By Bill Bryson
English is a very messy language. It regularly absorbs words and idioms from other language. It's still growing, evolving. No one standardizes it.
Unfortunately, this makes for a messy history. There are so many adhoc influences, that that there is no overarching narrative that that helps your reason through it.
Maybe that's the conclusion-- English is messy and will continue to be messy.
Some things from the book that I want to remember...
Older class systems sometimes pop up in English. Consider that in England farmers and chefs were different classes. You can see what foods the upper class ate, because they used different words than the lower class....
Cows become beef and veal.
Pigs become pork and bacon.
Sheep become lamb and mutton.
Goose and ducks become fowl.
Deer becomes venison
Chicken stays chicken.
Yes, chicken was not ate by the upper classes.
"Set it up"
"Set it down"
To someone learning English, these two phrases would appear to be opposites, yet that is not true. English is almost malicious to foreign learners in its ability to come up with these problems.
What is the difference between these two sentences?
"My suffering is terrible."
"I am suffering terribly."
Or these three?
"It's time for lunch."
"It's the time for our lunch."
"It's our time for a lunch."
While there are lots of rules to English grammar. They are at best a descriptive interpretation by people who care. Fundamentally, most English is spoken by feel. Grammar rules are there to try and help you find sentence structures that will probably make the English feel right.
English is a very messy language. It regularly absorbs words and idioms from other language. It's still growing, evolving. No one standardizes it.
Unfortunately, this makes for a messy history. There are so many adhoc influences, that that there is no overarching narrative that that helps your reason through it.
Maybe that's the conclusion-- English is messy and will continue to be messy.
Some things from the book that I want to remember...
Older class systems sometimes pop up in English. Consider that in England farmers and chefs were different classes. You can see what foods the upper class ate, because they used different words than the lower class....
Cows become beef and veal.
Pigs become pork and bacon.
Sheep become lamb and mutton.
Goose and ducks become fowl.
Deer becomes venison
Chicken stays chicken.
Yes, chicken was not ate by the upper classes.
"Set it up"
"Set it down"
To someone learning English, these two phrases would appear to be opposites, yet that is not true. English is almost malicious to foreign learners in its ability to come up with these problems.
What is the difference between these two sentences?
"My suffering is terrible."
"I am suffering terribly."
Or these three?
"It's time for lunch."
"It's the time for our lunch."
"It's our time for a lunch."
While there are lots of rules to English grammar. They are at best a descriptive interpretation by people who care. Fundamentally, most English is spoken by feel. Grammar rules are there to try and help you find sentence structures that will probably make the English feel right.
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