I'd ring that
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[–] 33 points 1 year ago (12 children)

I speak spanish and one of the first cultural shocks I had was when I as a kid saw an episode of some sitcom (can't remember) and there where talks of a "spelling bee" a contest to see who could spell correctly, that was so alien to at the time because in spanish there are just a few words that are tricky, because they have some silent H or a P at the beginning but then I started to learn english and it all made sense.

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  • [+] 13 points 1 year ago (3 children)
  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago

    We have bees, and we also have really long, ancient words that no one uses or remembers like pulchritudinous, which means physical beauty or Myrmecophilous which is fond of ants.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Just the fact that we can have a whole contest around the idea, and that there's still room for words contestants haven't seen before, illustrates just how insane English is.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    English isn't really a language. It's at least three languages in a trench coat.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    it's wild to think that we embed miniature copies of Greek and Latin into English, for doing science and medicine. not just words, I mean a functional grammar fully stocked with roots and morphemes. we just make words like "holographic," "isotope" and "synesthesia" (Greek), "accelerometer", "prefabricated" and "refrigerator" (Latin), or hybrids ("television", "microscope.")

    English is such a wonderful mutt of a language.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago*

    Fuck hybrids that mix greek and latin....

    The worst offender: Decathlon, Greek sports in a Greek event (Olympics) and they use DECA! /s

    Greetings from a Norwegian. (Some words of Norse origin, mostly those of pre Norman origin)

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