Pet Peeves of your native language

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Mark44 said:
Back to pet peeves of English. Many words in English have their origins in other languages - French, Latin, Greek, German, Hindi, and many other sources. One word in English is sort of a hybrid -- rhododendron, meaning "red tree." The rhodo part (red) comes from Greek, while the dendron part (tree) is derived from Latin.
The German dictionary says
"latin rhododendron <greek rhodódendron = oleander, actually = rose tree, to: déndron = tree"
so it seems to be completely Greek and then was copied into Latin and from there into our modern languages.
 
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fresh_42 said:
The German dictionary says
"latin rhododendron <greek rhodódendron = oleander, actually = rose tree, to: déndron = tree"
so it seems to be completely Greek and then was copied into Latin
Those thieving Romans ...
 
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fresh_42 said:
The German dictionary says
"latin rhododendron <greek rhodódendron = oleander, actually = rose tree, to: déndron = tree"
so it seems to be completely Greek and then was copied into Latin and from there into our modern languages.
We have Norse too, they raped pillaged then settled down and gave some great words
Anyway interesting as they are, these are not peeves and I do not want to get the thread closed for deviation.
Stupid rule in spelling, i before e except after c. Every time I utilized the rule as a kid it seemed like I had found the exception.
German rule when I first encountered it seemed much more logical, if it sounds like i then it ends in i, if it sounds like e..
I remember thinking, 'Why the hell didn't we think of that?'
 
Peeves in English - What a difference a single letter makes!

wretched - two syllables, accent on first
retched - one syllable
 
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Another peeve - how many vowels are there in English?
Certainly a, e, i, o, and u are vowels, with the usual qualifier that y is sometimes a vowel. That makes six in total.

Occasionally teachers will add w to the list, for a total of seven. When I asked for a word in which w was used as a vowel, one teacher gave "awe" as an answer, but that wasn't very satisfying.

Can you think of a word in English in which w convincingly plays the role of a vowel?
 
Mark44 said:
Another peeve - how many vowels are there in English?
Certainly a, e, i, o, and u are vowels, with the usual qualifier that y is sometimes a vowel. That makes six in total.

Occasionally teachers will add w to the list, for a total of seven. When I asked for a word in which w was used as a vowel, one teacher gave "awe" as an answer, but that wasn't very satisfying.

Can you think of a word in English in which w convincingly plays the role of a vowel?
Two?
 
fresh_42 said:
Are tricks allowed?
https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=cwm
I saw that one but I have never heard of it so I went for something more accessible.
Low and bow were also examples given where w influences the phonetic, the vowel sound.
Replace the w with o and you have 'oo' as in 'two' rather than 'low' as in 'toe.'
 
pinball1970 said:
I saw that one but I have never heard of it so I went for something more accessible.
Low and bow were also examples given where w influences the phonetic, the vowel sound.
Replace the w with o and you have 'oo' as in 'two' rather than 'low' as in 'toe.'
Yes, but it only changes the vowel, it isn't one.
 
fresh_42 said:
Yes, but it only changes the vowel, it isn't one.
Yes but my original was 'two.'
In 'two' the w does not change the sound it substitutes the second o. It is playing the part of a vowel.
 
fresh_42 said:
I am not convinced, as 'to' sounds the same way, with or without 'w'.
I think there is slightly more emphasis on 'too' than 'to.'
This is what happens when you invite a mathematician to analyse the rules of grammar when 'rigour' does not apply. I think you are right in a kind of a way but then again I have a point.
Imagine if mathematics worked in the same way?
Another peeve about the English language, it has too many grey areas and no real
rigour.
 
fresh_42 said:
I am not convinced, as 'to' sounds the same way, with or without 'w'.
I'm not convinced either.

Regarding w used as a vowel, I'm thinking of a word with w and no other vowels to complicate things.
 
In Bryn Mawr (the college), the second word is one syllable. The w alters the sound of the a. Is it a vowel? Well the i in Giordano certainly does the same thing and nobody calls it a consonant. (It's 3 syllables, although many Americans add a 4th). So it acts as a vowel.

Is this convincing? Probably not. It's certainly acting more vowel-like than consonant-like, but does that make it a vowel? I think the dichotomy consonant/vowel is the source of the confusion. W is acting as neither in this or the other examples (cow, low, awe). It actually is acting more like a diacritic, but is written as a letter instead.
 
It is difficult in English to decide as the language lacks the 1-1 correspondence of other languages which normally pronounce as they write. I searched for words of Arabic origin, because as far as I know, Arabic does not write vowels, but I haven't found any: vowels have always been included for the English version.

We have silent vowels in German, even sound changing vowels, especially in the area near the Netherlands which didn't follow some historical sound shifts. But it's hard to imagine a consonant becoming a vowel.
 
Mark44 said:
That's the one...
Welsh is not English
 
pinball1970 said:
Welsh is not English
English is chock-full of words that came from other languages. Would you deny that kayak, garage, wiener, pajamas, bungalow, pizza, and many others aren't words in English? They all have their origins in other languages.
 
Bandersnatch said:
Oh, and one of the nuttier words in English is 'fast'. It's a noun, it's an adjective, it's a verb, it's an adverb. I mean, come on.

And as adverb and adjective (in the sense of rapid) it has also come to mean the opposite of what it used to. There are plenty of remainders of the old meaning as in "hold fast " "fasten" etc.
 
epenguin said:
And as adverb and adjective (in the sense of rapid) it has also come to mean the opposite of what it used to. There are plenty of remainders of the old meaning as in "hold fast " "fasten" etc.
Thanks for the insight! "Hold fast" would be "Halte fest" in German. There is also a word 'fast' in German, but it means 'almost', which gives reason to some 'fast food' jokes.
 
Vanadium 50 said:
the second word is one syllable.
Is it? My ear always heard PTT, faculty member from Bryn Mawr down in summers at U. of Del., saying "mower;" never had the presence of mind to ask him.
 
Greg Bernhardt said:
Pet Peeves of your native language

How do non-native speakers of US English feel about all its idioms? - for example, "pet peeve".

When I sense that I'm communicating with a non-native speaker, I tried to avoid idioms. However, this makes what I write sound unnatural.
 
I detest the presence of gender in languages, for things that do not have gender in nature. For languages that are replete with that flaw, it is a severe barrier to their acquisition as secondary or tertiary languages. I find it especially exasperating when a noun that is masculine in one language is feminine in another.
 
fresh_42 said:
German isn't English either, but the list of German words in English is really long!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_German_expressions_in_English

Rather forced IMO to call most of those 'English'. The majority are pretty rare anyway, many having a specifically German context that would be apparent any time you used it. In almost all cases I would be perfectly conscious of the German origin. The only example where I did not know this was 'hamster'. Dachshunds and Rottweilers bark with German accents, but maybe Poodles have been fully naturalised into English .

In a few cases there might be some question about whether you called the origin German or Yiddish, and so indirectly German. I thought delicatessen might be such a case. But whatever, it turns out that that has come through French and Italian according to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delicatessen

There are bound to be some German terms in scientific English. One that sticks out is 'eigen-', as in the awkward set of hybrids eigenvalue, eigenvector, eigenfunction etc. You occasionally see attempts at an English version like "proper-" "self-" or "auto-" even going back a long way, but they have not taken. I suspect they will in the end. Like you used to see in texts 'gegen-' as in 'gegen ion' now totally supplanted by 'counter-'.
 
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