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I was thinking about the English language, spelling, and pronunciations the other day, and this entered my mind. Please bear with me and do the following…..
read out loud each of the following words;
tough
enough
rough
cough
Did you say cuff ?
Now, say the first three words again,
and the last word is…..dough……did you say duff?
How did we ever learn English ?
And don't forget "Bow Wow" - which can mean "Is it lunchtime yet?" or "Get off my lawn".
There are also words that have different definitions and different pronunciations but are spelled the same. Bow: front of a ship. Bow: device for shooting arrows. Dove: a species of bird. Dove: to have jumped into water. Bass: a species of fish. Bass: lowest musical range.
That’s precisely why I admire people who speak English as a second language.
A lifetime ago I attended a couple Mandarin classes in Toronto - first off, the instructor said "There are four tones in Mandarin "uh", "uh", "uh", "uh" - can you tell the difference?"
A group of Cantonese speaking Chinese girls comprised half the class or more.....none of us nodded "yes".
That’s precisely why I admire people who speak English as a second language.
I had no problems with it.
I don't gots no idea!
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