239
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2023
239 points (93.5% liked)
Asklemmy
43831 readers
887 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
German has the awesome ability to just shove words together to make new words and the language accepts it. It's unambiguous (so I understand).
This is another great opportunity to promote a book that I enjoyed as a fan of language:
Highly Irregular: Why Tough, Through, and Dough Don't Rhyme―And Other Oddities of the English Language
Interview with the author here (got me to buy the book):
In 1920, a Dutch writer named Gerard Nolst Trenité published a poem in English titled The Chaos, designed to draw attention to English spelling and pronunciation — and all the confusion its absurdities have let loose upon the world. It begins “Dearest creature in creation; Studying English pronunciation; I will teach you in my verse; Sounds like corpse, corps, horse and worse” and ends: “Hiccough has the sound of ‘cup’…. My advice is—give it up!”