Curiosities of the English language

 CURIOSIDADES DA LÍNGUA INGLESA

(Versão em Português)

Olá a todos os membros,

            No dia 05 de Novembro de 2012 será inaugurado um novo tópico a respeito das curiosidades da língua inglesa.

            Este tópico tem como objetivo o conhecimento da origem da língua, suas peculiaridades e curiosidades, com o intuito de conhecer aspectos da língua inglesa que não se encontram em livros, gramáticas ou nas escolas.

            É mais uma forma de compreender a língua inglesa e relaxar ao mesmo tempo com as curiosidades que a língua apresenta.

            Este tópico será publicado todas às segundas-feiras.

            Espero que se divirtam, pois diversão também é cultura, e a cada semana vocês se surpreenderão com as curiosidades que a língua inglesa possui.

                Boa diversão e não fiquem curiosos.

CURIOSIDADES DE LA LENGUA INGLESA

(Versión en español)

Hola a todos los miembros,

            El 5 de noviembre de 2012 se abrirá un nuevo artículo sobre las curiosidades del idioma Inglés.

            Este tema está dirigido a la comprensión de los orígenes del lenguaje, sus peculiaridades y curiosidades, con el objetivo de estudiar los aspectos de Inglés que no están en los libros, gramáticas o escuelas.

             Es una manera de entender el idioma Inglés y relajarse al mismo tiempo con las curiosidades que el lenguaje presenta.

             Este tema se publicará cada lunes.

             Espero que se diviertan, porque la diversión también es cultura, y cada semana te sorprenderás con las curiosidades que el idioma Inglés tiene.

              Buena diversión y no sentir curiosidad. 

Curiosities about the English Language

          About the English language:

          For more than 500 years ago no one spoke English in North America. Native Americans had their own language, as well as the Inuit (Eskimos), the Aleuts in Canada, the Aborigines in Australia and Maoris in New Zealand.

          The British arrived and established their colonies, then other people came with their customs, their languages ​​and their cultures. The U.S. has the greatest mix of cultures in the world, "Melting Pot", a popular American expression. At the beginning of colonization were the English, Irish, French, German and Scandinavian. Then came the Italians, Jews, Chinese, Japanese and Russian.

          The reasons that brought immigrants to North America were difficult economic conditions in their countries of origin, the gold rush and later, religious persecution, as in the case of the Jews who left Russia and other countries between 1880 and 1910 . And the latest American citizens are Spanish-speaking, from Mexico, other countries in Central and South America

          The current English language stems from a mixture of these and other great people. See, e.g. hence some of the following words:

Exit, Circus, Video - LATIM

Psychology, Telephone, Cinema - GREEK

 Biscuit, Garage, Restaurant - FRENCH

 Piano Concerto, Spaghetti - ITALIANO

 Hamburger, Kindergarten - GERMAN

 Guitar, Tango, Banana - SPANISH

 Tomato, Potato, Tabacco - AMERICAN NATIVE LANGUAGE

 Curry, Bungalow, Pyjamas - INDIAN

           English as a Second Language

          The English language is spoken in more than 60 countries as a second language, or considered the official language of government. Example:

 India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka

 Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, Papua New Guinea

 South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Cameroon, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Kenya

 Puerto Rico and other

          A country like New Zealand, the English language is the first language. In fact, it is the only language for most people. Approximately 100,000 Maoris, have their own language, but everyone also speaks English. As well as Australia, Tasmania, England, Ireland, Canada, USA, Jamaica, Trinidad and other Caribbean countries.

          Today the English language is almost the same all over the world., However there are differences in writing between one country and another.

           Below are some of them between British English vs. American English:

Catalogue - Catalog

 Programme - Program

 Litre - Liter

 Theatre - Theater

 Colour - Color

 Neighbour-Neighbor

 Centre - Center

 Humour - Humor

          ... And sometimes a completely different word. Here are some of them:

Flat - Apartment

 Crisps / chips - Potato chips / French Fries

 Cinema - Movie Theater

 Film - Movie

 Toilet - Bathroom

 Holiday - Vacation

 To phone - To call

 Petrol - Gas

 Sweets - Candy

 Biscuit - Cookie

 Queue - Line

 Motorway - Highway

 Chemist - Drugstore

 Lorry - Truck

Curiosities and tips of written English: Ideogram Academy of Letters and Informal

          Spelling problems in many countries, are resolved through academia or government agencies that act as arbitrators in the use and abuse of their respective languages. So it was in Italy (1582), France (1634), Spain (1713) and many other countries. Portugal and Brazil are no exception to this rule, and around half the academies of the two countries meet to change the language. Already the English-speaking countries have never had something similar, although in the past there has been clamor for its establishment. This function has been exercised by dictionaries, starting with those of Samuel Johnson (1755) for British English, and Noah Webster (1828), for American English, later followed by other referees as to what is correct or incorrect.

          Samuel Johnson (1709 - 1784) and Noah Webster (1758 - 1843)

English seen as Chinese ideogram

          The need is obvious, for dealing with written English you have to have eyes of a hawk, ears of a dog and elephant memory. Psychologists, educators and linguists will say. After long studies on how best to teach English writing, these professionals have concluded finally, still not unanimous, that it is better to learn the written word as a constellation of letters whose image is more or less recorded in the student's mind instead of insisting on a letter-by-letter reading. Accordingly, the written English would have some resemblance to the Chinese character. For example, the words one (one) and who (who) would be read as a whole, without considering the implications of the letters that compose them. Proponents of this system, called the look and say (look and say), find that, once engraved in mind, they can be read and written with the same ease as well less complicated in languages ​​such as Spanish.

          Opponents are quick on the trigger point and then serious difficulties with this approach. With the mess spell reigning in the language, how to get a separate image of a sufficient number of common words that allow the student to a satisfactory degree of efficiency? And as to enable the student to deal with unknown words, unless you have the ability to link sounds and letters? The native speaker, oblivious to theories and hunches, seems to have already given the answer to the professionals, in the most natural: thus he will not read the word ghoti with the sound suggested by George Bernard Shaw, for the native ghoti never be / fish / and yes / goaty /.

The Academy of Arts Informal English

          Any outsider in the English language is subject to become one of his victims, which is not surprising if we consider that even dictionaries and academics make their slips. Therefore they say that, somehow, the Englishman still loose. The limits imposed on it come than we vaguely call an "informal academy of letters": schools, universities, the press and literature, led by a number of self-appointed arbitrators to judge what is right and what is wrong. Unfortunately, not always the performance of these referees leads to clarification and simplification. Rather, their quirks, and mutual antipathies vanities often make only hinder the process, as we shall see in the next articles.

Curiosities and tips of written English: confusion between pronunciation and writing

           Ghoti is a bizarre shape of writing the sound that corresponds to the simple word fish (fish). This metamorphosis is only possible because the spelling of the English language, like so many other facets of language, is unpredictable. There are rules, of course, but some seem more revenue for the unwary take a madhouse.

            George Bernard Shaw did not hesitate to use this example to denounce the English alphabet as a system as crazy and illogical that you could replace the word by word ghoti fish, and keep exactly the same sounds. Consider: GH would be the F, as in tough (read / Taff / hard, resistant); What would the sound of I as in women (/ uêmen / women), and the sound would be represented by SH IT, as in the word nation (/ neishan / nation).

           "Ghoti" and "Fish" have the same pronunciation

          Indeed, Shaw's beliefs on the subject were so strong that, for years, he led a vigorous campaign to reform the alphabet. How could anything in life, he left in his will certain amounts to be used as prize for inventing an alphabet in English, in which each symbol corresponds to a sound in spoken language.

          It would be an alphabet, with the basic features of many others invented throughout history. As Steven Pinker in his book The Language Instinct, all of them are nothing more than artificial processes that limit communication to only one direction, the vision, when the essential meaning of the language is that of hearing. After all, says Pinker, spoken language is a human instinct, whereas written language is not. The best example is what happens to a child. She learns to speak instinctively, giving extraordinary leaps in their knowledge almost from one day to another, but when it comes time to learn to read and write, the child usually goes through hard times. This process is anything but instinctive, which explains the fact that the world is full of human beings who would not recognize a letter or your life depended on it.

          The writing, in any language, probably came wrapped in mysteries. In English, the word spelling, which corresponds to spelling or spelling in Portuguese, already seems to bring a load of something unnatural. In Old English spell meant, among other things, as today, enchantment, witchcraft, sorcery. His strange powers fully manifested during the Middle English spelling that turned the act of making spells by reading magic books spelling aloud.

The Old English alphabet

          Indeed, the principle of creating a relationship between symbols and sounds had nothing new: he existed long before the word spelling, and long before the invasion of the British Isles by Celts, Angles and Saxons.

          The Old English alphabet consisted of characters called runes (runes), a word that, in the Scandinavian languages, meant secret, mystery, and who were represented by rods with antlers. It is not known exactly where did these symbols, but scholars say that risk were probably an adaptation of the Etruscan alphabet to which some people attributed magical powers.

          The "Futhark" or runic alphabet gets its name from first six letters F, U, Th, A, R, K

          The Anglo-Saxon culture was traditionally oral - the runes used for certain purposes, but in general, was an illiterate people. Only after the arrival of Christianity is that the Anglo-Saxons began to become literate and to adopt the Roman alphabet, with more or less satisfactory results in relation sound / symbol. However, they soon discover that the Old English sounds that had not existed in Latin and the Roman alphabet had no letter that corresponded to these strange sounds. The solution was to add new symbols to the Roman alphabet adapted from the runic alphabet, especially those that corresponded to sounds that later came to be known as the TH, W and G. Later, these symbols adapted found a new barrier and ended up disappearing, victims of progress - is that the mechanical printers imported from mainland Europe simply did not foresee the existence of symbols outside the Roman alphabet. In its place began to be used combinations of letters we have today.

30 fun facts about the English language:

1.The lesser sentence in the English language is "Go!";

 2.A quick brown fox the phrase jumps over the lazy dog ​​contains all the letters of the alphabet. Phrases like this are called pangrama;

 3.Dreamt is the only word that ends with "mt";

 4.Existem only two English words that have all five vowels in order: abstemious and facetious;

 5.Ewe and you have the same pronunciation, but no letters in common. The same situation occurs with eye and I;

 6.Almost is the longest word that has the letters in alphabetical order;

 7.Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis is the longest word in the English language;

 8.Rhythm is the longest word in English written without vowels;

 9.Of all words in the English language, the word set is that has more settings;

 10.Typewriter is the longest word that can be typed using only letters in the same row of the keyboard;

 11.The largest English word that can be drawn without repeating letters is uncopyrightable;

 12.The U.S. and Britain have no official language;

 13.Un study conducted in 2010 by Harvard University in partnership with Google discovered that the English language contains approximately 1,022,000 words, and that figure is growing at a rate of 8,500 words per year;

 14.Do not exist in English words that rhyme with month, orange, silver and purple;

 15.Only two words that are used currently end in-gry: angry and hungry;

 16.More words begin with s than with any other letter in English, even with the letter and used in the most general;

 17.The # symbol has several English names: hash, pound sign, number sign, among others;

 18.No keyboard, stewardesses is the longest word typed with only the left hand and lollipop is the longest word that can be typed using only the right hand.

 19.Skiing is the only word that i have two letters in sequence;

 20.The word greatest strengths is only English word with a vowel;

 21.The first dictionary of the English language was published in 1755;

 22.There are over 100 dialects based on English;

 23.Goddessship is the only word that has a letter that repeats 3 times in a row;

 24.Underground is the only word that starts and ends with und;

 25 dot over the letter i is called a tittle;

 26.Four is the only number whose letters represent the total number itself;

 27.Forty is the only number whose letters appear in alphabetical order;

 28.There is just a word that contains only one vowel that is repeated six times: indivisibility;

 29.There are only three words that end in-ceed: proceed, Exceed and succeed;

 30.Of all world languages, English has the largest vocabulary.