Drifting semantically

[Charlie Reams]

People using "infer" to mean "imply" annoy me, for example.

I tend to resist anything that reduces the expressive power of the language. We already have a perfectly good word meaning imply (viz. imply) so why abuse infer? However many of these distinctions, like dependent vs. dependant, are just too subtle and are therefore likely to die off.

Also some spelling errors, like miniscule and seperate, are now so common that they are likely to become acceptable alternatives, but generally I still resist this sort of change because having multiple spellings per word makes text harder to read. German has a higher reading speed than English, probably because the language has fewer polysemic words and helpfully marks all Nouns with a Capital Letter, so sentences are easier to parse. English could benefit from some of that.

[David Roe]

I'm surprised at German being faster to read than English, just because of the way they chop the start of a verb off its root and stick it at the end of the clause. I'd have thought that would slow the job down no end as you have to check out the end rather than reading in sequence. However, I bow to the judgement of those who can actually read German (as opposed to translate it with the help of a dictionary, which is what I can do).

What's polysemic mean? My NODE's downstairs, it isn't in my average-size dictionary I keep up here.

[Brian Moore]

What's polysemic mean? My NODE's downstairs, it isn't in my average-size dictionary I keep up here.

Polysemy is when the same word has very closely related but different meanings. I'm nicking this straight out of Steven Pinker's 'The Stuff of Thought' (there, I capitalised the nouns, to make it easier to read) ... A polysemic word is one like 'door' which can mean the hole in the wall through which you walk when you go from one room to another, or the bit of wood which you put in the hole when you're not walking through it. As Pinker puts it: "With polysemy [...] the senses of a word are so tightly linked that it takes a linguist or an artificial intelligence researcher to spot the difference." Or Charlie.

[Ben Hunter]

I'm surprised at German being faster to read than English

I tried reading German once and it took me ages.

[Chris Corby]

I'm surprised at German being faster to read than English

I tried reading German once and it took me ages.

[Martin Gardner]

English is just a completely weird language. I've never actually taught English to speakers of other languages, but that's what I'll be doing for my year in France. For instance, how do you explain the totally different pronunciations of THROUGH, THOUGHT and THOUGH. I suppose you might as well add TROUGH and TOUGH to that list. English pronunciation is so illogical and without rules, I don't think anyone in the world could really explain it that well, even to another native speaker.

[Brian Moore]

For instance, how do you explain the totally different pronunciations of THROUGH, THOUGHT and THOUGH. I suppose you might as well add TROUGH and TOUGH to that list.

And LOUGH and BOUGH and THOROUGH and ....

[Gavin Chipper]

English is just a completely weird language. I've never actually taught English to speakers of other languages, but that's what I'll be doing for my year in France. For instance, how do you explain the totally different pronunciations of THROUGH, THOUGHT and THOUGH. I suppose you might as well add TROUGH and TOUGH to that list. English pronunciation is so illogical and without rules, I don't think anyone in the world could really explain it that well, even to another native speaker.

Obviously it's difficult for me to view this in a completely unbiased way, but there are good things about English (or things that aren't as bad as they are in other languages). Like not having stupid genders for nouns. Also not exactly scientific, but when I've seen listened to rally co-drivers reeling off pace notes, they seem a lot more calm and relaxed in English than in some other languages, presumably because you have to say less to get the message across. And then there's the word "the" in German.

Perhaps some of you would like to shoot me down in flames (especially since I know very little about langauges), but I've always been of the opinion that while pronunciations of words are bizarre and various other things as well, actual sentence formation is not too bad in English.

[Martin Gardner]

English is just a completely weird language. I've never actually taught English to speakers of other languages, but that's what I'll be doing for my year in France. For instance, how do you explain the totally different pronunciations of THROUGH, THOUGHT and THOUGH. I suppose you might as well add TROUGH and TOUGH to that list. English pronunciation is so illogical and without rules, I don't think anyone in the world could really explain it that well, even to another native speaker.

Obviously it's difficult for me to view this in a completely unbiased way, but there are good things about English (or things that aren't as bad as they are in other languages). Like not having stupid genders for nouns. Also not exactly scientific, but when I've seen listened to rally co-drivers reeling off pace notes, they seem a lot more calm and relaxed in English than in some other languages, presumably because you have to say less to get the message across. And then there's the word "the" in German.

Perhaps some of you would like to shoot me down in flames (especially since I know very little about langauges), but I've always been of the opinion that while pronunciations of words are bizarre and various other things as well, actual sentence formation is not too bad in English.

I think you're half right. There are no genders, although those can sometimes be useful. Sometimes in French if you say celui-ci instead of celle-ci (this one/that one), it makes it clear whether what you're talking about is a masculine or feminine noun. Again, with all the verb conjugations you get in most European languages, you don't really need them a lot. That's why in Spanish, Catalan etc they drop the pronoun (I, you, he, etc) because the conjugation tells you who's doing the action. But no, I suppose it's not really necessary.

On the other hand, English irregular verbs are hard, like buy/bought. Also there is some weird word-ordering in English that would be hard to explain. Like 'I would' (either conditional or imperfect). I know some speakers of other language that talk to me on MSN in English, what I tend to find is they write stuff that ought to be grammatically correct, but isn't! So, they've followed the rules correctly and come up with the wrong answer.

PS we're moving a bit off-topic, aren't we?

[George Jenkins]

I'm surprised at German being faster to read than English

I tried reading German once and it took me ages.

Years go, I visited my brother's German in-laws, whom lived in Hameln (Hamlin). Previous to that, I'd attended Evening classes to learn a bit of German, because nobody in the Family spoke any English. I was relieved to discover that after a couple of glasses of their Lager, German became very easy to speak.

All the Family and relations were in the house one day, loads of beer beside our chairs, and "Mutti", my Brother's Mother-in- law said to me; "Georgie, London is a beautiful City". I said "yes Mutti" She said, "London has got beautiful Parks". I said "yes Mutti" She said, "But I did not like the Ladies in the Park" You have to imagine the dead silence in the room and everyone staring at me, wide eyed and eyebrows raised. I thought of a way out of this one and fell right into the trap. I said ,"Ah! Mutti, those Ladies are now forbidden in the Park". Mutti's eyebrows shot up, and she said, "but Georgie;why are they forbidden in the Park".

I thought for a minute and wondered how to describe the Ladies and had a flash of inspiration.
I said,"Mutti, they are forbidden because they are Ladies of the night".

You should have have heard the roar of laughter that went up and with glasses raised they hollered, "Prosit, We like Georgie".

[Martin Gardner]

No offense meant, but I also get annoyed at people putting random capital letters in the middle of phrases. For nouns in German, it's obligatory. I remember when I was on Jobseekers Allowance (that's a proper noun) they asked me for my 'monthly Water Rates' (sic) and when I was going through it with the employee, I pointed this out to her, and she just looked at me like I was talking Martian (that's also a proper noun).

[Jeff Clayton]

For instance, how do you explain the totally different pronunciations of THROUGH, THOUGHT and THOUGH. I suppose you might as well add TROUGH and TOUGH to that list. English pronunciation is so illogical and without rules.

Martin

Que la langue anglaise soit diverse et sans constance - telle serait votre explication, non?

Préparez bien sûr un discours sur les racines étymologiques, les homonymes, et d'autres sujets linguistiques qui seraient utiles pour vos étudiants. Mais faites peut-être un point sur la simple coïncidence que tant de mots contiennent les mêmes lettres "O-U-G-H". On en devrait saisir cette occasion à agrandir son vocabulaire puisque le prof joue au Scrabble en deux langues.


Jeff

[Jeff Clayton]

For the non-francophiles among you, the point I'm making is that I do embrace lingustic change - I spent many hours whilst studying for my degree looking into the intricacies of French language.

I take this opportunity to apologise for screwing up - I didn't read my ODE2r properly before starting this thread, so you would have had something far simpler just on writing up numbers solutions.

I can't say I'm surprised that "times [v.] / timesed / timesing" is now officially recognised in common usage. I had a maths teacher in the mid-90s who fervently intervened when fellow pupils used that turn of phrase in class - and I thank him for ensuring that I should never have had to resort to it ever since.


Jeff

[Rosemary Roberts]

...how do you explain the totally different pronunciations of THROUGH, THOUGHT and THOUGH...

When I learned French my problem was with the identical pronunciations of differently spelled words. In one exam the dictation included "deux", "de", "d'eux", and most memorably "d'oefs". No problem if you understand what is being said, but for me...
As to how you explain it - you don't: they are there to learn, you are there to teach, they just have to buckle down and live with it.

[Phil Reynolds]

When I learned French my problem was with the identical pronunciations of differently spelled words.

Someone once told me that there are no puns in French. I realised this was utter merde on a holiday in rural France some years ago when we had our car broken into and needed to make a police report for insurance purposes. We found the nearest police station, which turned out to be the village policeman's house, and walked up the garden path to the front door, next to which was one of those electric bell-push things with a little illuminated window underneath into which you can slip a card with your name. On this one was written: "Jean Darmerie".

[Rosemary Roberts]

On this one was written: "Jean Darmerie".

Brilliant!

[Debbi Flack]

[quote On this one was written: "Jean Darmerie".[/quote]

[Martin Gardner]

When I learned French my problem was with the identical pronunciations of differently spelled words.

Someone once told me that there are no puns in French. I realised this was utter merde on a holiday in rural France some years ago when we had our car broken into and needed to make a police report for insurance purposes. We found the nearest police station, which turned out to be the village policeman's house, and walked up the garden path to the front door, next to which was one of those electric bell-push things with a little illuminated window underneath into which you can slip a card with your name. On this one was written: "Jean Darmerie".

I know an enormous amount of them, mainly for the reason stated above, all the homophones you can have in French (deux, de, d'eux...) I think one such set of words in a school text book was dans, I'll have a go here,

dans, dan, dont, don, dons, dent, dents, d'ans (difficult to use in a sentence that one)

Before someone asks, dan is the martial arts term (maybe Joseph can pick up on this as it's of Japanese origin). PS any chance of moving this to the off-topic board as I said before?

[Martin Gardner]

When I learned French my problem was with the identical pronunciations of differently spelled words.

Someone once told me that there are no puns in French. I realised this was utter merde on a holiday in rural France some years ago when we had our car broken into and needed to make a police report for insurance purposes. We found the nearest police station, which turned out to be the village policeman's house, and walked up the garden path to the front door, next to which was one of those electric bell-push things with a little illuminated window underneath into which you can slip a card with your name. On this one was written: "Jean Darmerie".

I know an enormous amount of them, mainly for the reason stated above, all the homophones you can have in French (deux, de, d'eux...) I think one such set of words in a school text book was dans, I'll have a go here,

dans, dan, dont, don, dons, dent, dents, d'ans (difficult to use in a sentence that one)

Before someone asks, dan is the martial arts term (maybe Joseph can pick up on this as it's of Japanese origin). PS any chance of moving this to the off-topic board as I said before?

Speaking of, that reminds me of a Scrabble game whether I was wondering if you could have a plural of MOI (me, myself). I then realised that MOIS means month anyway. I can think of quite a few invariable words where you can add an S and it forms a totally different word (DO, PI are two). There are some feminine forms as well, where the feminine form isn't possible but if you add an E, it makes a completely new word. Also of interest is RADEUSE which doesn't have a masculine form. That's because it means prostitute in 19th Century French, so at the time there was no word for male prostitute. In the same way, TRAMEUSE (sewing machine) doesn't have a masculine form either.

[George Jenkins]

No offense meant, but I also get annoyed at people putting random capital letters in the middle of phrases. For nouns in German, it's obligatory. I remember when I was on Job Seekers Allowance (that's a proper noun) they asked me for my 'monthly Water Rates' (sic) and when I was going through it with the employee, I pointed this out to her, and she just looked at me like I was talking Martian (that's also a proper noun).

I understand what you mean Martin, Martin, but those of us whom lacked a good education have a problem. I know that a noun should have a capital (is that word a noun?), But I don't always know the difference between a noun and a verb. I also have a problem with numbers and there is a word for it, something similar to dyslexia

In my case, after five weeks (is that a noun) summer holidays, my mother took us hop picking for five weeks. I was never able to catch up with lessons, including maths formulas. I left school with a bad report a got a job sweeping up Bakelite(?) dust in a factory, and that is when my education about real life began.

Just two incidents to demonstrate what life is about. I was at Victoria station, (I was a Train driver) and a workmate from another Depot came up to me and said, "George, I've got a problem, and I've been told that you're the one to tell me what to do". I was able to tell him the answer to his building problem.
The second one concerned a golfing friend. We are in his house and he said to me,"do you think that you could mend our electric clock, it's been stopped for about two years". "O.K. I said, and put a new fuse in the plug". He thought that it was amazing when the clock started working.

My friend was University educated, was head of a Government department dealing with supplies to the armed forces, could work out mathematical problems and adding up in his head, but was completely lacking in common sense. His wife told me quietly, that it's better to have a practical mind than an educated one.

So Martin, you are quite right with what you say, and when I read some of the messages on these pages, I smile at the mistakes with Grammar etc, but it is an affectionate smile, because unless you are the business of communication, it just does't matter. By the way, you spelt the words Job seekers as one word. I clicked on spelling check, and it seperated to two words.

[Martin Gardner]

No offense meant, but I also get annoyed at people putting random capital letters in the middle of phrases. For nouns in German, it's obligatory. I remember when I was on Jobseekers Allowance (that's a proper noun) they asked me for my 'monthly Water Rates' (sic) and when I was going through it with the employee, I pointed this out to her, and she just looked at me like I was talking Martian (that's also a proper noun).

I understand what you mean Martin, Martin, but those of us whom lacked a good education have a problem. I know that a noun should have a capital (is that word a noun?), But I don't always know the difference between a noun and a verb. I also have a problem with numbers and there is a word for it, something similar to dyslexia

In my case, after five weeks (is that a noun) summer holidays, my mother took us hop picking for five weeks. I was never able to catch up with lessons, including maths formulas. I left school with a bad report a got a job sweeping up Bakelite(?) dust in a factory, and that is when my education about real life began.

Just two incidents to demonstrate what life is about. I was at Victoria station, (I was a Train driver) and a workmate from another Depot came up to me and said, "George, I've got a problem, and I've been told that you're the one to tell me what to do". I was able to tell him the answer to his building problem.
The second one concerned a golfing friend. We are in his house and he said to me,"do you think that you could mend our electric clock, it's been stopped for about two years". "O.K. I said, and put a new fuse in the plug". He thought that it was amazing when the clock started working.

My friend was University educated, was head of a Government department dealing with supplies to the armed forces, could work out mathematical problems and adding up in his head, but was completely lacking in common sense. His wife told me quietly, that it's better to have a practical mind than an educated one.

So Martin, you are quite right with what you say, and when I read some of the messages on these pages, I smile at the mistakes with Grammar etc, but it is an affectionate smile, because unless you are the business of communication, it just does't matter. By the way, you spelt the words Job seekers as one word. I clicked on spelling check, and it seperated to two words.

Hmm, yeah I think you could argue that job seeker is a two words, but in the proper nouns sense it's Jobseeker's Allowance (coined by the Department for Work and Pension, Google confirms this btw). But I did miss the apostrophe. Plus I do agree with you on your other point, I wouldn't say "better", but practical skills are immensely important for things like cooking, cleaning, shopping, fixing things, keeping up with payments etc. I certainly wasn't having a go at uneducated people - I couldn't really care less. Plus, nowadays you can just copy and paste into word and press F7.

[Charlie Reams]

Plus, nowadays you can just copy and paste into word and press F7.

...as long as you don't mind sifting through all the false positives and overlooking lots of obvious mistakes.

[Martin Gardner]

Plus, nowadays you can just copy and paste into word and press F7.

...as long as you don't mind sifting through all the false positives and overlooking lots of obvious mistakes.

Yeah, it does tend to correct good English, if you write "the dog that I saw last week" it tries to change it to "the dog which I saw last week". Is the first one really so much worse than the second one?

[David Roe]

Anglo-French pun: Why does the French President only have one egg for breakfast? Because one egg's un oeuf.

I was told English and French are the only two languages where cryptic crosswords really work, because they're the only two languages with puns. Oddly enough, American seems to be included as one of the languages without.

[Charlie Reams]

I was told English and French are the only two languages where cryptic crosswords really work, because they're the only two languages with puns. Oddly enough, American seems to be included as one of the languages without.

They certainly exist in Greek and, I would guess, other languages with a dense lexicon (Italian?), although I'm told by native speakers that they're not common in German or Serbian.

[Martin Gardner]

I was told English and French are the only two languages where cryptic crosswords really work, because they're the only two languages with puns. Oddly enough, American seems to be included as one of the languages without.

I find this hard to believe, although there isn't another language I speak well enough to test this out on. I'd love to know what your source is, I'll gladly read (or skim) it.

Edit: I skived off Spanish today, so I can't ask my tutor until next week.

[Jason Larsen]

I consider that ok!

[Martin Gardner]

I was told English and French are the only two languages where cryptic crosswords really work, because they're the only two languages with puns. Oddly enough, American seems to be included as one of the languages without.

I find this hard to believe, although there isn't another language I speak well enough to test this out on. I'd love to know what your source is, I'll gladly read (or skim) it.

Edit: I skived off Spanish today, so I can't ask my tutor until next week.

Wikipedia does a pretty good job with this, in Spanish it came up with this:

Entre el clavel blanco y la rosa roja, su majestad escoja. / Entre el clavel blanco y la rosa roja, su majestad es coja.

The key is only in the last two words, escoja from escoger (to choose/pick) and es coja (you are "crap" or something that translates it better than that). So thanks to Freetranslation.com, you get

Between the white carnation and the red rose, your majesty may choose / your majesty is crap

[George Jenkins]

No offense meant, but I also get annoyed at people putting random capital letters in the middle of phrases. For nouns in German, it's obligatory. I remember when I was on Job Seekers Allowance (that's a proper noun) they asked me for my 'monthly Water Rates' (sic) and when I was going through it with the employee, I pointed this out to her, and she just looked at me like I was talking Martian (that's also a proper noun).

I understand what you mean Martin, Martin, but those of us whom lacked a good education have a problem. I know that a noun should have a capital (is that word a noun?), But I don't always know the difference between a noun and a verb. I also have a problem with numbers and there is a word for it, something similar to dyslexia

In my case, after five weeks (is that a noun) summer holidays, my mother took us hop picking for five weeks. I was never able to catch up with lessons, including maths formulas. I left school with a bad report a got a job sweeping up Bakelite(?) dust in a factory, and that is when my education about real life began.

Just two incidents to demonstrate what life is about. I was at Victoria station, (I was a Train driver) and a workmate from another Depot came up to me and said, "George, I've got a problem, and I've been told that you're the one to tell me what to do". I was able to tell him the answer to his building problem.
The second one concerned a golfing friend. We are in his house and he said to me,"do you think that you could mend our electric clock, it's been stopped for about two years". "O.K. I said, and put a new fuse in the plug". He thought that it was amazing when the clock started working.

My friend was University educated, was head of a Government department dealing with supplies to the armed forces, could work out mathematical problems and adding up in his head, but was completely lacking in common sense. His wife told me quietly, that it's better to have a practical mind than an educated one.

So Martin, you are quite right with what you say, and when I read some of the messages on these pages, I smile at the mistakes with Grammar etc, but it is an affectionate smile, because unless you are the business of communication, it just does't matter. By the way, you spelt the words Job seekers as one word. I clicked on spelling check, and it started to two words.

Hmm, yeah I think you could argue that job seeker is a two words, but in the proper nouns sense it's Jobseeker's Allowance (coined by the Department for Work and Pension, Google confirms this btw). But I did miss the apostrophe. Plus I do agree with you on your other point, I wouldn't say "better", but practical skills are immensely important for things like cooking, cleaning, shopping, fixing things, keeping up with payments etc. I certainly wasn't having a go at uneducated people - I couldn't really care less. Plus, nowadays you can just copy and paste into word and press F7.

I found your answer quite interesting. I know that English is said to be a live language and is subject to change over the years. I accept your explanation about proper nouns, and will now quietly back away from the minefield called the English language

[Phil Reynolds]

This doesn't really count, as the words involved aren't true homophones, but amusing enough to be worthy of mention:

I once used Altavista's Babelfish translator to find English translations of some Spanish sentences in a play I was reading, one of which was "Tengo diezinueve años", which (I subsequently discovered) actually means "I am nineteen years old". However, not knowing how to enter the character ñ, and not thinking it would matter, I just typed "Tengo diezinueve anos". The translation came back as: "I have nineteen anuses".

[David Roe]

I find this hard to believe, although there isn't another language I speak well enough to test this out on. I'd love to know what your source is, I'll gladly read (or skim) it.

No idea what the source was, sorry, it's something I heard years ago. But it was said in relation to crosswords, and why the English and French are the only two nations to have them. It might well not be true.

[Charlie Reams]

It might well not be true.

It isn't true, as I said already.

not knowing how to enter the character ñ, and not thinking it would matter

It's interesting how different languages have different attitudes towards accents and other diacritics. They're so rare in English that we generally ignore them, and certainly you'd be surprised to find a word like émigré in some section of the dictionary other than E. In French, they're quite particular about correct accents in general text but are happy to drop them in, say, Scrabble (where there are no tiles for the different variants of e, for example) and French dictionaries, phone books etc are sorted with accents ignored. However I believe Swiss French is sorted with the different kinds of E as different letters (no idea what order.) In Swedish, the extra letters like are considered completely distinct; ä is as different to a as, say, v is to u, however similar they look. They also tend to place them at the end of the alphabet, so Swedish equivalent of zymurgy is something like övning (I don't speak much Swedish, maybe someone can come up with something better.) Both Dutch and Welsh have the curious property of having a letter which is clearly two characters (IJ and LL respectively) and there are probably others like this. The IJ is particularly odd because, depending on context, it can be sorted as if it were two characters, or as one character occurring between I and J, or (particularly puzzlingly) as one character occurring between X and Y. There's probably lots more variation in other languages but that's all I can think of for now.

Edit: Oh yes, the German Eszett (ß), which is a kind of contraction of "SS", is sorted exactly as if it were SS. Which is nothing to do with accents, but kind of cool.

[Hannah O]

Talking of foreign Scrabble, I did try to get Russian Scrabble but the darned foreign language bookshop had sold out! With French accents, it's all about the é- if you say nous avons pensé it means "we thought", but if you say nous avons pense it sort of means "we have (I) think", since pense is first-person present, as in je pense.

In martial arts, white belt to brown belt is measured in "kyu", whereas black belt levels are measured in "dan", so if you're a 6th dan not even the most hardcore people will want to mess with you, but if you're 6th kyu, people would still take you on. By the way, if you can come up with what colour belt 6th kyu is, you get points! Also, in some karate styles, there's "ho", which is used to describe your provisional black belt "shodan ho", where "sho" means first. Also, it can be halfway to a belt- if you're 7th kyu ho, you are halfway to your orange belt, and in the karate I do you get an orange tip put onto your yellow belt to signify it.

I find English a bit restrictive in regards to creative writing and poetry- it's a SVO language, or a subject verb object language. Take a sentence like "I hit Boris", rearrange it and you get "Boris hit me", completely different meaning. In Russian (or even Latin! I don't know the exact details for German) where cases and conjugations dictate the language, as long as you stick the right ending on each word, you can use whatever crazy word order you want, like "me Boris hit" or "hit me Boris" and a Russian speaker will understand completely that Boris hit you, even if you put the verb first. In Latin poetry like Ovid, he threw in his verbs all over the place, even deferring them a line or two for scansion's sake and effect.

[Charlie Reams]

I find English a bit restrictive in regards to creative writing and poetry

If English was good enough for Jesus than it's good enough for me.

Not having to carry around a load of inflective baggage makes English words and sentences shorter. A sentence has to have a word order so why not make use of it?

[Ian Volante]

Edit: Oh yes, the German Eszett (ß), which is a kind of contraction of "SS", is sorted exactly as if it were SS. Which is nothing to do with accents, but kind of cool.

I had something in my mind that ß had been officially dropped a few years ago, but I now see that the reality is more complex:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_ort ... rm_of_1996

Or simpler I suppose.

[Kai Laddiman]

By the way, if you can come up with what colour belt 6th kyu is, you get points!

Stretching my colour vision here, but is it purple?

[Gavin Chipper]

Something that seems to have sprung up recently - "I find that concerning." Sounds weird. Don't say it.

[Martin Gardner]

Talking of foreign Scrabble, I did try to get Russian Scrabble but the darned foreign language bookshop had sold out! With French accents, it's all about the é- if you say nous avons pensé it means "we thought", but if you say nous avons pense it sort of means "we have (I) think", since pense is first-person present, as in je pense.

In martial arts, white belt to brown belt is measured in "kyu", whereas black belt levels are measured in "dan", so if you're a 6th dan not even the most hardcore people will want to mess with you, but if you're 6th kyu, people would still take you on. By the way, if you can come up with what colour belt 6th kyu is, you get points! Also, in some karate styles, there's "ho", which is used to describe your provisional black belt "shodan ho", where "sho" means first. Also, it can be halfway to a belt- if you're 7th kyu ho, you are halfway to your orange belt, and in the karate I do you get an orange tip put onto your yellow belt to signify it.

I find English a bit restrictive in regards to creative writing and poetry- it's a SVO language, or a subject verb object language. Take a sentence like "I hit Boris", rearrange it and you get "Boris hit me", completely different meaning. In Russian (or even Latin! I don't know the exact details for German) where cases and conjugations dictate the language, as long as you stick the right ending on each word, you can use whatever crazy word order you want, like "me Boris hit" or "hit me Boris" and a Russian speaker will understand completely that Boris hit you, even if you put the verb first. In Latin poetry like Ovid, he threw in his verbs all over the place, even deferring them a line or two for scansion's sake and effect.

I think I did a Latin example of this on my blog (he blog is in French which complicates things even more!) I'll have found it by the time I have finished the post.

First thing, "nous avons pense" isn't really French, "nous avons, je pense" isn't great either because avoir needs an object, go for "nous l'avons, je pense" and I'm with you on that one. Most Romance languages drop the personal pronouns (I, you, he, etc) but French doesn't. I think this might be because it would be enormously ambiguous, as French takes all the Latin words, and whatever the ending of the word, it becomes and -e in French, or more rarely just nothing at all. The four Latin conjugations become three, with -are becoming -er (sometimes -ar in Old French), -ire become -ir and -ēre and -ere merge into one.

Take aimer (Latin, amare; Old French, amer)
j'aime
tu aimes
il aime
nous aimons
vous aimez
ils aiment

If you remove the pronouns and the silent letters, roughly speaking you get

aime
aime
aime
aimon
aimez
aime

So four of the six are homophones. Plus aimons and aimez are the imperative forms (aimons nos mères - let's love our mothers (yes it sounds weird ok)). So without the pronouns, you ended up with enormous ambiguity. The only ones where they drop the pronouns regularly are vais (no real homophones) and suis (a couple of homophones, not a bad one for puns this).

I do Spanish, and they do drop the pronouns which can sometimes cause confusion. Basically, for hablo and habló the stress is different, but if you miss that it changes from I speak to he spoke. The imperative hable is also exactly the same as the third person singular indicative, so if you add a pronoun it helps things a bit:

Hable francés (could be 'he speaks French' or just 'speak French')

Anyway, I suppose I should find that Latin quote.

Canis felem mordet
Canem feles mordet

NB this could be inaccurate because I did it myself using a guide-book. Basically, canis and feles are the nominative cases, so they are the subject (doing the biting) while the other two are accusative cases. I'd better stop now, I think.

[Martin Gardner]

This doesn't really count, as the words involved aren't true homophones, but amusing enough to be worthy of mention:

I once used Altavista's Babelfish translator to find English translations of some Spanish sentences in a play I was reading, one of which was "Tengo diezinueve años", which (I subsequently discovered) actually means "I am nineteen years old". However, not knowing how to enter the character ñ, and not thinking it would matter, I just typed "Tengo diezinueve anos". The translation came back as: "I have nineteen anuses".

Ha in fairness yes I wished a Spanish friend happy new year over the Internet and without the accent, it said 'a good new anus'.

Re: accents in French Scrabble, it's easy to see the argument against it because some a really common, yes (é, è) but you also get some rare ones (ù and à are pretty rare). I think there was a discussion about this on the French Scrabble mailing list last year, there are a couple of words that have unique accents only found on that word. Obviously, in this case if you had that accented letter, you'd only be able to use it in one word in the entire dictionary! And if you didn't have that accented letter, you could never play that word! I know Romanian drops all the accents, Spanish doesn't bother about the stress accent (hablo/habló) but keeps the "ñ", and German has some accented vowels, but no scharfussesse (apology for spelling).

Also I've noticed in lessons that tutors often put accents in French on capital letters. Theoretically that's wrong (les Etats-Unis) but apparently it's coming into fashion. I'll probably ask Florian Lévy about this, as he knows absolutely everything, lol.

[Kevin Thurlow]

"Both Dutch and Welsh have the curious property of having a letter which is clearly two characters (IJ and LL respectively) and there are probably others like this. "

You could even include "oe", which is used in English - Chemicals like oestrogen and oestradiol are now called estrogen and estradiol officially by IUPAC. This seems reasonable as the first part of "oe" is not a separate "o" (and I can't find a way of depicting it properly). However, IUPAC have changed "eicosane" to "icosane", and I don't think "ei" is just one letter!

The German "ss" symbol (not to be confused with the SS) is rather fun as it appears in many different forms, sometimes looking very "B-like" and sometimes completely different.

Kevin

[Martin Gardner]

"Both Dutch and Welsh have the curious property of having a letter which is clearly two characters (IJ and LL respectively) and there are probably others like this. "

You could even include "oe", which is used in English - Chemicals like oestrogen and oestradiol are now called estrogen and estradiol officially by IUPAC. This seems reasonable as the first part of "oe" is not a separate "o" (and I can't find a way of depicting it properly). However, IUPAC have changed "eicosane" to "icosane", and I don't think "ei" is just one letter!

The German "ss" symbol (not to be confused with the SS) is rather fun as it appears in many different forms, sometimes looking very "B-like" and sometimes completely different.

Kevin

Let's take "æ" for example (I can't find the oe one as easily on the numbers pad). It's called a ligature (adj. ligatured) and still exists in modern French. Again, in Scrabble oeil is 4 letters long, as there's no oe letter on its own. Really the -oe- should be ligatured, but most of the time on computers, there is no way to do ligatures other than the tricky ALT + (number), which not a lot of people know about, but it's vital if you're a French student at a university.

[Matt Morrison]

I can't find the oe one as easily on the numbers pad

Anyone on a Windows PC, Start > Programs > Accessories > System > Character Map is a good place to learn these.
œ is ALT+0156

[Neil Zussman]

Both Dutch and Welsh have the curious property of having a letter which is clearly two characters (IJ and LL respectively) and there are probably others like this. The IJ is particularly odd because, depending on context, it can be sorted as if it were two characters, or as one character occurring between I and J, or (particularly puzzlingly) as one character occurring between X and Y.

Bizarrely, in my (admittedly limited) knowledge of Dutch-language wordsearches, the IJ character is printed as IJ in the list of words to find, but is always found in the grid as a Y.

[Hannah O]

6th kyu is a green belt in the karate I do!

Are ligatures necessary for writing in French? I don't use them (although I'm just an AS level student, so I might not have reached that stage yet!)

[David Roe]

Danish have a letter Å, or å in lower case, which can also be written as AA or aa. Eg. the town of Ålborg, or Aalborg. With the complication that the letter Åå as a separate letter comes at position 27, after Z, so Ålborg is at the end of any index. But Aalborg is at the beginning of any index. Which must add a bit of excitement to looking people up in the telephone directory.

[Martin Gardner]

6th kyu is a green belt in the karate I do!

Are ligatures necessary for writing in French? I don't use them (although I'm just an AS level student, so I might not have reached that stage yet!)

Well, technically but but French people don't use them on the Internet, because they don't exist on a French keyboard. As for the accents question you mentioned a couple of days ago, a friend came up with this ambiguous phrase.

LE PALAIS DES CONGRES

You don't put accents on capital letters traditionally, although a lot of people are against that, for the reason I'm going to give.

Le palais des congrès- the house of congress (politics, etc)

Le palais des congres - the palace of conger eels (marine life).

[Brian Moore]

But you don't need accents (or lack of them) to make ambiguous phrases in French. There was a case of a French teacher (a teacher in France) several years ago who lost his job because he used to set his class riddles. Unwisely, for each time the class got the wrong solution to the riddle, his chosen forfeit was to remove an item of clothing. They had lots of wrong guesses and he ended up naked in front of the class. His riddle: "Je suis une femme, mais je ne suis pas une femme." There is a simple solution if you consider the conjugations of 'être' and 'suivre'. I guess the class were wannabe Sartres and went for an existentialist explanation, rather than thinking about their own language.

[Hannah O]

Ah, I remember getting very confused before finding out that suivre was a horrible irregular little verb. "I follow a woman, but I am not a woman"? As for Sartre, "L'enfer, c'est les autres"- he knew his stuff!

[Brian Moore]

Ah, I remember getting very confused before finding out that suivre was a horrible irregular little verb. "I follow a woman, but I am not a woman"? As for Sartre, "L'enfer, c'est les autres"- he knew his stuff!

I've just found a longer version of the riddle on French website:
Je suis un homme, mais je ne suis pas un homme
Je suis une femme, mais je ne suis pas une femme.
Je suis ce que je suis, mais je ne suis pas ce que je suis
parce que si j'étais ce que je suis, je ne serais pas ce que je suis.
Je suis aussi, une voiture, un train, un chien, et tout ce qui bouge ....

[Hannah O]

Oh now that is cool!
Tough though.

I follow a man but I am not a man,
I am a woman but I don't follow a woman,
I am who I am, but I am not what I follow
because if I was what I follow, I would not be who I am.
I also follow a car, a train, a dog, and all that moves?

Is this at least partly right?

[Martin Gardner]

Oh now that is cool!
Tough though.

I follow a man but I am not a man,
I am a woman but I don't follow a woman,
I am who I am, but I am not what I follow
because if I was what I follow, I would not be who I am.
I also follow a car, a train, a dog, and all that moves?

Is this at least partly right?

Well as soon as you translate it you lose the double meaning anyway. Oddly enough, double-entendre is strictly an English phrase, double-sens is the French.

There's one I use for poker in French which is je pense, donc je suis. I'll let someone else explain that...

[Matt Morrison]

There's one I use for poker in French which is je pense, donc je suis. I'll let someone else explain that...

I presume the literal translation is "I think, therefore I am" but my French poker terminology is too rusty to guess at the double-sens

[George Jenkins]

Oh now that is cool!
Tough though.

I follow a man but I am not a man,
I am a woman but I don't follow a woman,
I am who I am, but I am not what I follow
because if I was what I follow, I would not be who I am.
I also follow a car, a train, a dog, and all that moves?

Is this at least partly right?

Well as soon as you translate it you lose the double meaning anyway. Oddly enough, double-entendre is strictly an English phrase, double-sens is the French.

There's one I use for poker in French which is je pense, donc je suis. I'll let someone else explain that...

Is it a shadow. If it's not, I'll slink back to my armchair

[Brian Moore]

Oh now that is cool!
Tough though.

I follow a man but I am not a man,
I am a woman but I don't follow a woman,
I am who I am, but I am not what I follow
because if I was what I follow, I would not be who I am.
I also follow a car, a train, a dog, and all that moves?

Is this at least partly right?

Yes, although of course it could equally be translated as:
I am a man but I do not follow a man,
I follow a woman, but I am not a woman, etc.

It just makes me wonder what French people actually think for 'suis' when they understand the riddle ... we 'get' it by the translation. I suppose there is probably a French word with exactly the same meaning as 'suivre' that they could substitute to differentiate the two meanings of 'suis'. But if there isn't, then they would have to ignore the word and think in underlying concepts, if you get what I mean. Maybe that's why the riddle works so well in France. I must try to get to grips with Stephen Pinker better. I'm sure that he knows what he's talking about.

[Martin Gardner]

There's one I use for poker in French which is je pense, donc je suis. I'll let someone else explain that...

I presume the literal translation is "I think, therefore I am" but my French poker terminology is too rusty to guess at the double-sens

Fair enough, suivre is actually the French term for to call (a bet) so it cold roughly be translated as I've thought about it so I'm going to call. I do have a book in French on poker, and on chess, but I'm hilarious bad at chess whatever the language.

[Martin Gardner]

Aha, a good example of Microsoft word fudging something is this. I wrote "a recent Channel 4 documentary." and it tried to change it to documentaries (to agree with '4').

[Neil Zussman]

Aha, a good example of Microsoft word fudging something is this. I wrote "a recent Channell 4 documentary." and it tried to change it to documentaries (to agree with '4').

I'm more surprised that it didn't try to change your spelling of 'Channel.'

[Martin Gardner]

Aha, a good example of Microsoft word fudging something is this. I wrote "a recent Channell 4 documentary." and it tried to change it to documentaries (to agree with '4').

I'm more surprised that it didn't try to change your spelling of 'Channel.'

Yeah too quick for me, I just edited that.

[Roxanne]

I've got a better one for Microsoft Word making mistakes; my (severely dyslexic) boyfriend put in his CV that he had worked in a "wherehouse" (warehouse). Word changed it to "whorehouse".

[Charlie Reams]

I've got a better one for Microsoft Word making mistakes; my (severely dyslexic) boyfriend put in his CV that he had worked in a "wherehouse" (warehouse). Word changed it to "whorehouse".

That's what they all say.