Do you think English is as crazy as Lederer actually says it is? Why or why not? Please give several examples to support your opinion.
This post needs to be at least 125 words long and use quotes from the essay to support your claims. You will also need to respond to at least 2 other posts before class on Tuesday (Oct 23). I will also respond to your posts. Good luck with your assignment and have a great weekend!
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Mr.Pickett
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In “English is a Crazy Language” by Richard Lederer, he talks about why he thinks the English language is strange. He gives many examples of words not following a consistent pattern. He stated, “If the plural of tooth is teeth, shouldn’t the plural of booth be beeth? One goose, two geese - so one moose, two meese?”. I also think it’s is strange how inconsistent our plural and singular words can be. He also makes good points like, “there is no butter in buttermilk, no egg in eggplant, no grape in grapefruit, neither worms nor wood in wormwood”. It’s particularly odd how we just use random words that don’t have to have any relation to what they are used to name. The English language is definitely a crazy complicated language.
Eric Bates
English Is a Crazy Language
I strongly agree with Richard Lederer’s “English Is a Crazy Language.” I always found that English was a bit peculiar, and I enjoyed finding my own English puns as well. One of my own examples was if you “will not” do something, couldn’t it be “willn’t,” instead of “won’t?” What is “won’t?” Can you say “wo not?” That’s one of my own. Looking at what Shelby posted and Lederer wrote, I also found it hilarious and genius when he said “if pro and cons are opposites, is congress the opposite of progress?” (pg. 112) You can’t help but smile at the irony of the English language. With all the rules that there are in English, almost half of them are broken, but what is said still makes sense. It’s strange and ironic the things that we say. Like Eric posted on the blog, we just seem to say random words without really thinking about the meaning of what we say. And yet, although what we say may be bizarre and ironic, we can still understand what we’re saying. What other language is capable of being both insane and comprehendible?
~Patrick Hughes
Ofcourse English is crazy. I've heard tht English was crazy from popel from other countries. They told me not only do we have so many synonyms and antonyms but we have the most complex slang terms ever. We use word like "dog" and "son" to show relationship to someone. We also have only a select group of circles where sertain slang is accepted. To make matters worst we decide to spell words like dog differently to justify the meaning. W spell it d-a-w-g. These complications do nothing but confuse people trying to learn the language.
I agree with Patrick. The English language breaks a lot of it's own rules.
Like Matt stated, our slang is another very difficult thing to learn. Although slang words can be foreign to some that have lived in the United States their entire lives. Slang of any country takes time to learn, even though it has nothing to do with their accepted language.
Richar Lederer’s point of view in the essay English is a Crazy Language is agreeable. He complains about words and phrases and how they don’t have the same meaning, but use the same words. For example he says, “How can sharp speech and blunt speech be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites.” I think English is inconsistent with meanings of prefixes and suffixes. In English, the use of metaphors is inevitable, if you think about it, there is no other way to say a shoe is “shiny” or “glossy” without using a word that explains the characteristics but also relates to something completely different. English, to me is the most broad, malleable language of our time, it is “crazy”.
-Jeshua Peart
I think that this story was a good one to read. The story was funny to me. English is a crazy language. I think that the title fits the story. This story is very true a lot of words are crazy because there is no butter in buttermilk and no egg in eggplant and a few other words are the same. It is fun to make up words and make it mean something different from what it really means. I agree with what Patrick said we just seem to say random words without really thinking about the meaning of what we say. I think that what Mattjones said is true too we do make words mean something different from what then are like when some people say son or nigga.
noel jordan
I completely agree with Lederer. Upon reading his view on the matter, I came to realize that we as a society use the English language as an outlet to express ourselves. Case in point, Ebonics; they are used to creatively say a certain thing that means something else. I also agree with Eric about how in the English language, we call certain things something that has nothing to do with the item in question. i.e. "parkway" - when you drive on it and "driveway" - when you park on it. I also agree with Matt. It does confuse people when you mix around the spelling of a word just to justify the meaning. It is certainly insane how different our language than others.
I believe that Lederer’s essay makes sense to a certain extent. I mean some of the words in the English language make absolutely no sense, but a lot of the words come from Latin roots. We get the basis of our language from other places. So technically, there really isn’t anything crazy about our language at all. Maybe some words are a little strange I will admit but, I really don’t agree with his opinion when he wrote, “If the plural of tooth is teeth, shouldn’t the plural of booth be beeth?” I believe that some of the words created in the English language are based on the way something looks for example, Lederer writes about there being no butter in buttermilk, I believe the reason they call it buttermilk is because it has coloring similar to butter. And when he speaks of “ one Kleenex, two Kleenices” I think that some of the words in the English language are also spelled a certain way because they just look better spelled that way, or because they sound better.
I agree with Richard Lederer, in regards to the crazy language we call English. English is very much contradictory when it comes to many of there words and there usage. For example as stated in the text; “in what other languages do people drive in a parkway and park in a driveway?” This is a perfect example of how the English language is very much backwards, but we who speak it hardly notice these things when communicating with others. Every once in awhile I might wonder why this word is used differently even though it may have the same prefix as another word. Most of the time we are not aware of those things because we grew up speaking English and we are extremely comfortable with it. I’m very sure that someone who’s just learning to speak English realizes these things right away and are somewhat confused, and we wonder why English is deemed one of the hardest languages to learn.
Don Peart Jr.
My response to Patrick is that the words you just made up really make no sense. I mean I understand that sometimes people invent really stupid words, a lot of it is slang so it stands for something totally different, but there are also some words that you can pretty much see where the connection was made. Most of the words Lederer is using are just words that rhyme with the base word. Just because the words rhyme that doesn't mean it makes more sense. That just make you a better candidate for writing nursery rhymes.
I understand what Matt is saying about the slang we use. But other languages use slang too. We just constantly create new words to add to our already expanding vocabulary.
Well it's no wonder that English as a second language is difficult to learn. When we speak, we don't realize how crazy our language really is. In Richard Lederer's "English Is A Crazy Language", he describes some of the inconsistencies of often used, every day words. For example he writes," there is no butter in buttermilk, no egg in eggplant, [and] nogrape in grapefruit". Where in the world do we come up with this stuff? He also writes, " If pro and con are opposites, is congress the opposite of progress?"I found this one to be particularly funny. There are many words that sound the same and are spelled the same that have two unrelated meanings. Take the word table. I eat at the kitchen table and sometimes I will table a discussion until a later date. It is a wonder that we ever learned this crazy language.
Wow Don, it looks like we were thinking the same things. Obviously I agree with you and I always thought it was funny that we drive on the parkway.
In Lederer’s “English is a Crazy Language,” he talks about how the English language can be unusually strange. I would have to agree with him on some of things that he talks about but you can’t blame us for something we can’t change. Most of us have been speaking this language all of our lives and we just follow what we are taught. I do agree when he says “neither pine nor apple in pineapple, neither peas nor nuts in peanuts, and no ham in hamburger.” Who and where did these names come from? To people who speak other languages, the English language might be a little difficult to understand. Just the way we think some other languages seem just as crazy. So no I don’t totally agree with Ledere’s piece.
Man away to call this english. Reading this story it’s crazy. All because Mr.Richard has broken down the english language. For example “buttermilk does not have any butter, no grape in grapefruit, and no worm in woodworm. So how can all these words can become an english word if they don’t really say what they are. There are a lot of these words like this but why. Who can we ask about these words. So this a good story and we can find the reason why these are call this way.
Krystle Gaither
I think Lederer is right about what he feels the enligh language has come to be and what it will be in the future. Like for example when he said.''Language is like the air we breathe. It's invisible,inescapeable,indispensable,and we take it for granted.'' I think he's basically saying with english we tend to put word ttogether with the same or similar meaaning and it has the tendency to confuse people no matter age,race or place in life. At the same time the english language is popular. To an extent of being able to take it and turn what we know into a different language all together and turn it into something else that's hard to understand.
As the lines of communication opened throughout different cultures, the English language was able to infuse different rules from other languages, even if they didn’t necessarily work well with one another. Along with the fact that we aren’t using the same English as before; some times certain words change meaning (like in gay) and it starts a misconceptions, many times things are named by the slang that the person who named it used or just for the fun of it all (titmouse?). As the world changes and we start to identify other objects; the meaning of particular words start to contradict as “no ham in hamburger”, hamburger is just the original name given to it by its creator and we ignore these rules, otherwise it would get chaotic trying to rename everything.
DeAngelo Murphy
Do I think that English is as crazy as Richard Lederer says it is? Yes, I do. English is known for being the hardest language to learn and it is always changing. We are always coming up with new slang terms and adding new words to the English dictionary such as bootylicious. Words that sound the same, seem like they should be opposites, or that they should be the same thing don’t have to be.
In English words that sound the same don’t necessarily mean the same thing. As Lederer said “How can raise and raze and reckless and wreckless be opposites when each pair contains the same sound?”
Also, words that seem like they should be opposites always aren’t “If button and unbutton and tie and untie are opposites, why are loosen and unloosen and ravel and unravel the same? If bad is the opposite of good, hard the opposite of soft, and up the opposite of down, why are badly and goodly, hardly and softly, and upright and downright not opposing pairs?”
hey
First of all, anyone with the name Erik B. has to be a cool guy. :-0
However, I am not here to goof off, but I just didn't know that somebody somewhat has my name on here.
Reading your Eric B.'s comments, made me feel like I forgot to include the quotable sayings that I was supposed to for the blog. Anyway,I am glad you remembered to do so.
Back to Mr. Lederer, he definitely is having fun with his essay(writing), and I had fun reading it also.
Ms. Noel Jordan has put in words a lot of what I was just describling as far as the humor goes. Also, I'm in agreement with her about English being a strange crazy language. The author(Mr. Lederer)makes a valid, strong points to put into the media.
http://www.myspace.com/erikbforpresident
hit me up.
Richard Lederer’s “English Is a Crazy Language” was a true outlook of the English language. I found that they way we actually use our language is crazy. One statement I thought was interesting and funny was “If plural of tooth is teeth, shouldn’t the plural of booth be beeth? One goose, two geese-so one moose, two meese? One index, two indices-one Kleenex, two Kleenices (pg.112)?This talk is crazy, it made me think of when African American use the word ya’ll which means you all, why not just say you all all together? Why is it that Americans try to find a way to get around good language? There are so many rules and ways that we have to use the English, that they are broken every day. Eric made a good point when he said that we use random words and mess up the meaning. But still, we seem to understand what is being said.
I agree with noel I think that this story made a lot of great point, and had a very strong arguement about the fact that English is a crazy languagge. I really like that way he takes words that has crazy meanings, and tell how crazy they are. But overall a really good story i think.
*~Kevin Featherstone~*
Strangely enough to have read this piece before in an email from a friend, this version of the writing was much more enjoyable. I really liked the word selection Lederer uses, like "a King can rule a Kingdom, but a Queen a Queendom," and the grapefruit with no grapes. Here is a fact about the buttermilk, how do you think we make butter? Cows dont just lay or squirt out butter, its a process involved in the milk processing that you get the butter from the fats in the milk. So the reading of "English is a Crazy Language" really makes English look thrown together by a bunch kids where as if a word is used enough it finds itself in the English dictionary. Who makes the rules for this? Does it go to the house for a vote? Who might I ask has the power to do such a thing, and how can I put words in the dictionary.
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