Is it the definite article?
So, to reiterate, when it comes to when to use the “the”, the only universal rule is this:
Some rules (such as the two you’ve given) might hold 95%+ of the time, but unfortunately there may be weird and arbitrary exceptions that you’ll just have to learn.
Is it capitalization?
Because a cursory look at the Wikipedia page for capitalization also reveals that it is not without its quirks.
For example:
planets and other celestial bodies: “Jupiter”, “the Crab Nebula”; and “the Earth”, “the Sun”, or “the Moon” should be capitalized according to the International Astronomical Union based on its manual of style, but style guides may suggest differently.[19]
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalization_in_English
Is it the fact the way something is written almost has no bearing on how it’s pronounced?
Please tell me your thoughts.
IMO, the weirdest thing about English is something every speaker does but probably never thinks about.
Whenever multiple adjectives describe a single noun, there’s a particular order in which they must go. If you have big tractor that’s also green, you would call it a “big green tractor” but you would never call it a “green big tractor”. Not only does it sound wrong, it’s grammatically incorrect.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/one-weird-trick-for-adjective-order
100% this. No one is ever taught it as a rule in school. You’re never tested over it. But all native English speakers intuitively know it.
Adjectives in English absolutely have to be in this order: opinion-size-age-shape-colour-origin-material-purpose Noun. So you can have a lovely little old rectangular green French silver whittling knife. But if you mess with that word order in the slightest you’ll sound like a maniac.
Mark Forsyth, The Elements of Eloquence: How To Turn the Perfect English Phrase
Pronunciation of same letters differently.
Rough. Bough. Cough. Sough. Lough. Dough. Though. Tough.
I also think the way we insert curse words is abso-fucking-lutely unique.
I like that different pronunciations and spellings are a history of integrating different languages and cultures. Especially now with all the hatred, spite and racism, at least I get to be amused that the language they claim as their own has a fundamental “diversity, equity and inclusion “
And no the Brit’s can’t claim to be the mother language - maybe they were the melting pot that spawned its birth, but as long as their fanny’s are on the wrong side …
(As someone who has historically been too sheltered so thought some societal issues were over dramatized, nothing could make me so pro “diversity, equity, and inclusion” like today’s US politics.)
I mean, fanny has been the front bits since long before the yanks started using it as slang in ww1.
I always thought the celestial bodies thing was just another case of proper nouns. Jupiter is always capitalized because it’s a proper name.
But “the Moon” can be either. “the Moon” is the proper name of Earths natural satellite so should be capitalized, but “the moon” is a description of any planetary body’s natural satellite so should NOT be
Similar for “the Sun”. “the Sun” is the proper name of Earths star, but “the sun” is any solar system’s star. I like that in so much science fiction they’ve figured this out and use a distinct proper name, “Sol”
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One I always find weird is how often we reuse the exact same word with the same spelling and pronunciation to mean wildly different things. For example, the word ‘jam’ can mean:
- a fruit preserve
- to play music
- heavy traffic
- a door that won’t open
- to cram something into something else
- a difficult situation
Or ‘saw’, which can be to look at something in the past tense or to cut wood. The word ‘run’ apparently has over 600 different meanings!
We also have contronyms, which is when a word also means the opposite of itself. For example ‘dust’, which can mean to add dust or remove it. Or ‘left’, which can mean remaining (“I only have three left”) or departing (“They left.”)
A door can get jammed on the door jamb
Chinese would like a word
I remember my English teacher telling me the word “set” was the worst example of this, with over 200 definitions in the unabridged Oxford dictionary.
Or ‘left’, which can mean remaining (“I only have three left”) or departing (“They left.”)
I remember learning Spanish in school. Discovering the difference between “dejar” and “irse” drove this home for me. Dejar - to leave [a thing somewhere.] Irse - to leave [a place.] (“Salir” also works for the latter meaning, but it can mean more of “to go out.”)
“Ella se fue y dejó el libro en la mesa.” (“She left and left the book on the table.”)
Speaking of “driving (a point) home,” I’d say one of the weirdest/most interesting quirks of English is how many idioms we rely on.
I vote spelling. English spelling makes less sense than French or Danish and they take mothereffing liberties as well. No naturally occurring, alphabet using language will probably score perfect on that but I suspect English will be in the relegation zone of that table.
Beware of meat and great and threat, they rhyme with suite and straight and debt…
It’s hard, can be understood through tough thorough thought though.
Final boss: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Ruize-rijmen/De_Chaos
The disparity between written English and its pronunciation. Identically written words represented with vastly different sounds, and no real and consistent system whatsoever.
I agree. I like it (the spelling often shows the history of the word, relationships between words) but for an allegedly phonetic system it’s nonsense. Not sure it’s worse than French, but Spanish is so phonetic I can read aloud stuff I don’t even understand!
I learned to read as I was learning to talk, more like a language than a skill - kids learning in school are taught phonics, and I would despair if that was how I was taught.
Once. Really? The word Wonss is spelled Once?
Mandatory reference here: The Chaos (Poem)
Probably spelling, but there’s one quirk in English that makes it so you can build the arguably weirdest sentence in any language. Here’s the short version and explanation for people unaware of the 3 meanings of the word (which I’ll use 3 different spellings to make it easier to understand):
Buffalois a city in USA- a
buffalois another name for an animal also known as a bison - To
BUFFALOmeans to bother, or bully.
So a
Buffalo buffalois a Bison from the city of Buffalo. If a Bison from Buffalo were to bother another Bison from Buffalo, you get the common example of this phrase which isBuffalo buffalo BUFFALO Buffalo buffalowhich means Buffalo bison BOTHERS Buffalo bison. You can add an extra Buffalo at the start to make it a headline of a newspaper telling you where this happened, but that only gives youBuffalo, Buffalo buffalo BUFFALO Buffalo buffalo…But we can make it better. See, in English you can add specifiers to a noun, the way we’re doing with Buffalo to specify this is a Bison from Buffalo, but the specification can be a full sentence. For example if we wanted to say that specify that the bison is known to bother other bisons you can call him a “bison bully” bison, or even if he’s from Buffalo and only bullies other bisons from Buffalo he’s a Buffalo “Buffalo bison bully” bison, or a Buffalo “Buffalo buffalo BUFFALO” buffalo.
Cool, so if a Bison from Buffalo known for bullying other bisons from Buffalo is bullying yet another Buffalo bison you can say that a “Buffalo Buffalo buffalo BUFFALO buffalo BUFFALO Buffalo buffalo”… But what if the bison it’s bullying is also known to bully other bisons from buffalo? Then
Buffalo buffalo BUFFALO Buffalo buffalo BUFFALO Buffalo buffalo BUFFALO Buffalo buffaloBut our bison might actually EXCLUSIVELY bully bisons that bully other bisons, so he’s a Buffalo bison BULLY BULLY, and if he’s from the city of Buffalo he’s a Buffalo Buffalo buffalo BUFFALO BUFFALO. So if our heroic bison made a mistake and bullied another Bison who only bullies bullies then:
Buffalo Buffalo buffalo BUFFALO BUFFALO buffalo BUFFALO Buffalo Buffalo buffalo BUFFALO BUFFALOAnd you can keep making the sentence infinitely long by specifying that tach bison in the story is a Buffalo bison Bully bison.
Chinese has something a bit like this too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion-Eating_Poet_in_the_Stone_Den
I don’t think articles, definite or indefinite are the weirdest things about English, if only because other languages have the same features.
There have to be weirder things that are specific to this one language, but it’s hard to find something that isn’t shared by any other language, especially not the closely related ones. German goes one step further with the whole capitalisation thing, for example, where all nouns are capitalised, not just those that are names.
Perhaps we could go for how vowels all become, or at least move towards schwa in unstressed positions. That’s the vowel at the end of “the” when unstressed and before a consonant. (German has some of this with final -e (and to some extent, the same with older French pronunciation), but it’s not necessarily the same thing going on there.)
Consonant aspiration might be another oddity. Aspiration depends on position in a word in English and doesn’t hold any semantic or grammatical meaning, but in other languages, an aspirated consonant can completely change the meaning of a word. I think Korean is one such language. They even have different letters for the different sounds.
If you don’t know what aspiration is, it’s the burst of air that follows some consonants. English speakers generally don’t even know they’re doing it. The often-used example is “pin” versus “spin”, where the leading “p” of “pin” has far more air after it than it does in “spin”.
Aspiration depends on position in a word in English and doesn’t hold any semantic or grammatical meaning, but in other languages, an aspirated consonant can completely change the meaning of a word.
It reminds me of how Hindi/Urdu use v and w. Which sound is produced depends on where it is in a word, but to native speakers, both v and w may sound the same. That’s why Hindustani ESL speakers tend to switch between the two in ways that don’t make sense to native English speakers.
It helps me wrap my mind around it to think of how English has two different ways of pronouncing L - there’s “light” L at the beginning of words (love, listen, like.) Then there’s “dark” L used at the end or sometimes in the middle (full, ball, visible.) The word “little” provides an example of both types (and if you pronounce it with a glottal stop for the “tt”, such as in a Cockney accent, the word is basically “light L, glottal stop, dark L.”)
Of course, aspiration itself also works as a way to understand it, since aspirated sounds make a difference in Hindustani, but English spelling treats them interchangeably. However, that difference is too hard for many of us to distinguish, so I find that comparing L sounds is easier for English speakers to recognize as a comparison.
I think what is exceptional for English is that negation and forming a question require a modal verb. You can say “I love apples” but not “*I not love apples”, nor “*Love I apples?”. This is rare in a language. (An exception for negation could be “Apples, I love not”, but this does not sound like everyday speech.)
That officially you have “whom” on the books, but then if anyone uses it, they are seen as weird.
Dearest creature in creation, The weirdest part is pronunciation…
Personally I definitely think it’s the pronunciation, which is… self explanatory. Other languages have weird grammar rules too, but even French pronunciation is more consistent 😭
Which makes it funny when I hear fellow English speakers knock on French spelling. At least I can reasonably assume what a written French word is supposed to sound like. English doesn’t give us that luxury.
It’s that familiar feeling…how do you say…?
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo
