[The English Language] Etymology, Words, Phrases, Dialects and other fascinating things

valgomir

EggyToast wrote: »

I think the best word is "be." Not only is it incredibly useful, it's also incredibly short, a verb, and when you conjugate it it becomes an entirely different word!

Despite my love of the English language, and figuring out where sayings come from and what words mean, I do find myself to not be a prescriptivist. Language changes, rules change, and I find that trying to establish an authority just leads to dogma for no reason. It's more interesting, to me, to see how a culture, region, or people are using language than to force them to speak correctly. I mean, we could have arguments about how American English is more "pure" than British because British has too much French influence (use of "-re," too many vowels, softer pronunciation), but what's the point? It's more interesting to talk about how they're different now and how that came to be, accepting that we're seeing two approaches to the same language.

Besides, with a word like "manoeuvring," it's hard for the British to be correct.

Anyway, I'm also anti-prescriptivist because my ex-wife's aunt made a hoity-toity correction to a statement I made once, casually, about leaving the "-ly" off an adverb. It's stuck with me, and when I come across great sayings like "All men are created equal," I think "Where's your -ly now, bitch!"

It's correct that way. From what I understood (bear in mind, I am not a native speaker), "All men are created equally" would mean that they are created in the exact same manner (since the adverb equally points to the verb before it, "create"), whereas "All men are created equal" is what you are probably referring to in that the adjective describes the noun before it, "men".

AManFromEarth wrote: »

valgomir wrote: »

AManFromEarth wrote: »

valgomir wrote: »

My English teacher at university is a really cool guy.
We start every lesson by watching a video (the first lesson started with a video of a kid doing about 20 or 30 different accents, for example) and then spend the rest of the lesson discussing it, doing (very few) exercises and learning about various figures of speech.

I was completely dumbstruck when I learned that "dude" was originally an insult.

What do you learn? Are the videos on literature and improving your English skills and the like? What sort of class is it, a gen ed or a higher level course? I am hesitantly interested in learning about this new approach to English but also quite skeptical.

It is a required language course for advanced students that everyone who studies electronic engineering (or, in my case, information system technologies) has to take.
We are supposed to learn how to communicate technical aspects and things like that to other people, but since this is the first semester, we are practising general listening comprehension for now.

The videos are sometimes related to engineering, sometimes just random but interesting things our teacher stumbled across.

Huh. That's an oddly specific course but it sounds very useful.

I thought you meant like "English 101" for all students where you just sit around watching videos and talking about them.

In which case I'd want to smack your English department across the collective face.

Well, I did say that this was a course for advanced speakers. I do not know for sure how it differs from the "normal" course (my guess is they discuss the topics less and focus more on solving exercises) but it is not meant to be an introduction to the language itself.
Being a passable English speaker was one of the requirements for my major, so that would explain the absence of an English 101 course. That, and the fact that 90% (*) of German students learn English from the 5th grade on.

(*) I pulled that number out of my ass.

Atomika

Behemoth wrote: »

Kana wrote: »

Today replaying some Empire: Total War I found out that "shrapnel"'s source is from Henry Shrapnel, british inventor and army officer.

His exploding shells were such a big deal the British army gave him the equivalent of more than 100,000 pounds a year for the rest of his life.

It's always funny to discover words that seem so natural and appropriate are actually just some dude's last name.

Like "sandwich" or "volt" or "crapper".

Or "gigawatt."


Baron Henrich Anders von Gigawatt, inventor of electricity.

Taramoor

Question.

A friend of mine is looking for a figure of speech or idiom that means, sort of, "Things are pretty terrible right now, but they were awesome for a while, and they can't take that away from us."

I've mined what other resources I have, and can't come up with anything. The closest we've come is "We'll always have Paris..." but that doesn't quite seem to encapsulate it. I think we want something that's sort of the opposite of "It's always darkest just before the dawn" but more dwelling on the ideal past aspect.

AManFromEarth

Taramoor wrote: »

Question.

A friend of mine is looking for a figure of speech or idiom that means, sort of, "Things are pretty terrible right now, but they were awesome for a while, and they can't take that away from us."

I've mined what other resources I have, and can't come up with anything. The closest we've come is "We'll always have Paris..." but that doesn't quite seem to encapsulate it. I think we want something that's sort of the opposite of "It's always darkest just before the dawn" but more dwelling on the ideal past aspect.

I don't think there is one for that. We'll always have Paris might be the closest.

Take this opportunity to coin a new one!

DarkPrimus

Grislo wrote: »

Lucascraft wrote: »

When I was in my American English class, I learned a new definition. The official term for inserting one word inside of another word is called an "in-fix." Most of the time, this occurs with swear words.

In-fucking-credible. The fucking is an in-fix.

I would call that tmesis. Or, at least, it's a subcategory of tmesis.

Which is an unusual word in itself. If I'm feeling a little vicious while preparing a quiz for students I'll sometimes add a question along the lines of 'name a word beginning with tm AND a word ending in mt.'

I don't know about words starting with tm, but as for ones ending in mt... "dreamt" sprang immediately to mind.

Grislo

Yeah, tmesis and dreamt is what I'd expect them to answer.

RT800

I try and pick a new word to learn each day. Then I try and use that word throughout the day.

Then people get all pissed at me for using uncommon words.

Today's word is "contumely".