{"id":40,"date":"2024-06-03T15:49:32","date_gmt":"2024-06-03T15:49:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/learntospeakenglishwell.com\/?p=40"},"modified":"2024-06-03T15:49:32","modified_gmt":"2024-06-03T15:49:32","slug":"10-funny-things-about-english-that-make-no-sense","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/learntospeakenglishwell.com\/?p=40","title":{"rendered":"10 funny things about English that make no sense"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>\u2018Prison\u2019 and \u2018jail\u2019 are the same thing, but a prisoner and a jailer are opposites! A prisoner is the one being locked up, while a jailer is the one who guards the prisoners to make sure they don\u2019t escape.<br><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Horror, horrible, horrifying and horrific all mean something very bad or scary. Terror, terrible and terrifying mean the same thing, but terrific is used to describe something great! Originally, terrific also meant something scary, but the meaning has changed over time. If you read something written hundreds of years ago, you might hear about \u2018a terrific dragon\u2019 or something similar. The author meant the dragon was scary and terrible, but we read it as being fun and cool!<br><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>English has a word for \u2018the act of throwing someone out of a window\u2019 (defenestration), but not for \u2018the day after tomorrow\u2019 or \u2018the day before yesterday.\u2019<br><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>If you look at the word parts, \u2018awful\u2019 and \u2018awesome\u2019 both originally meant \u2018something that creates a feeling of awe,\u2019 but these days, awful means something bad and awesome means something good!<br><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>If you hear someone saying \u2018thou\u2019 and \u2018thee\u2019 instead of \u2018you\u2019, it sounds very old-fashioned and formal to us. However, in Medieval times hundreds of years ago, people used \u2018you\u2019 as the more formal and distant way of addressing someone, and \u2018thou\u2019 was used for close friends and family. That means, if you could travel through time to the Middle Ages, and you met someone important, saying \u2018I am honoured to meet thee\u2019 could actually be quite insulting!<br><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Sometimes words that are spelled the same are pronounced quite differently to each other. One of the best examples of this is the words \u2018rough,\u2019 \u2018dough,\u2019 \u2018cough,\u2019 and \u2018through.\u2019 Oh, and also \u2018hiccough\u2019! (That\u2019s pronounced \u2018hiccup,\u2019 weirdly.) And on the other side of things, sometimes words that look completely different actually sound the same. \u2018Pony\u2019 and \u2018bologna\u2019 rhyme! Tear and tier are pronounced the same but tear and tear are different. It truly is ridiculous.<br><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>English uses something called the Oxford Comma, which is when you put a comma before the word \u2018and\u2019. It\u2019s not always necessary, but sometimes it makes sentences clearer. For example, you could say \u201cI met Tom Cruise, a construction worker and a circus clown,\u201d but that makes it sound like Tom Cruise IS the worker and the clown. In this case it\u2019d be better to use the Oxford Comma, \u2018I met Tom Cruise, a construction worker, and a circus clown,\u2019 to make it clear that these are three different people you\u2019re talking about.<br><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>If something is \u2018the bomb,\u2019 it\u2019s good. If it \u2018bombed,\u2019 it was bad. If it \u2018works like a bomb,\u2019 it\u2019s good. If it\u2019s \u2019a bomb,\u2019 it could be either good or bad, depending on where you live. Don\u2019t worry, I\u2019m confused too!<br><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Americans and British people use the word \u2018quite\u2019 in a different way. In America, it\u2019s generally used to mean \u2018very,\u2019 but in England it means \u2018just a bit.\u2019 So if two people call something \u2018quite good,\u2019 the American is saying he liked it and the Brit is saying he didn\u2019t!<br><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>If you thought contractions such as \u2018can\u2019t\u2019 were bad, wait until you hear about triple contractions! These are most common used in areas such as the southern USA. How about \u2018y\u2019all\u2019d\u2019ve\u2019? Can you guess what it means? \u2018You all would have.\u2019 And \u2018I\u2019dn\u2019t\u2019ve?\u2019 \u2018I would not have\u2019! <\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n<p>Sometimes you just have to laugh at the ridiculousness that come from English being, as some people say, four languages in a trench coat pretending to be one language!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sometimes you just have to laugh at the ridiculousness that come from English being, as some people say, four languages in a trench coat pretending to be one language!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fun-stuff-about-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/learntospeakenglishwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/learntospeakenglishwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/learntospeakenglishwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/learntospeakenglishwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/learntospeakenglishwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/learntospeakenglishwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55,"href":"https:\/\/learntospeakenglishwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40\/revisions\/55"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/learntospeakenglishwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/learntospeakenglishwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/learntospeakenglishwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}