1-21-2006 Word of the Day

[artdutra04]

Originally Posted by Andrew Blair

Ah well, at least we don't have to have genders on words and conjugate verbs. (Ich hasse Deutsch!!!)

We might not have genders, but we do conjugate verbs somewhat. Usually this is in the third person singular in the present tense, but for some irregular verbs this is in other tenses as well.

Example 1: to walk
I walk.
You walk.
He/She/It walks.
We walk.
They walk.

Example 2: to be
I am.
You are.
He/She/It is.
We are.
They are.

But then we get things like a dozen mice, twenty deer, three moose, when "logic" would tell us that these are a dozen mouses, twenty deers, and three mooses.

And then we gets words like tsunami, knife, pneumonia, or phase. Wouldn't "logic" tell us that these words should be spelled 'soonamy', 'nife', 'nemonia', or 'fase'?



English is slowly becoming a kind of defacto language of the world, and is slowly taking all these other languages and combining them into one. This started nearly a millennium ago, when old German and an early version of French combined to get Old English. That is why English has words like 'big', 'small', or 'house' (these words came from old German), while we have words like 'intelligent' or 'petite' (these words came from French).

English has the widest vocabulary of any language. The reason for this is that English keeps "borrowing" words verbatim from other languages, and we just keep adding new words. Some of these words contain certain spellings and pronunciations that are specific to that particular language. All we do it make this an "irregular" word.