HILARITY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
How many remembers or knows that ATM in British English is cash point. You tell a Nigerian that you want to use of the cash point and he cannot make much meaning out of it. Sometimes, even as students, it is grammatically insulting to have 'centre', when it can simply be spelt as pronounced, 'centre'. The American English seems to appeal to sentiments in this regard; the sentiments of those who are of the opinion that British English is unnecessarily difficult, especially as regards spelling. Why spend all the time trying to memorize the spelling of cheque, which is simply spelt 'check' in American English. And who wouldn't consider as more orthographically appropriate American 'tire' to British 'tyre', or American 'encyclopedia' to British 'encyclopaedia', or American 'favor/labor' to British 'favour/labour'? For God sake, why the 'ae' in encyclopaedia?
In the same vein, not many people favour, "He has forgot." when compared to, "He has forgotten". Some even think the former is incorrect. How many times would a user of English use the single quotation marks ('') instead of the double ("")? In fact, some people consider the single quotation marks as incorrect, while some think it is obsolete.
That said about the differences between American English and British English, there seems to be some issues with the structure of the language. Students wonder why the plural forms of boy, girl, rat are boys, girls and rats, respectively and further get confused when taught that the plural form of man isn't mans, nor the plural form of child, childs. The case is made worse when learners of the language are taught that the plural form of ox is oxen; box, boxes; knife, knives; thief, thieves; but chief is chiefs, not chieves.
Learners' confusion comes to the climax when they are taught that the plural forms of cattle, sheep and deer remain cattle, sheep and deer. They are also left confused, so to say, when they are told that certain verbs such as put, cut, broadcast, hit, etc, do not have 'ed' added to their past tense forms. Some times, students want to know if there is a difference between burnt/burned; learned/learned. Apart from the orthographic differences, there exists no semantic differences. It is just another instance of the British and American English dichotomy.
Furthermore, students are reminded that nouns such as foot, tooth, goose, etc. have feet, tooth and geese as their plural forms. To further compound students' problems, why the problematic resemblance of words that are pronounced alike but spelt differently? Such words, says the language, are technically referred to as homophones. So, if students are asked to spell night/knight; noun/now; flour/flower; week/weak, etc., until they are told the meaning of the actual word in the binary set, they are left confused. And there are lexical sets as ring/wring; wright/right/write; sight/cite/site; red/read (past tense of read), etc, which equally fall in the same category.
The part that appears difficult is when a verb like 'hang' has two entries in the dictionary. The first entry has 'hanged' as its past tense, while the second has 'hung' as its past tense. It is the same with the verb 'find' which has 'found' as its past tense, and another verb, 'found' which has 'founded' as its past tense form.
And come to think of it, if one had been taught that someone who drives is a driver; someone who teaches is a teacher; someone who preaches is a preacher, then one wonders why someone who cooks is not a cooker, and someone who prays is not a prayer!
Hear the conclusion of the whole matter, all these instances and many more are what make the English language interesting and boring at the same time.
0 Comments