical structure of the prestige language of the time(Old English).
Both I and my wife are native speakers of Dravidian languages. I started speaking English at two years of age, whereas she started around eight. She still has trouble with English prepositions, and I don't.
For a Finnish native, learning English since age of 10 officially, but obviously a lot before it (got my first computer as 6 year old), the whole concept of a language having or needing to use prepositions all the time is disturbing.
The issue isn't that we don't have a word for this. Its just that the common ones aren't polite. But from "poppycock" to "b*llsh&t", we have lots of words that have the ability to do this function.
What we need is a contradictory yes, like jo in Swedish, doch in German or si in French. Most of the time we use these words we're far from being aggressive, we're just contradicting in the affirmative.
I have coined a new English word! This was achieved while solving a game of "Target" where many words have to be made from 9 letters given. My word fills all the requirements of a 'good word' i.e. - It will be instantly understood by a British person - It will confuse the Americans - It will annoy the French - It solves an instance of using one word for three very different meanings (possibly more) You know how we use 'Liquidate' to mean 'Make into a Liquid' and also 'Turn Assets into Cash' or even 'Eliminate a rival' Ladies and Gentlemen I give you ... QUIDILATE "I'm so skint I had to quidilate my Biggles book collection"
5 месяцев назад+12
"Liquidate" doesn't mean "make[sic] into a liquid". You mean "liquefy" (which, fittingly for this video, isn't spelled "liquify")
I hate it. You didn't miss that part at least. It looks just like Latin but in a " I'm so quirky, look at me " kind of way, the exact same a ton of english already sounds like.
I taught an English class in Argentina many years ago and was asked the meaning of “do” at the beginning of a question. I spent the next five minutes in silent, torturous contemplation, throughout, completely stumped. I was absolutely shocked to realize that, as far as I could tell, it had no meaning at all, and just as shocked that I had never realized it. I was able to more or less explain when it is used, but then had the equally difficult job of trying to answer what I meant by saying “it has no meaning, but it kinda plays a role”. This concept was so foreign to native Spanish speakers that I suspect none of them believed a word that I said. 😂
Another detail about articles. When using "the", we use the long sound before a word starting with a vowel, and the short sound before a word starting with a consonant. We use "an" before a word starting with a vowel. But when we are emphasizing something, we use the long sound on the article, both "the" and "a".
'We use "an" before a word starting with a vowel' Before a vowel sound not before a word beginning with a vowel letter. An honour, a house, an umbrella a university etc.
@@zegrze Excellent point. The one that always nudges me is historic. "an historic occasion". I often say, "When I hear 'an historic', I need someone to drive me to an hospital in an hurry.
@@Threezi04 Hence why I'm fine with both "a herb" and "an herb", even if the silent H one looks and sounds wrong to me, as I don't think I've ever heard anybody jumble together the two. But I could count the number of times I've heard somebody say "historic(al)" with a silent H in their native dialect on one hand. Instead my ears get tortured on a semi-regular basis by ostensibly educated US hosts (late night, news, sports, RUclips, anything) declaring something "an historic moment" with a distinctly pronounced H.
Meaningless Do made learning other languages in school very hard. I was always asking what's the word for Do in situations where the foreign language structure was different.
I find that I'm always searching for a substitute for "get/got" when using Spanish. I realize now how often English relies on that verb and in different contexts. In Spanish, there's no one verb to take its place.
Its surprising how many grammar features Bulgarian/Macedonian shares with English. We also have sort of a meaningless "DO" - its "DA" and Its not the same DA as YES it has different function. The verb infinitive is formed with it. So if you listen to people speaking those languages you will hear a lot of DA's but they don't mean YES. Example: Da Vidya, Da sedna : to see, to sit. The articles are post positioned but there are one for each gender and in some dialects there are 3 types of articles for close, medium close and distant objects.And also the structure of the tenses also uses operators as in English. Fo example the future tense is formed with shte, which is another verb for "want"...
There was a commercial many years ago in which a well known supermodel stated, "That is something I do do." The product and specific speaker have long since escaped my memory, but the incongruous image of a beautiful woman saying do do on tv has stuck in my memory.
One of the most hilarious things I've ever seen just happened. A mid-roll ad interrupted the embedded ad. 🤣 But also and as well, great video, mightily entertaining! 12:41 my first thought was "What is similar to chocolate?"
See how many meanings you can get by re-punctuating / capitalising this. "What is this thing called love" (For non-native speakers, remember 'Love' can be a familiar honorific for a partner or in some dialects, any female.) Reply with your version please
I've noticed that... Sometimes I'll be watching a documentary from somewhere else in the world where they're speaking some foreign language, and I'll hear an OK.
i stand by the concept that ok originated from the sound of "k" ancient Phoenician alphabet. "ok" caught on because it was already used in english to mock the normans by saying "oc" instead of "ooi"
Which one? The American, "R," sound is different from the English, and in fact, no other language does it. We Americans do a weird thing in which we curl the edges of the tongue up against the teeth when pronouncing, "R." It confounds ESL students and I think it's a major reason Americans have so much trouble rolling, "R," sounds when speaking other languages. It's hard to roll when you can't overcome the usual habit of curling up the edges.
@jlangevin65 According to Wikipedia, the 'postalvelar' R sound is the standard one that's used in American, Australian and British English. This sound is only present in 4 other languages. However, the sound is often labialized which means that it's produced with rounded lips. This sound [ɹ̠ʷ] is only present in English dialects. So yes, you are correct that that sound is only in English if that's what you're referring to.
20:20 "Separate words for our mother's/father's grandparents." I would still go with "maternal" & "paternal" grandparents. I like these words because rather than have two unique words for this one specific idea (of grandparents), maternal and paternal are more versatile, describing anything to do specifically about one's mother's or father's side.
I think the idea is more of a separate word for Grandparent depending on the side of the family. Paternal and Maternal is just a descriptor, not a separate word that I think Rob is getting at
"My maternal grandmother" or "grandmother on my mother's side" both sound clunky to me. In Swedish, for example, we just say "mormor" (lit means mother's mother). Also helps with more complex family lineage, like saying "my maternal grandfather's paternal uncle" simply is "morfars farbror".
Hello Rob, I am from Belgium, the Northern part, where we speak Flemish. That is like Dutch, but with a different pronunciation, also some other words and other expressions. There are some words that I think do not have a direct English translation; those are: "toch", "nog", "trouwens". We use these words often. Google Translate just gives lots of definitions for each of these words, depending on the sentence in which they are used.
I would insist that phrasal verbs are much harder to grasp in Dutch (and German) because the preposition and the verb don't always come in the same order like in English. Like for instance the example you used of opgeven in the present tense resembles the English phrasing, "Ik geef op", and the preposition is further separated like in English with a single object like in "I give something up", "Ik geef iets op", but unlike English the preposition is pushed to the end when there's more words, for example "Ik geef het gisteren op", literally "I gave it yesterday up". But _then_ as a participle it's in the same order as an infinitive, but with the "ge" prefix thing inserted between it, so "I have given it up" is "Ik heb het opgegeven". So not only does one have to learn the implied meanings of two parts that don't necessarily make sense literally, one also has to keep track of the preposition as it wanders around the phrase. Not only that, but this only actually applies to _some_ but not _all_ verbs. Sometimes they stay attached no matter what. And sometimes there are two verbs with the exact same components but are different depending on whether they're separable, like "Het komt voor" (It happens) vs "Het voorkomt" (It prevents)
What are the chances you could put these videos out hourly? Your is the single channel I wait and watch for all the time! I love this channel. Seriously - hourly...challenge yourself. I believe in you.
I think that on another video Rob said that he has a "Day Job" somewhere else, so he probably needs to sleep and eat. Just read a page or two from an English language dictionary each day, and you will be refreshed until next week's video. 🙂
Fascinating!!! Thanks Rob…. I’ve been learning Spanish and I’ve noticed some of the differences you further illuminate…. Language is fascinating and you bring this out so well…. You’re interesting and fun (:
"Do not turn off your computer" You can turn off a motorway so why isn't it - Do not turn your computer off. ? The local supermarket sign says: "Please ask if you need help" So I did. I asked an assistant: "Excuse me - Do I need help?"
😁 That's asking WHETHER you need help. But it's their fault for omitting a comma: "please ask, if you need help". Or if it was in certain American locales, perhaps you should have "aksed"?
Since the turning in that sense is figurative and references turning a knob or switch into an "off" position, I'd say that keeping the "off" next to "turn" instead of "computer" is reasonable. You are not turning the computer anywhere, you are doing to the computer the same thing you would do to another device by turning a smaller component on it (one not literally present on your computer).
Having a little experience with this, I'd guess the choice to use "Do not turn off your computer" was for the benefit of non-native speakers, for whom the 'shifting'[1] of the particle in "Do not turn your computer off" may be unfamiliar or less intuitive. I'd have used the more common "Don't" as well. [1]: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_phrasal_verbs#Shifting
Kul att du lär dig svenska Rob! Det svåraste måste vara att veta när man ska använda ”en” och ”ett”. Många gör fel på det. Och att höra skillnaden på ”anden”, the bird, och ”anden”, the spirit, till exempel, men kämpa på och lycka till!
På norsk har man "ei" i tillegg til "en" og "et", men "ei" har forsvunnet fra store deler av landet, og i bokmål, og blir erstattet an "en". På vestlandet og i nynorsk bruker vi "ei" enda, til hunkjønnsord som ei jente eller ei dør. På bokmål kan man skrive en jente, en dør, en bok osv, men intetkjønn, et hus f.eks. gjelder som på svensk.
What's missing from English? Let me know below. And start speaking a new languages in 3 weeks with Babbel 🎉. Get up to 60% OFF your subscription ➡ Here: go.babbel.com/t?bsc=usa-influ-promo&btp=default&RUclips&Influencer..May-2024..USA-TATAM..promo-yt-robwords-may-2024
First! 🎉 Also, there should be a letter for "sh" "ch" and "kh". Stuff like that! Like, Turkish has the letter “Şş” which makes the “Sh” sound. Bye! 😊
One weird thing that English does not have is tone--the use of pitch to distinguish meaning. In many Asian languages, changing the pitch you use on a certain phoneme changes the meaning of the word. So, "ma" in standard Mandarin has 5 distinct tones, and using any in place of the other will change the meaning of the word significantly. One can be a question particle, one can mean horse, while another can be part of the word for mother.
quite a lot... the "Đ" sound is considered quite usual along with "r". The word order isjust makes sense, rets of the more developed languages dont HAVE TO, since we can overcomplicate with pre--and suffixes.(saying this as a Hungarian)
also in Hungarian w euse plenty of thos fixes (up, dodown, etc, and we literally say the same way to give up (felad , whereas fel= up ; give(s) = ad )
Rob likes him a proper brew. 👍
English is weird. It can be understood through tough thorough thought though.
Nicely done! I may plagiarize you very soon.
That's a thoroughgoing thought thoroughly thought throughout; through and through!
It's good to see you have thought it through.
The English world is connected and divided by one language.
are you trying to give me a stroke?!
A conversation with my Italian friend...
"How do you say your alarm wakes you up in the morning?"
"My alarm goes off.."
"NO! Your alarm goes ON!"
Gave me pause for thought.
Well if it's going off in the morning, then logically you should turn it on to stop it?
@@danytalksmusic Technically you turn it on when you set the timer (or activate the smoke detector), and the alarm is the last thing it does before it gets turned off.
@danytalksmusic If the alarm is on then it's making a sound, if it is off then it's doing nothing.
Perhaps the phrase "goes off" is like a rocket "goes/going off" its launchpad. Something IS happening within the mechanism of the alarm clock to keep it from ringing (launching) UNTIL its proper set time. The alarm sounds when the silencing mechanism "goes off".
@@danytalksmusic Well, you'd be "turning on" the stop mechanism to cease the audible alarm sound.
As a Swede, I'm so jealous of your access to single words to describe certain bodily movements like "shrug", "squat", "frown", "nudge" and "poke". In Swedish, you often have to describe it with a whole sentence, like "sitting down in a crouched position" or "push someone gently with your elbow". A terrible waste of time for us..
Feel free to borrow the English words 😊
@@NikiHolmes Yes we already borrowed our fair share of Scandinavian ones 😂
But we can say "closing your eyes" and "opening your mouth" with just one word . And moving away from bodily movements, what about bädda=making the bed, diska=doing the dishes, cykla=ridning a bike?
@@katam6471 Well, we do have cycling, but not usually used in the same context. And the Brits have washing up (unless they've americanized that one, too). As for the first one, young men just don't bother, either with the words or the thing.
Swedish is like most European languages then.
As a native Spanish speaker I can tell you that learning all the vowels sounds in English can be a nightmare for us. I think I intuitively picked them up over the years, but nobody explains it like you do in the beginning of this video. Thanks for that.
Yeah, learning Spanish made me realize how complicated and inconsistent some aspects of English are. Even when you make sentences that seem correct, you're often not making word choices that a native speaker would use.
Spanish grammar is also a lot more complex than English @@bryede
Just know that, as native English speakers, we understand how this could be difficult. We admit that it makes absolutely no sense. For instance, I think there are four ways the "oo" sound is made in various English words (like "cook", "blood", "floor", "boot"). Even if you mispronounce those, our ears will understand the context you are attempting to say the word, and we will understand. Don't be afraid to mess up!
@@HereForTheBeer1987 Well, if you mispronounce "cook" like the other three would be pronounced, you get, in order, the following meanings: "[something vulgar]", "cork", and "kook", all which have wildly different meanings than "to prepare food with heat." I think I would do a double-take if I heard someone refer to a person used for sexual denial fetishes OR a wine stopper OR a crazy person used to mean that my food is being prepared.
Edit: My linguistic perspective is Eastern U.S., both South-Atlantic and Mid-Atlantic (with some Colorado mixed in), so your mispronunciation results may vary. 😉
@bryede You are absolutely correct. I am a native English speaker. I learned Spanish many years ago. English is a nightmare, especially it's vowels. Spelling does not match pronunciation, mostly due to vowel shifts that occurred over a period of several centuries in England.
I will tell you however that Spanish, while very logical and phonetic, loses it with all the dipthongs in verb changes. Unlike Portuguese or Italian, the verbs are much messier in Spanish.
A friend of mine started using "grandboss" for boss's boss and I love it.
That's excellent
I would probably go with Überboss (overboss).
The Big Boss!
@CheeseWyrm But Big Boss is the CEO, the person at the point of the org chart.
Well, at least in my dialect it is.
I seem to recall that Dr. Charles Mayo and his wife Alice were called GrandChuck and GrandAlice by their grandchildren - lovely.
When only a contraction sounds "right" but the full words do not. Don't you dare! v. Do not you dare!
Interestingly, to my ear the first is a command and the second a question.
well, I think it would be rearranged... You do not dare!
The cambridge grammar of the english language argues that ·n't functions as a verbal suffix, that verbs negated this way are inflected for the negative (synthetic negation) and as such are not entirely equivalent to the "non-contracted" construction (analytic negation). They do acknowledge that ·n't was a contraction, that its etymology was of a reduced pronunciation of "not", but they argue that that's no longer the case.
If you have access to the book, it's chapter 3, section 1.9
'dare not' is better but no one would take you seriously
@@sidarthur8706 Do not dare!
A: You didn't take the bins out again.
B: Rubbish!
Yes, the rubbish bins. You didn't take them out.
Preposterous!
B: Rubbish?
Wrong!
I like "nuh" for these situations ^^
As a Frenchman (so not really objective on this one) I really loved that video. I even learnt some things about my "home words" which happens quite often with your videos Rob. There's obviously so much work behind all this !! Kudos for your accent !!
20:26 We should bring back overmorrow and ereyesterday into common usage, they could be pretty useful (although maybe change "ereyesterday" to sound better since it doesn't sound as nice as "overmorrow" to me).
Overmorrow sounds fantastic 😆 I think I'm gonna start using is for real. It's just... it's just too good!
I’m here to stick up for ereyesterday-it sounds poetic to me, and I think that, ere long, it could make a comeback! 😊
I'm already using "overmorrow" and explaining to people what it is when they are confused. But "ereyesterday" indeed sounds too odd, I wish there would be some better alternative.
I use these, sometimes. Confuses the hell out of people. In fact, they were my choice to post as needed words. I tend to pronounce ereyesterday as just eresterday, I guess it seems more like a single word, rather than two words, ere and yesterday, mashed together.
I was going to bring up overmorrow - a nice sounding word. We could have yesterdayeve instead of ereyesterday?
The part about phrasal verbs reminds me of a joke that Victor Borge used to tell about how, in English, it is odd that you have to cut down a tree before you can cut it up.
Non native speakers of a language are always aware of its idiosyncrasies.
In hungarian we cut the tree out then cut it up.
I have always giggled at this sort of phrase ‘The burnt house was razed to the ground’ what would you call it? Oxymoronic phrase?
@@mariannewhyte8310?
That is interesting
Indefinite article in Dutch created the word 'Decoy'. It came from 'Eendekooi', duck cage (Eend = Duck), which was used to catch wild ducks by putting tame ducks in a cage. Wild ducks would flock with the tame ones making it easier to catch them. Anyway, it was wrongly assumed the 'Een' at the beginning was the indefinite article, thus 'Een dekooi' which turned into 'a decoy'.
Same kind of change as "an ewt" becoming "a newt" in English (so I've been told)
@@SteveLFBO Yep. Also "a nadder" to "an adder", "a napron" to "an apron", "accord" to "a chord", and "alone (all one)" to "a lone" among several others.
That's a nice random fact that I'm going to remember 😅
@@twincast2005 And the funny thing about the nadder-to-adder thing, is that that one happened both in Dutch and English.
That is a bit doubted, you had Eendekooi (modern spelling "eendenkooi"), but you had "de kooi" (the cage) too as a possible source of confusion, it may be that both misunderstandings played a role.
When I started learning English, the weirdest and the most frustrating thing for me was how different the way words written compared to how pronounced
My favorite is rendezvous. Not only is its spelling and pronunciation wild, it's one of the few words with a silent "z".
@@nyandayo24 Rendevouz is French
I have the same problem with French
@@nyandayo24 rendezvous is French, not English.
@@hankjeffries2596 A large amount of English is basically just borrowed/derived words, but that doesn't mean that those words aren't English. All it means is that those words didn't originate in English
Loved the "medieval RUclips" screen 😂 The little details like "brethren", "subscribeth", the video with the boar. That's quality: taking time to produce a result, even if that product is there for a few seconds.
Yeah I had to go back and pause it to see all the little details. Top work!
@@respectedgentleman4322 I also had to and it's how one realizes, values, and appreciates the effort that goes into quality work.
10:24 if anyone's looking for it
That's a theme of this video: ruclips.net/video/mUF4afxMpQk/видео.html
That was my favorite part. Like an Easter egg.
3:16 RIP, Rob. Eaten by his Kitten. Another tragic instance in which a comma could've saved a life.
Great catch! I missed that and went back to look. I sincerely hope the feline's request will not be met!
I dedicate this comment to my parents, Ayn Rand and God.
Once I have came across a restaurant in Seoul, advertising it's services - "BREAKFAST, COFFEE JUICE". My Slavic-parsing mind (i.e. one used to proper grammar, as in "Romanes eunt domus", but I digress here) never noticed it, but my pal, a native English speaker, started to laugh the moment he saw it.
And this, my children, is what happens to languages when they don't upkeep their grammar and let it disappear - a single coma becomes a life or death difference... ;-)
@@MrKotBonifacy Yes, a coma is a serious medical situation.
@@MrKotBonifacy The famous: "Let's eat Grandma.", as opposed to: "Let's eat, Grandma."
“Rob, you didn’t take the bins out again.”
“False.”
I like to use “correct” and “incorrect” in these situations.
That is appropriating a nother word for the situation, he was referring to a dedicated word.
Bullocks!
"Lies!"
Often a sound is used but not a word. Like "bah" or a negative grunt-like sound, something that would be classified as a scoff.
Fully acknowledging its weirdness and difficulty to learn, I quite like the chaotic nature of it. There’s beauty in the way English bears all of these clues and remnants of its convoluted journey through time and geography. It’s uniquely primed to accept new words all the time, too.
I agree.
Most of the difficulty with English in relation to grammar is because of the fact that English took in Latin, and French without changing the spellings of words.
You can adopt words, but you have to change the spelling. That is where English failed. German more often than not changed the spellings of the words to conform to their language or kept the spelling and changed the pronunciation.
For example, the word "depot" should be spelled "depo" the word 'jalapeno" should either be spelled "halepenyo" or pronounced like it is written. The same is true of the word "marijuana" it should be spelled "marehuana." Etc, etc....
In German they use the word "balloons" which comes from French. In French you do not pronounce the "ns" in German you do. The French word for office "bureau" is used in German but it is written as "Büro" In English the word is also used but they kept the French spelling.......
We, who managed to learn english as a second language, thank you from the bottom of our hearts, Rob! You just validated a lot of struggles people had to come to terms with.
But, you ignore the cardinal rule of "never end a sentence with a preposition"
@@hankjeffries2596 Because it just is not a "cardinal rule" in English as it is actually spoken or written. It is a piece of nonsense invented by some pedantic grammarian trying to the rules of Latin onto English. We have may phrasal verbs as Rob points out. Regard the so-called "preposition" in these cases are being like the German separable and inseparable verbs. " To take on" is a different verb from "To take over " , or "to take down " or "To take off" or "to take up" and so on and ought each be treated a distinct verbs where the prepositional part may be separated from the main part but is not to be seen as a totally independent preposition but as part of the verb . Though good style may play a part too. Why do I prefer to end this note here rather than to end it up? Because the "up" here is totally superfluous.
The missing word I've been asked about several times by learners of English is the question word asking for an ordinal number.
"Whichth wierdness was the pronouns?" - "The seventh."
"Whichth president was Obama?" - "The forty-fourth."
Thanks for the video!
I've had exactly that problem before and it's stumped me as I searched my brain for a method to explain exactly what I'm trying to ask. And I'm a native speaker. "In a chronological list of presidents, where does Obama fall?" seems such a mouthfull. We really need a "whichth" type word.
And thus we have another candidate for a crazy spelling...
It doesn't sound like it would be technically correct, but I usually ask this as "which/what number". As in "What number in the list was the pronouns?" or "Which number president was Obama?"
which works fine in both
Ironically we have it available for monarchs but as soon as you try to put it into a sentence you find it's redundant:
Which reginal number did Henry the Eighth have?
The episode should be shown at the beginning of every B1 ESL course - the best one so far. Thanks Rob!
It should also be showed to every bigoted person who throws a fit when they see a person in the US speaking a language other than English in public. I grew up speaking English and I'm impressed anyone can learn it as a 2nd or 3rd language because of all the weird quirks. I still have trouble some days myself!
@@corvidsRcool The worst part of english is pronunciation tbh. I mean it's satisfying if you're able to read/speak something in your amalgamation of english accents (it's my case; I target mostly northern american; I know there's more to it but idk) but it's also frustrating if you stumble upon something you didn't really say in your entire life or its grammatical structure makes it tongue twister for you
i mean "give up" kinda makes sense, like you're giving something abstract (hence losing it) to something higher or more powerful than yourself (almost "fate" in a way?)
i might just be justifying my intuition unfoundedly
When you talked about the present tense, I thought you were going to mention (you almost did but didn't quite), the fact that we don't use the "present tense" as our present tense: "What are you doing?" "I am reading a book." We never ever say: "I read a book." The so-called "present progressive" has completely supplanted the present tense in our language.
I suppose you use it to show habit, 'On my way to work, I read a book', 'On Mondays, I visit my parents'. Also to state facts: 'The moon is Earth's satellite'.
That.. that is the present tense though.... Or else what tense would you class "I am reading" as?
Some of these conventions are needed to distinguish between heteronyms (words spelled the same but pronounced differently). For past tense, we write “I read a book.” We understand the pronunciation /rɛd/. For the present tense, we must write “I am reading a book.” The root there is pronounced /riːd/. Vocally there wouldn’t be a problem. It’s in the weird English spellings and phonics. There’s no such difficulty writing the past tense “led” and the present tense “lead”.
Irish has two present tenses for the verb "to be" (immediate & continuous) and so two present progressives.
This has shaped how we speak English. So we would say in English:
I read books
I am reading books (now)
I do be reading books (generally)
It's more subtle than that Eric. We have different present tenses for different situations. What you call the present tense, 'I read', is for habitual actions, usually qualified with an expression such as 'on Mondays' or 'if I'm sad'. 'I am reading' is the present tense for just saying what I am doing right now. 'I do read' is a now old fashioned and dialect present form which is mainly used for emphasis now, especially when contradicting a negative.
I love all your videos but I find this particularly meaningful since every non-English speaking friend has complained about English's "weirdness." This spells that out. Thanks!
Or do what we Irish do....never give a yes/no answer.. agree/disagree with the question with an "I didn't", or "I did", or if its obvious the action wasn't carried out just say say "I know"
“I before E, except after C, and in weird words like…WEIRD!” An aside: English speakers in Yorkshire are trying to eliminate definite articles: eg. “We went t’ut theater” where the the has been reduced to a single letter t (I guess it’s still there in the contraction!)
Native Afrikaans speaker here. I can attest to the fact that the "th" is *extremely* difficult to learn when learning English.
This normally gets substituted by the "f" sound, but "At school I thought a lot" has somewhat of a different meaning than:
"At school I fought a lot"
12:07 - Just went past that bit in the video. Went instantly from "yeah, your English is weird" to a very proud: *"Ah yes! We're also weird!" *
I thought it was only cockneys that said "f" when they meant "th." Some Brit in the RUclips world does that, and to me it feels like fingernails on a blackboard, just intolerable to listen to. Hearing a non-native English speaker do it is probably a lot less aggravating.
Somehow I never struggled with the "th" Vs "f". I had more trouble with "r"s. I'm so glad Afrikaans doesn't have gendered forms of words though!
But doesn't the other "th" as in "the" use a "z" sound, as well as "th" as in thought when it is in the middle of a word (not beginning or end)?
I do find that particular accent easy to understand myself, and clarification is usually simple if there's ever miscommunication. Bostonian accents though, those are impossible.
I like the use of definite articles. Sometimes when you are in a room with multiple things you are considering or not considering, you are better off being able to define just “the” or “that” one thing you desire.
It can sometimes be very useful: "I need the (specific) paper." "I need a (random) paper." "I need paper." (The material or sometimes the concept (subject or category) of something.)
@@Khorteka But you don't need it for specific examples, like "I need article 23" (aka referencing specific paper). "I need yesterday's paper". You don't need "the" or "a". Just like in this reply I took out all times I would have used "the" or "a" and it still sounds correct.
In this case, articles act a lot like pronouns by taking the place of the exact name of the paper or "yesterday's."
Your old-timey RUclips page was brilliant. I went back and paused the video so I could read everything and appreciate the clever humour.
Yes!!! It's at 10:23 for those who want to go have another look. I could not stop laughing! (well, actually I did, but I'm about to start again just thinking about it) 🤣🤣🤣
ThouTube 😂😂
yes i was wondering how much time it took to put this little easter egg in the episode
Even the word "weird" is weird! Its etymology involves meanings such as "fate" and "to turn" and "to become". Not only that, I just found out that Shakespeare reintroduced the word into English! It had fallen out of use in Middle English, but came back through Macbeth's Weird Sisters.
Your videos are so wonderfully jovial and witty, as well as deeply informative! Thanks so much 😊
Guess Shakespeare was the original weirdo then!😂
i before e except after c. And also except "weird" ...
another fun Shakespeare fact he used about 20 000 words in his writings meanwhile the great french playwrights used about 2 000 since the 16th century (the height of french theatre) there was a big push to "purify" the language removing all words that didn't have a distinct french, latin or greek origin as well as having a simplified language as the fad at the time was beauty in simplicity
Mine own owl, grown and gowned, owned a crow's crown, mined by the slow plow, flown down, never scowling, yet unknown.
🤣👍🏻👍🏻
Nice.
i don't get it. i see that there are a bunch of "ow"/"own"s that are pronounced differently (seems like mostly 2 pronunciations).. but it seems like there must be more to it than that?
Me trying to read this: ow.
That's... just two pronunciations repeatedly?
While texting on a phone, I want to eliminate words that make it take longer to say what I want to say and still be easily understood. It isn't difficult to shorten many sentences that would normally start with 'I am....." followed by a verb ending in 'ing', for example, 'going' 'eating' 'walking', 'reading' and so forth. I am walking... begins instead 'Walking'.
In context that works. If I were to receive a text out of the blue from someone that only read "walking" I'd be left to wonder exactly what they mean, as a response to a text from me asking "what's up?", however, it fully qualifies as a complete answer.
To be fair, saying "Walking" has an implied "I am", "We are", "They are" in front of it. English, in some ways, is very contextual. If you and your family are sitting down for dinner and someone asks what's for dinner, you say "Pizza". You don't say "We are having pizza" because the "we are" and the idea of "having" are all implied.
@@RoySATX English is a very high context language - as you pointed out. As was pointed out in the video we're commenting on, other languages are low context because their words already include context in them, like "Voy" means "I go" or "I am going". But it's one word. However, as has been pointed out by several other commenters, it's also possible that English has singular words for things that other languages require many words to say.
For example, hailing a cab (taxi) only requires "TAXI!!", where as in Japanese, it requires 3 characters/words to do the same thing.
The disagreeing word in response to you didn’t take the trash out would be “bullshit”
Better in that context would be "Rubbish!"
Said the same thing hahaha
Nuh-uh!
@@nigelsimpson3547 Not in the USA.
How about, "Untrue!"
I would argue that the indefinite article serves an absolute purpose, in clarification. Such as, from Monty Python and the Holy Grail: "You got my note!" "Well, I got A note." It doesn't work the same without that indefinite article specifying that he doubts the note's authenticity.
Zactly. There are all sorts of aspects of language that are functionally redundant in _many_ cases as they can be inferred from context and probability, but there are still times when their correct usage provides a useful distinction or where their incorrect usage could create confusion.
I think it works. In Irish your example would be "Fuair tú mo nóta" - "Fuair mé nóta" (I got a note) instead of "Fuair me do nóta" (I got your note). If I leave out the "do" (your) intentionally it is the same statement as in the English example. Namely "don't know if it's YOUR note".
I can definitely understand where you're coming from with this in that it's good for emphasis of clarity, but in the case where there was no indefinite article then the very absence of the definite article is enough to provide that clarity. In your example, "You got my note!" "Well, I got note" would be understood to mean that the received note wouldn't necessarily (though still could) be the one indicated by the definitive article
@@Shna_na That's what I intended to say. Reading over my own comment again I think it might be a bit confusing?! 🤔😬
@@CahiraOMalley Ah, yes, I had the video paused for a while before watching so your comments weren't there for me when I replied. My reply was for the original post, don't worry
In Australia, we use a word to negate a negative statement and we use it all the time. For example
“Rob, you didn’t take the bins out again.”
“Bullshit!”
🤣🤣🤣
Bullshit! I'm living here hahahah
Can confirm!
As an australian I have no idea what your talking about. 😢
@@Wreniffer Bullshit! 🤣
The day after tomorrow used to be “overmorrow”, just like in German this is “übermorgen”, and the day before yesterday is “eresterday” (the German equivalent is “vorgestern”). These two words had vanished in between 1500 and 1600 but still these can be met in some modern books written by nowadays bizarre authors.
'Overmorgen' en 'eergisteren' in Dutch; 'euvermorge' en 'ieergister' in Limburgisch
I believe that "this morrow" technically means today, especially when spoken in the morning.
Ever since discovering the world overmorrow, I’ve made it my mission to use it more often.
Ever since discovering the world overmorrow, I’ve made it my mission to use it more often.
Ever since discovering the world overmorrow, I’ve made it my mission to use it more often.
"English does not a word for disagreeing"
OBJECTION YOUR HONOUR
I disagree works very well. Or " I don't happen to agree with you!"
No
My first thought was:
*in Trump voice* "Wrong."
“Cap”
That's one of the many examples of when a word taken from French comes to save the day :D
Tom Scott's short video about language features that don't exist in English was neat. Of those, clusivity is easily the most useful and I wish we (all) had it.
I speak Tok Pisin and I'm learning Te Reo Māori, both of which have clusivity. In my experience, clusivity is not as useful as you'd think. Cos how often do we find ourselves saying "Do mean 'you and me' or 'you and them'? I don't understand."
BUT Tok Pisin is kinda fun cos it has singular, dual, trial, and plural clusivity! It all looks super confusing until you see the English etymology - eg, 'Yumitripela' comes from You-me-three-fellows.
SINGULAR:
Mi = I/me
Yu = you
Em = she/her/he/him/it
DUAL:
Mitupela = The two of us (but not you)
Yumitupela = The two of us (including you)
Yutupela = the two of you
Tupela = the two of them
TRIAL:
Mitripela = The three of us (but not you)
Yumitripela = The three of us (including you)
Yutripela = the three of you
Tripela = the three of them
PLURAL:
Mipela = Us (4 or more, but not you)
Yumi = Us (4 or more, including you)
Yupela = You (4 or more)
Ol = Them (4 or more)
But in practice, a lot of people drop the dual and trial. Eg, if you're about to leave a place with someone, they'll often just say 'yumi go' instead of 'yumitupela go'
@@ahorrell Good on ya for learning Te Reo Māori. Personally, I do find the clusivity of Te Reo useful and bemoan its lack in English - and I'm a "pasty white boy", so it's not a "my language is the best" thing. As an autistic person, I find myself confused when someone says "we are going to..." *more often than I care to remember* if there's enough people to make a "we" that doesn't include me. I constantly find myself wondering if only they're going or they mean me as well. I don't get that with "mātou" and "tātou".
@@ahorrell I don't understand. Is "mitupela" used in situation where there are 2 people or 3 people? If the first is the case why don't use "mi" for instance? I'd understand if a person wants to make them clear that it's not you but other than that it seems somewhat useless. I think plural ones are really neat tho
PS. Didn't notice the thing you typed on a bottom bottom of a comment. I see why they drop it
@@bopmaster404 "tupela" is used in the case of a grouping of 2 people. "mitupela" signifies that the 2-person group includes me. For 3 people (me, you & another) it would be "yumitripela".
Tok Pisin is intriguing ... think of "tupela" as "two fellas". So "mitupela" (or me-two fellas) = "two fellas including me". This clearly excludes you - as to include you would be "mi-YU-tupela" (me-YOU-two fellas). Same concept applies to 3 people (tri-pela), and likewise Plural. Hope that helps :)
Yes! This exists in Mandarin, although usage is not entirely strict.
我们 (wo men) can mean 'we' in all contexts.
咱们 (zan men) can only mean 'we' as in the people included in the conversation.
Unfortunately, I am so used to my native English that I never use 咱们, since 我们 works just fine, and as many native Chinese speakers often neglect to use 咱们, I can't see that changing anytime soon! I do believe (though I may be wrong) that 咱们 is more often used up north, whereas I live in Shanghai, which is in the east.
Swedish has male and female names for pet owners.
Husse - male owner of pet
Matte - female owner of pet
...and it's useful exactly how ? ..and how to you refer to an owner of a pet you don't know the gender of?
@@davidioanhedges you have the same thing in English when you talk about children; mother, father and parent. If you don't know the gender just say "ägare" (owner).
In English these are "master" and "mistress" but the words have so many other uncomfortable connotations that most prefer to pretend we are their parents instead.
Ok we definitely need this added to English
I often see hudad and humom used in pet related social media posts... In Dutch we have 'baas' or 'baasje' (boss, little boss) as non gender option over 'eigenaar/eigenaresse' (owner).
From what non English speakers tell me who have learned English, one of the best ways to learn it is via music and movies. That’s an overwhelming stance.
I’m not sure why. I tried it the other way around with both mandarin and Japanese and it didn’t work for either of them.
(I) Love your videos, and always find it amusing to compare with my native Danish. My (English) grandchildren call me “morfar” (mother’s father) but in English I can distinguish between granddaughters and grandsons. In Danish they are all børnebørn (childrens’ children). When I studied Bahasa Indonesia, I discovered that you can do very well without the verb “to be”. (“I Danish” in stead of “I am Danish”). My teacher explained that “to be or not to be” had to be rendered as “hidup atau tidak hidup “ (alive or not alive). Languages are such fun.
I love that you accidentally wrote “in stead” instead of “instead.” 😂 But “in stead” is also technically correct, but a native English speaker would use “instead” every time … unless they were at a Renaissance Faire
The thing I think English really needs is an exclusive we/our. A simple way to indicate "[belonging to] the group of which I am a member, but you/they are not."
Them.
Us. Ourselves.
Edit: "Our group" (as stated by @gregorymorse8423) is even better. Not perfect but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
but we don't say "Us are going" or "Ourselves are going" - and neither distinguish between including or excluding the listener in any case.
Te reo Maori has "maua" (s/he and I) and taua (you the listener and I) and also matou (3 or more people excluding the listener) and tatau (3 or more people including the listener)
"Our group"... done. You are welcome
A fun fact: in “Star Trek: Enterprise” they don’t use the definite article about the ship (eg. “We need to get back to Enterprise.”). In other Star Trek series, they do use it (eg. “We need to get back to the Enterprise.”).
I've always thought that there was a general difference between American and English on that topic - Nelson served on HMS Victory versus Kirk served on the USS Enterprise. It's not always like that - just usually.
In the film Titanic, they always referred to the vessel as simply Titanic.
In my dialect, I say the Titanic - as I do for all large floating vessels.
The Mayflower, the Golden Hind, the Flying Dutchman, the Bounty, etc, etc.
Note that the 1960s British war film was "Sink the Bismark", not "Sink Bismark"
Enterprise would be more accurate since military vessels tend to be gendered.
So you would "Go to Rob" not "Got to the Rob"
But what if he's the only one? ;)
The difference between humanizing a ship (Enterprise) versus treating it like an object (the Enterprise)
When I disagree with a statement I just make a loud "ERRRR" like it's a buzzer from a game show when a contestant answers incorrectly
Even that is different per language/culture. In know for example in Japanese they make a sound akin to BIPUUU, because game show "wrong" sounds are usually two tones there. But I do think it's pretty universal that this only happens among close friends, when the other person makes this sound with their mouth. Surely you wouldn't literally always do it, like at a job interview or when speaking with the king 😀
Agreed let's adopt the word er. For this! People may pronounce as they wish. Our new equivalent of si, doch. Is er.
round of applause for the medieval RUclips recreation, Rob. I had a good chuckle at that.
That was well done :)
I particularly loved the video titled "Should I learn to read?". Rather ironic title.
I'm scottish, my wife mocks me for saying y'all.
But it is an effective contraction that flows much more easily than "you all".
I think it should be formally adopted as an acceptable word.
I didn't even know that was Scottish until now 😂
I was born and raised in South Texas and agree 100% that y'all should be adopted as an official word.
@@michelejones711 The problem is created by using "you" for both singular and plural subjects, so "you all" was, presumably, established organically as the plural version of "you," thus allowing for the bastardization into "y'all." However, in the southern US, "y'all" has come to be used for both singular and plural, and that has produced the relatively recent (at least in my experience) adoption of "all y'all" as the plural form of "y'all." Where does it end?
I'm a New Zealander, and I too use y'all
I’m Scottish and I have never said y’all 😂 more like “ yees “ for more than one person 😂
Gotta love, how as a Hungarian speaker learning English, a lot of these didn’t feel weird at all, like no genders, the clunky future tense and the definite/indefinite articles. Phrasal verbs too.
Yes, phrasal verbs are a very difficult part of learning Hungarian. I have had to create flashcards to drill them in.
uszername checks out
Yeah, but Hungarian is even weirder, or so I've heard.
@@andrewcarson5850 It sure is an outlier in many more ways, I just find it strange and funny how, the first two languages I learned have some common elements that I assumed are the norm, when in fact they are pretty rare.
@@19Szabolcs91 Out of the frying pan and into the fire, one might say.
In French, we should also reverse the verb and subject for questions, but we don't, it's true. It often seems too formal.
A-t'il regardé cette vidéo ? Il a regardé cette vidéo ?
"Il a regardé cette vidéo" et "Il a regardé cette vidéo ? "
It only differs on the intonation of the end of the sentence. Not the easiest I guess, for non-native speakers.
Hi Rob! Swedish speaker here! It should be "Tycker du om ost?" not um (um is it not word :D) Great video nonetheless!
Rob - you just TOTALLY delight me. I really enjoy every one of your videos - and often refer them to folks. I've been teaching various forms of English in Germany for MANY years. In my university classes - one of my first statements to students is: "I'll be the first one to say: English sucks." or "English is stupid." HOWEVER - over the many years I've worked here, it's the pronunciations and the verb phrases and/or idioms that truly challenge non-native speakers. Once I give them tips on how to simplify and deal with such things - they are quite delighted with this "weird" language - as it can be quite quick to grasp because it DOESN'T have so many rules (I HATE der-die-das and all the tenses, for example).
And my absolute favourite German word is "doch". I firmly believe it should be incorporated into English at all levels.
Native Chinese(Mandarin) speaker here. When we started to have English classes in 2nd grade, I noticed a whole lot of parallelism between Chinese and English, and it became ever more noticeable when I started to learn even more languages like French Japanese Hebrew and Spanish. I cannot explain the parallelism but it's fun to point out.
Both have SVO word order, lack of inflections of nouns and verbs, and Mandarin is in the process of developing the indefinite article as yige (一个). Chinese can drop pronouns but in practice uses them more often than, say, Japanese. The 3rd person singular (he/she/it) is pronounced identically (tā) but in the written form are different (他，她，它). They both have a sound that is like a retroflex r, especially in the Beijing dialect (zher 这儿).
Yes, you can very often say the same sentence in English or Chinese using the exact same word order.
@@kiga14 I found Japanese students would often miss a/the when speaking English, which since English is stressed-timed language ruins the sentence rhythm (and hurt my ears) - I got my revenge on the students by speaking Japanese and leaving out the "wa" 😊 after every subject noun.
@@jumpingjohnflash
Leaving out the は isn't *as* bad as leaving out the article in English though
. True. Still made them wince though.
I'm really enjoying your videos! Thank you so much for making them so thought provoking. As an English teacher, I realised that I only really started to learn it after I started teaching it to Spanish-speakers! I can't agree that English doesn't have a single word to disagree with a statement; we use words like: "rubbish!" "balderdash!", or its definition: "nonsense!", as well as many expletives that I won't mention here. As for what the language is missing; I'll have to ruminate on that for a while. Thanks again!
I knew a French man who asked me why do you say washing 'up' and drying 'up' , I didn't have an answer for him.
When we do the washing up we're cleaning dishes and cutlery. When we do the washing we're cleaning clothes.
Heheh try explaining the difference between a lay up and lay down.
And what's a "lay-by"? In England it's a turnout/siding at the side of a highway where you can stop if your car's not working right or you're tired.
A puddle can dry up. But if you've washed up, you then dry off.
One can just say to wash the dishes and to dry the dishes . Up defines the end task. To do something up = to renovate or make something look better . It adds finality. Like to grow and to grow up. A start up defines the finality of the “start”… geddit? 😅😂
About grandparents our family traditionally call the father’s side ‘ grandpa and grandma’ and mother’s side ‘nanna and granddad’.
Saves a lot of confusion.
Love you show.
Does that get confusing between cross cousins? The grandchildren by your male children and the grandchildren by your female children would refer to you by different terms then
We used Mormor and Morfar for mother's mother and mother's father, as well as the inverse for the father's side of the family. But that originated from Danish after one sibling's exchange year in Denmark. It is vastly more clear as to who is being spoken about.
@@Aaron-hr5bbYeah, the Danish way works very well for danes, because our family-words are so short. Just stick ‘em all together to describe the relation:
Mother’s brother? - Motherbrother (morbror)
Father’s mother? - Fathermother (farmor)
We even have brotherson/sisterdaughter to describe how we are related to our nephews and nieces, though it is quite outdated.
Except that only works in your context. It doesn't work if you try to explain to someone else who doesn't use "nanna". Like I have a Mima (often spelled Meemaw by others). But if I say that to someone else, they have no idea how that is.
@@Dyanosis That's all words though. If you speak english to someone who don't speak english, they don't know what you are talking about either. If you are with people who know what Mima means, then Mima is really useful to distinguish who you are talking about. If they don't know Mima, then don't use Mima.
A frequent annoyance to me is how the word next has become ambiguous when referring to future days. If today is Saturday and I say "Meet me here next Friday", most people will think that will be in six days but some will think it's the Friday of the week after. The closer we get to the Friday, the same phrase spoken that day makes more people think it's not the upcoming Friday but the Friday after. There's no clear agreement amongst us as to which week we're talking about.
North South Divide .. but not exclusively ... Next Saturday is not well defined ...
"This Friday" and "Friday next."
@@drs-xj3pb Check with your Northern and Southern friends and they won't agree on these either ...
French has a way to clarify this ("vendredi en huit" means Friday next week) but it's barely ever used. I suspect the need for this type of clarification isn't strong enough for people to worry about keeping such expressions alive.
Yes. This does require a bit of extra attention in English to avoid ambiguity. If it's Tuesday, and one tell you to meet them "next Friday" are they referring to three days from now? Or ten days from now? It's better to use "on Friday" instead of "next Friday" as that will be understood to mean Friday of this week. I often hear myself saying "this coming Friday" (clunky, sure, but it's unambiguous) or "Friday of next week," respectively.
I see the "do" in English and "si" in french having a similar purpose. It feels to me that they both respond to a said or unsaid "no".
"You don't like coffee"
"I do like coffee!" / "Si, j'aime le café!"
English used to have a yea/nay/yes/no system, where the former two were used literally and the latter two only as a response to negative sentences (yes like French si).
We can repurpose "nay" to serve this role in modern English, I think.
Aye!
Aye, Yea & Nay are used in English but mainly for voting.
Also in the military (mostly in the Navy) aye is used.
and it's no nay neverrrr no neverrr no morrrre!
Danish: ja [yah], nej [nigh], jo [yoh] ( yes to a negative question a la "si" in French etc. )
We do, sorta have a word for "day after tomorrow", "overmorrow". At least, I've heard it used and I have used it. Mostly it confuses people, but it's a word for "day after tomorrow". "Eresterday" or "Ereyesterday" is one I've heard used, and have used for "day before yesterday." Again, it mostly just confuses people.
Note: Another archaic word, "yestereve", rather than "last evening"
Near as I can tell, they are basically obsolete words that are no longer used. But I like them.
Where in the world have you seen these words used? Is it in an old regional dialect word?
@@minuteman4199 I'm an American, but mostly in older movies and TV shows. I remember a old fellow from my childhood, back in the 80s, lol, using ereyesterday and yestereve. Overmorrow I probably picked up years ago from reading various things. (I used to pick up dictionaries and encyclopedias, just to read them.)
I'm certain I've seen them in the dictionary of archaic words that some of the "Classics" novels you can get cheap have in them.
It is also a direct translation to the word we Scandinavians use for this exact thing - övermorgon is how we write it in Swedish. It's just the words we use for "over" and "morning" combined into one word.
To get to our word for two days ago you could pretty much get there by translating "ereyesterday" as well, as long as you know that "ere" means before. We say "förrgår" for this, which either combines "förra" which means last or "före" which means "before" with "igår" which is yesterday. Or it could be that we use the prefix "för-", our equivalent to English "fore-" as in forefather. I actually don't know which it is, and it doesn't really matter since either of them make sense.
Hey, that disaster movie from a decade or two ago could have been called "Overmorrow"...cool title...
Thank you, @jamesmccrea4871, I came here to post the same thing. I have a taste for older literature, and these words pop up from time to time in the books I read. They are good words that deserve a return to daily usage.
I was searching RUclips for English history videos, and this channel popped up.
So I clicked on it.
This is now one of my top three favorite RUclips channels.
Thanks for not only being educational, but also amusing.
As a person who doesn't have english as my first language, yes PHRASAL VERBS ARE WEIRD. And annoying.
You should try Norwegian where we do look stuff up, we beat it up, «slå opp», and that’s the same expression for breaking up with someone. And «slå seg ned» (Beat oneself down) means to settle or sit down, while «slå noen ned» (beat someone down) is to beat someone up (with the implication of them falling from the beating).
Omg that sounds made up! (No, i'm joking i just wanted to use one little phrasal verb 😂) That sounds also annoying to learn, but very interesting at the same time haha
Here are my entries for potential collective nouns for "aunts and uncles":
1. Eldrins - Combines "elders," indicating seniority or older generation, with a suffix "-ins," which adds the familiar touch.
2. Eldsiblings
3. Kinparents - family (or made family) that are in a parental role without directly being parents.
4. Elderkin
5. Eldrets - eld + rets, a creative contraction of relatives of how it may have shortened over time.
I like Elderkin as the collective noun.
Furthermore in colloquial application it would likely be contracted as in this example: "Ah yes, let Eldkin Peter have that mug, he is Mum's Uncle after all".
my only weigh in would be to replace the eld with gran or grand so it fits in with general usage of grandparents that we already use. ive also heard "niblings" for collective nieces and nephews
I like this! Riffing off kinparents, what about "parblings"? (Pronounced like "pairblings")
@@erinm9445 maybe "parsibs" pair-sibs
Unclings? Auntles?
For me it's your weird vowels and diphtongs. Your written vowels often have a different sound than other language's written vowels. For example, when you say the letter E, you make the sound that other languages typically would express with the letter I. And you pronounce other vowels as diphtongs, which other languages would use two vowels to express, if they do it at all. (In my language we don't use diphtongs, except for a few loan words and in some specific dialects.)
Of course, this works well for English speakers speaking English, but it becomes a bit of a problem when native English speakers try to pronounce other languages. It isn't unusual at all for English speakers to see an A in a foreign word, for example, and automatically pronounce it as "ey" even though it makes it really weird, since it's a typical English pronunciation.
Also, the vovel E at the end of a foreign word seems to create some sort of overload or something. :D I have heard three different pronunciations of it. The Japanese beverage "sake" often gets, to my ears, pronounced as "saki". And then we have the word "anime", which you pronounce as "animay". And I recently watched some reaction videos of the German show "Dark", where there's a character named "Helge". To my ears it sounded like many of the reactors pronounced this name as "Helga", which is the feminine form of "Helge". It's weird since all of these words have the same sound at the end in their original languages. I'm not sure how to transcribe it, but "eh" I guess would be the closest.
Putting a short "eh" sound at the end of a word is difficult for English speakers. Not sure why, but it is.
The short e at the end of German words do sound a lot like an "uh" sound, e.g. Porsche, meine, liebe, etc
To be honest, "sake" is used for any alcoholic drink in general in Japanese. So it's weird that everybody else uses it for a single specific Japanese drink.
@@ajs41Because English doesn't have any words ending in that sound.
While native Italian speakers have a tendency to add a final -e to their pronunciation of English words that end in a consonant, because in Italian those consonants would be followed by an -e.
Hmmm. Attempt at phonetic spelling for how I pronounce the three example words
Saw kay
Anim ay
Helg eh.
Thank-you for this video.
On the subject of articles, I think they do serve a purpose: they prepare your mind for what is coming. Yes, you can figure out what a non-native is saying, after they finish and you think about it.
This preparation occurs in military marching commands also. "Left, face!", or "To the left, march!" both contain what are called a 'preparatory command' and a 'command of execution'. Since synchronized marching is not natural, the first command (the preparatory command) informs your mind of what direction (in this case) you need to be prepared to go; and the command of execution tells you when (now!) to do it.
The particles synchronize the listener's brain with that of the person speaking in preparation for what will be referred to. This might not be necessary if the word order in English wasn't sometimes (but not always) backwards.
And by insisting upon a symmetrical construction, it acts as a check-sum to show that a word wasn't omitted.
English lacks a good translation for the Dutch "gezellig". Cozy, which is what Google Translate tells me is the correct translation, doesn't cut it all. "Cozy" is drinking a hot chocolate while reading a book under a blanket, cuddling your cat while it's raining outside. "Gezellig" is hanging out with your mates. Going to the shops wouldn't be more "cozy" if my little brother decided to come along, it would be more "gezellig".
Same with German Gemütlich
Many words in English when spoken suggests an emotion, or a feeling, and sometimes that alone is enough to hint what the word means. I don't know if it's the same for other languages but "gezellig" pronounced in my American/Texan accent doesn't suggest anything even remotely close to being cozy. Pardon my ignorance, but does it when said correctly?
Sociable?
Pleasant?
Is this similar to the Danish hygge?
Excellent Rob, thank you. I am sorry if you have already done this but I have a weird fascination with the word "up". Why do we use it it in so many and often contradictory ways? We get up, wake up, start up, open up, close up, break up, shut up, rev up, pick up, mess up, wind up, and on and on.... Maybe a short video explaining would clear it erm up?
The kitchen got burned up but the house got burned down.
@@Ron_Rhodes razed to the ground
And we park on a driveway, yet drive on a parkway! ??? I really miss George Carlin!
How do non native speakers put up with it all?
@@Ron_Rhodes that's American English? Never heard of kitchens being burned up .....
I want to tell you about a concept that we don't have a word for, in English, but I just can't put it into words!
That's because English is quick to adopt any such needed words; e.g. "schadenfreude" from recent German. Our history as a massive German/ French creole shows that this goes back centuries.
English is poor in so mAaaaany concepts ; homesickness ( NOSTALGIA for a person, nothing to do with HOME ) , kidnapping ( RAPIMENTO of a dog, nothing to do with KID ) , blackmailing ( RICATTO from a son to his mother ) nothing to do with MAIL etc. 😢😢 What annoys me most is BUTTERFLY 🦋🦋🦋 what the damn has BUTTER to do with this wonderful insect ??? 😅😊😅😊😊
@@mariapiazza-od8ibI can't attest for any English other than what I speak on the US east coast, but I don't use the words you describe in that way.
Homesickness really is about one's home. It might be a physical house, but could also be about a hometown. If my parents moved away from my childhood home into an apartment, I'd never say I was homesick unless I meant the town I grew up in or my childhood home. Likewise, if I live alone and have been traveling for a month, I would say homesick to mean I miss my apartment, despite there being no one there.
Kidnapping is most often used to describe the taking (napping?) of a child. Yes, it can be used for an adult, too, but it's usually a kid. I'd never use it for a dog. I'd probably just say someone stole the dog. Maybe I'd playfully say dognapped.
Blackmail, to my knowledge, used to be done by mail, but yes, nowadays means any form of extortion. It means threatening someone with some action, often revealing a secret, if the victim doesn't pay money to the blackmailer. It doesn't really have to do with sons and mothers. Usually it's between non-family, and often enemies or work colleagues/adversaries.
You got me with butterfly!
@@mariapiazza-od8ibI'm not really sure what you are saying in the first part. Are you trying to say the words are more restricted in their definitions than the Italian words you mention or that the etymology of them is strange. Blackmail for example comes from "mal" an old word for payment or rent. As to butterfly I quite like that each European language seems to have their own idiosyncratic word for butterflies: vlinder, schmetterling, mariposa, farfalla, papillon, sommerfugl, borboleta, leptir, motyl, fjäril. No two languages seem to have gone for the same origin
@@mariapiazza-od8ib well butterfly, is a hiccup of flutterby which was the original, surely!
5:49
While english may be the only language to use the meaningless "do", danish uses the word "can" in the exact same meaningless way.
"I do not like matcha" =
"Jeg kan ikke lide matcha (da) / I can not like matcha (en)"
"Do you like coffee?" =
"Kan du lide kaffe? (da) / Can you like coffee? (en)"
"Do you see how special it is?" =
"Kan du se hvor specielt det er? (da) / Can you see how special it is? (en)"
Interesting. Points to a general desire in Germanic languages for a filler word. My personal assumption would be to simplify grammar by avoiding inflection for most verbs. And despite Rob's claims, German very much does have meaningless "do" ("tun") as well. It is simply considered "uneducated speech", but it has been resilient despite teachers railing against it for centuries and decades of mass media language standardization. Especially in the north, so there might be a Hanseatic aspect to its origin.
This confuses me as a Norwegian. Lide means suffering in Norwegian.
I do not like matcha (En)
Jeg kan ikke lide matcha (Da)
Jeg liker ikke matcha" (No)
The Danske way sounds like
"I can't suffer matcha."
Do you like coffee?" (En)
Kan du lide kaffe? (Da)
Liker du kaffe (No)
The Dansk sounds like
"Can you suffer coffee?"
We have a meaningless do in German as well. It's just that it's considered either dialect or childlike speaking and not considered proper Standard German. At least where I live a meaningless do is used very regularly in the local dialect.
I also find it weird the richness of vocabulary in English. Its extremely vast. Just pick up a Dickens or Shakespeare. I'm fluent in Polish and I find it interesting in how many synonyms exist in English relative to other languages. Rob, any comments (or a video) on this topic ?
Congrats!! As a person studying English as a foreign language for many years (trying to improve more and more) I find your channel very useful and interesting 👏🏻👏🏻
20:35 "We don't have a word to negate a negative statement."
Well, it may be viewed as a bit rude, but some Americans just say *"wrong"* as a challenge, like Doch or Si.
Or, for that matter, "Bull!", "Bullsh*t!", or the corresponding euphemism "Baloney!"
@@stephanzielinski7922 True, however those would be perceived as being even more rude.
Except for "Bologna", that's probably the nicest way of directly contradicting someone.
In Scots you can say Aye , Naw ! for an emphatic no !
My comment to this was that I sometimes use *"not true"* as such a challenge, which is a bit less harsh than "wrong", but (as an American) I've probably said that as well. Granted, "not true" is two words but as I saw in another comment, _"untrue"_ also fits here.
@@johnnydarling8021 In certain parts of the States, we use "Hogwash!"
10:25 I had to pause the video at the 1500's version of RUclips. Very creative!
HrodelbertWords
400k brethren
😄
I think a weirdness of the English language is the number of different things that are done through adding an 's' to a word (when you include tenses, contractions, possessiveness etc.) It must be very confusing for people learning English. Also, just the sheer quantity of sibilant sounds. To others, especially the French I believe, we just sound like a bunch of hissing geese. Maybe you could do an episode on that.
5:26 - My mother who was raised in England would END a sentence with "do" for emphasis!, as in "Stop it, DO!" (very British!)
Like in the song, "Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer, do!"
@@pablovivant9089 Yes, another use of "do" as a generic verb like in the standard response to "May i (verb)?" = "Please do"
I had thought the expression
"Do tell" was a request for someone to tell more of the shocking or scandalous or interesting information
but a number of sources indicate that it simply an expression of surprise and not necessarily a request for more information.
“Love Me, Do” by the Beatles.
When it comes to family trees, I love the obscure word niblings for nieces and nephews.
Good one!
Also “piblings” as a gender-inclusive term for aunts and uncles (parent’s sibling) 🙂
and piblings for aunts and uncles! (parents siblings)
Sounds like two kinds of Halloween candy...
Thanks Seth 😉👍 and I thought I knew it all 😆😅
We're never done learning are we pal 🍻 Like punctuation Patrick? 😆😅
Brilliant as always. Rob. You put so much into your videos in high production values, fun images, videos within your video, and so much research behind every episode.
THANK YOU! 🙏
I so appreciate your videos! I'm teaching English in SEAsia. My students are smart but struggle so much with our very different - and sometimes weird- language. Particularly, in pronunciation, the variety of vowel sounds, the mismatch of spoken with written forms and many particular consonants- sh/s, v/f, that/three. At least they don't have to struggle with tones or gendered nouns and other declensions!
10. Clusivity. I wish we had a separate system for specifying whether “we” was including speaker and listener, speaker and a group but not listener, or all three
I would like this for German, too. When somebody says something with "we", you can ask: "Who is we?"
To my way of thinking, if context does not make it obvious, then it is the context that is the issue, not the speech. If you're using pronouns, you must first define them somehow, even if it isn't with speech. You can make gestures, etc.
@@Siansonea Makes me think about the idea of unspoken language, effectively unspoken English. How universal are gestures and intonations?
Don't you just use "they/them" if you and listener are not included?
Yes! I want this all the time
Just yesterday I used the word “weird” and I immediately thought of this channel and wondered about the history/etymology of the word “weird” and if it has ever been covered here.
weird..
@@miralupa8841weird..
It would have been weird if he did a quick bonus fact about the history of the word weird at the end. 😁
@@amandaburnham8626 Indeed!
proto-indo-european *wert, meaning turn/twist, made its way to proto-germanic as “wurdiz” and then old english "wyrd" with the meaning of fate/destiny or an event thereof (out of the sense of a “turn/twist” of fate), later yielding the modern english “weird”
6:08 - Mind you, the reason why the Celtic languages do something vaguely like this is because we have question particles! "Useless do" might've entered English as a grammatical calque of this, so in a way, English does have a question particle.
For those interested in how it looks, if I wanted to say "You understand", I'd say "tuigeann tú" (verb first), whereas if I were asking "do you understand?", I'd say "an dtuigeann tu?"
I personally think it even comes specifically from Welsh (Old Welsh/Brythonic), because of the sound and obvious proximity, Welsh first person pronoun "I do" / "'dw i" (although it's a shortened form of "rydw i") the dw sounds exactly like the English "do".
Huh, the word for "you" is the same in Irish (That is irish right?), Spanish, and Hindi. I guess it's an Indo-European thing
Whilst very few Celtic words entered English Celtic grammar and numerics have done.
@@LeReubzRic Indo-European pronouns are pretty conservative, which is one of the ways that shows it's a family (other language families are similar with their pronouns). And English does have its cognate for the "tu" in other languages - it's "thou" (which would have been pronounced more like "thu" before the Great Vowel Shift), which was our original 2nd person singular until it was dropped for the more formal "you" in the 1600s.
@@johnfisk811 They didn't have to borrow but they certainly influenced the syntax and grammatical structure of the prestige language of the time(Old English).
I love this channel Rob.I learn something new everyday here. TY mate.
Both I and my wife are native speakers of Dravidian languages. I started speaking English at two years of age, whereas she started around eight. She still has trouble with English prepositions, and I don't.
If you have problems with English propositions try Cymraeg(Welsh)😁
For a Finnish native, learning English since age of 10 officially, but obviously a lot before it (got my first computer as 6 year old), the whole concept of a language having or needing to use prepositions all the time is disturbing.
I regularly use the word "false" to negate the negative statement in English
Or "untrue" would also work
The issue isn't that we don't have a word for this. Its just that the common ones aren't polite. But from "poppycock" to "b*llsh&t", we have lots of words that have the ability to do this function.
Just "No" and walk away, let them soak in the gravy of their own poorly formatted questions
What we need is a contradictory yes, like jo in Swedish, doch in German or si in French. Most of the time we use these words we're far from being aggressive, we're just contradicting in the affirmative.
You sound like Dwight
I have coined a new English word!
This was achieved while solving a game of "Target" where many words have to be made from 9 letters given.
My word fills all the requirements of a 'good word' i.e.
- It will be instantly understood by a British person
- It will confuse the Americans
- It will annoy the French
- It solves an instance of using one word for three very different meanings (possibly more)
You know how we use 'Liquidate' to mean 'Make into a Liquid' and also 'Turn Assets into Cash' or even 'Eliminate a rival'
Ladies and Gentlemen I give you ...
QUIDILATE
"I'm so skint I had to quidilate my Biggles book collection"
"Liquidate" doesn't mean "make[sic] into a liquid". You mean "liquefy" (which, fittingly for this video, isn't spelled "liquify")
You could reach this meaning with "cashilate" in America. Cashify would work equally well.
I hate it. You didn't miss that part at least.
It looks just like Latin but in a " I'm so quirky, look at me " kind of way, the exact same a ton of english already sounds like.
I found "skint" more confusing.
@@SigEpBlue it means impecunious
I taught an English class in Argentina many years ago and was asked the meaning of “do” at the beginning of a question. I spent the next five minutes in silent, torturous contemplation, throughout, completely stumped. I was absolutely shocked to realize that, as far as I could tell, it had no meaning at all, and just as shocked that I had never realized it. I was able to more or less explain when it is used, but then had the equally difficult job of trying to answer what I meant by saying “it has no meaning, but it kinda plays a role”. This concept was so foreign to native Spanish speakers that I suspect none of them believed a word that I said. 😂
But when I was trying to learn Tagalog, that language has word symbols for different things that I never understood.
That's where you pull out "Because I said so" or "Because it's how it is" card
I just hope you have taken English grammar lessons since and have heard about AUXILIARIES as grammatical words, as opposed to LEXICAL VERBS!
Another detail about articles. When using "the", we use the long sound before a word starting with a vowel, and the short sound before a word starting with a consonant. We use "an" before a word starting with a vowel.
But when we are emphasizing something, we use the long sound on the article, both "the" and "a".
'We use "an" before a word starting with a vowel' Before a vowel sound not before a word beginning with a vowel letter. An honour, a house, an umbrella a university etc.
@@zegrze Excellent point. The one that always nudges me is historic. "an historic occasion".
I often say, "When I hear 'an historic', I need someone to drive me to an hospital in an hurry.
@@dands1144 only acceptable if their accent doesn't pronounce their Hs
@@Threezi04 Hence why I'm fine with both "a herb" and "an herb", even if the silent H one looks and sounds wrong to me, as I don't think I've ever heard anybody jumble together the two. But I could count the number of times I've heard somebody say "historic(al)" with a silent H in their native dialect on one hand. Instead my ears get tortured on a semi-regular basis by ostensibly educated US hosts (late night, news, sports, RUclips, anything) declaring something "an historic moment" with a distinctly pronounced H.
Something to do with the phoneme not being a stop.
Meaningless Do made learning other languages in school very hard. I was always asking what's the word for Do in situations where the foreign language structure was different.
I find that I'm always searching for a substitute for "get/got" when using Spanish. I realize now how often English relies on that verb and in different contexts. In Spanish, there's no one verb to take its place.
Splendid! Certainly among the best Rob's videos. Great analysis, great RUclips -1.5ky page, nice humor. Just love it, what a brilliant work!
Its surprising how many grammar features Bulgarian/Macedonian shares with English. We also have sort of a meaningless "DO" - its "DA" and Its not the same DA as YES it has different function. The verb infinitive is formed with it. So if you listen to people speaking those languages you will hear a lot of DA's but they don't mean YES. Example: Da Vidya, Da sedna : to see, to sit. The articles are post positioned but there are one for each gender and in some dialects there are 3 types of articles for close, medium close and distant objects.And also the structure of the tenses also uses operators as in English. Fo example the future tense is formed with shte, which is another verb for "want"...
There was a commercial many years ago in which a well known supermodel stated, "That is something I do do." The product and specific speaker have long since escaped my memory, but the incongruous image of a beautiful woman saying do do on tv has stuck in my memory.
Sounds very normal to my native English ear.
One of the most hilarious things I've ever seen just happened. A mid-roll ad interrupted the embedded ad. 🤣
But also and as well, great video, mightily entertaining!
12:41 my first thought was "What is similar to chocolate?"
See how many meanings you can get by re-punctuating / capitalising this.
"What is this thing called love"
(For non-native speakers, remember 'Love' can be a familiar honorific for a partner or in some dialects, any female.)
Reply with your version please
@@derekmills5394 "What is this thing called, love?"
Yep, that's what my thought too: “like chocolate” = “similar to chocolate.”
@@YvonneWilson312 What! Is this thing called 'Love'?
"OK" is used throughout the world. It is not unusual to hear any language with an OK thrown in at the end of a sentence'
I've noticed that... Sometimes I'll be watching a documentary from somewhere else in the world where they're speaking some foreign language, and I'll hear an OK.
I believe it's actually spelled "okay," as well, though I often shorten it to "OK" (and it has to be in all caps).
i stand by the concept that ok originated from the sound of "k" ancient Phoenician alphabet. "ok" caught on because it was already used in english to mock the normans by saying "oc" instead of "ooi"
@@ShadowZero27 Very odd then that it is not recorded until the 19th century in America.
@@ShadowZero27 It's fairly well established that it originated as a fad spelling of "all correct" as "oll korrekt".
Concerning the indefinite article it is even weirder that there is a singular indefinite article, but no plural indefinite article.
There is - it's the zero article: the plural noun without an article.
20:07 Meanwhile in the dictionary...
Ereyesterday: **Am I a joke to you?**
Overmorrow: **Am I a joke to you?**
Aside from that, great content :D
Those are archaic words.
@@razerx100 they're only archaic if people don't use them. I also want "fromwards" to be brought back.
They’re archaic and weren’t ever really used. They’re mostly attested in translations from German, where it’s a calque of the German equivalent.
Well I use them.
@@mjb7015 Also froward (like backward, as in to and fro)
I'm surprised you didn't talk about the English 'r' sound in the weird sounds segment. It's only present in 4 other languages.
Which one? The American, "R," sound is different from the English, and in fact, no other language does it. We Americans do a weird thing in which we curl the edges of the tongue up against the teeth when pronouncing, "R." It confounds ESL students and I think it's a major reason Americans have so much trouble rolling, "R," sounds when speaking other languages. It's hard to roll when you can't overcome the usual habit of curling up the edges.
@jlangevin65 According to Wikipedia, the 'postalvelar' R sound is the standard one that's used in American, Australian and British English. This sound is only present in 4 other languages. However, the sound is often labialized which means that it's produced with rounded lips. This sound [ɹ̠ʷ] is only present in English dialects. So yes, you are correct that that sound is only in English if that's what you're referring to.
Some English speakers don't pronounce the r at all (unless it's at the beginning) and others will roll their r's.
@britcom1 The standard English R, present in the majority of British, American and Australian dialects is rare.
@@britcom1And some add an r that isn't there in the written version.
20:20 "Separate words for our mother's/father's grandparents."
I would still go with "maternal" & "paternal" grandparents.
I like these words because rather than have two unique words for this one specific idea (of grandparents), maternal and paternal are more versatile, describing anything to do specifically about one's mother's or father's side.
I think the idea is more of a separate word for Grandparent depending on the side of the family. Paternal and Maternal is just a descriptor, not a separate word that I think Rob is getting at
@@yumyumsunkie true, but I would argue that a simple yet versatile descriptor is more useful than a unique word for a unique situation.
"My maternal grandmother" or "grandmother on my mother's side" both sound clunky to me. In Swedish, for example, we just say "mormor" (lit means mother's mother). Also helps with more complex family lineage, like saying "my maternal grandfather's paternal uncle" simply is "morfars farbror".
Gets real confusing when a kid only has 2 mothers tho lol
@@LordZeebee No kid has that.
(At least not yet, although DNA technology may produce something like that in the future.)
Hello Rob, I am from Belgium, the Northern part, where we speak Flemish. That is like Dutch, but with a different pronunciation, also some other words and other expressions.
There are some words that I think do not have a direct English translation; those are: "toch", "nog", "trouwens". We use these words often.
Google Translate just gives lots of definitions for each of these words, depending on the sentence in which they are used.
For refuting a negative statement you can say, “FALSE!”
Also "Wrong!"
There is another phrase beginning with 'f' that is commonly used :)
OBJECTION!
@@ArtUniverse “You didn’t take the bins out again…” “OBJECTION!”
"Horseradish!"
I would insist that phrasal verbs are much harder to grasp in Dutch (and German) because the preposition and the verb don't always come in the same order like in English. Like for instance the example you used of opgeven in the present tense resembles the English phrasing, "Ik geef op", and the preposition is further separated like in English with a single object like in "I give something up", "Ik geef iets op", but unlike English the preposition is pushed to the end when there's more words, for example "Ik geef het gisteren op", literally "I gave it yesterday up". But _then_ as a participle it's in the same order as an infinitive, but with the "ge" prefix thing inserted between it, so "I have given it up" is "Ik heb het opgegeven". So not only does one have to learn the implied meanings of two parts that don't necessarily make sense literally, one also has to keep track of the preposition as it wanders around the phrase. Not only that, but this only actually applies to _some_ but not _all_ verbs. Sometimes they stay attached no matter what. And sometimes there are two verbs with the exact same components but are different depending on whether they're separable, like "Het komt voor" (It happens) vs "Het voorkomt" (It prevents)
What are the chances you could put these videos out hourly? Your is the single channel I wait and watch for all the time! I love this channel. Seriously - hourly...challenge yourself. I believe in you.
I think that on another video Rob said that he has a "Day Job" somewhere else, so he probably needs to sleep and eat. Just read a page or two from an English language dictionary each day, and you will be refreshed until next week's video. 🙂
@@gusloader123His 'day job' is a news presenter on DW (Deutsche Welle). Tons of videos of him there.
Fascinating!!!
Thanks Rob….
I’ve been learning Spanish and I’ve noticed some of the differences you further illuminate….
Language is fascinating and you bring this out so well…. You’re interesting and fun (:
"Do not turn off your computer"
You can turn off a motorway so why isn't it - Do not turn your computer off. ?
The local supermarket sign says: "Please ask if you need help"
So I did. I asked an assistant: "Excuse me - Do I need help?"
😁 That's asking WHETHER you need help. But it's their fault for omitting a comma: "please ask, if you need help".
Or if it was in certain American locales, perhaps you should have "aksed"?
Since the turning in that sense is figurative and references turning a knob or switch into an "off" position, I'd say that keeping the "off" next to "turn" instead of "computer" is reasonable. You are not turning the computer anywhere, you are doing to the computer the same thing you would do to another device by turning a smaller component on it (one not literally present on your computer).
Assistant: "Yes, I think you do."
You can totally say "Do not turn your computer off." It actually sounds a bit more natural to me than the other way, although both sound fine
Having a little experience with this, I'd guess the choice to use "Do not turn off your computer" was for the benefit of non-native speakers, for whom the 'shifting'[1] of the particle in "Do not turn your computer off" may be unfamiliar or less intuitive. I'd have used the more common "Don't" as well.
[1]: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_phrasal_verbs#Shifting
Came here to say I love the old RUclips interface thing and the titles you put with them! 😂😂 “Should I Learn to Read?”
Didn't use an obligatory pronoun!
Kul att du lär dig svenska Rob! Det svåraste måste vara att veta när man ska använda ”en” och ”ett”. Många gör fel på det. Och att höra skillnaden på ”anden”, the bird, och ”anden”, the spirit, till exempel, men kämpa på och lycka till!
På norsk har man "ei" i tillegg til "en" og "et", men "ei" har forsvunnet fra store deler av landet, og i bokmål, og blir erstattet an "en". På vestlandet og i nynorsk bruker vi "ei" enda, til hunkjønnsord som ei jente eller ei dør. På bokmål kan man skrive en jente, en dør, en bok osv, men intetkjønn, et hus f.eks. gjelder som på svensk.