Stitchit123

Last year my GD brought home her list of spelling words for Fridays test. Then she had to write sentences using each word with both pronunciations. She was 8 at the time.she says -With all the letters in the ABC's the people from the olden days could have been more creative when spelling words... but we challenged her and the word READ stumped her because if you say I red the book then it's now the color. But that still did nothing for convincing her the people from the olden days knew what they were doing

germanquilter

My thoughts exactly...born and raised in Germany; moved to the United States in 1984

Boston1954

Why do flammable and inflammable mean the same thing??

noveltyjunkie

That is a head scratcher alright. I have been told that inflammable was the original word (related to inflame) but because 'in' often means 'not' (invisible, inescapable, etc) someone decided not to use 'inflammable' on warning signs and made up 'flammable' instead.

Has anyone else heard that? I don't know if it is true or not.

For me though, one if the craziest things about English is not a spelling thing but a pronunciation thing. Why do 'can' and can't' sound almost exactly the same in the middle of a sentence?

Blue Bell

That was a wonderful read. Thanks for all that information.

Alondra

There was a funny incident on Fox News Sunday this week... Chris Wallace was interviewing some government spokes-zombie about the Syria situation, who kept repeating himself with non-answers. Finally, Chris, after having rephrased his question for the third time and getting nowhere, said, "Well, you've got to admit there's a considerable incidence of mendacity here." The guy looked a little confused, but continued repeating himself. I half expected Chris to roll his eyes, but he was ever the gentleman, and didn't. The guy apparently never realized Chris had told him he was lying. <G> I chuckled about that all day. It's amazing how many word twins we have in English, one from Latin/Greek, the other (usually shorter and simpler) from German/Old Norse, and someone who doesn't know that can be easily "worded" to death by someone who does. But that one should go down in newsroom history.

Alondra

Sloppy diction. There is no reason they should sound the same, no matter where they fall in the sentence. Although, in something like "The baby can't talk yet." it could be elision with the two t's together, but again... sloppy diction. Sometimes we're forced to depend for meaning on other (limiting) words in the sentence, like "yet" in that sentence.

Prairie Chicken

If you delete the word "up" in 90% of your examples, the sentence be improved. The sky does not cloud up or down, it just becomes cloudy.

helou

I agree.. the "up" "down" "off" "in" "out" etc... give me headackes when I try to use them after a verb loll

mighty

That is great!