Everyone’s like “those Germans have a word for everything” but English has a word for tricking someone into watching the music video for Rick Astley’s Never Gonna Give You Up.
lately i’ve been thinking a lot about the specificity of language. everyone always talks about how english has one word for love, i’m bored of that. i think a lot about how we have a word for a sign of things to come (portent) and how we have a word for freeing someone of sin (absolve), we have a word for a sudden outburst of any kind of activity (paroxysm). today my brother taught me wayzgoose: “an entertainment given by a master printer to his workmen each year on or about St. Bartholomew’s Day”.
i think about this in a kiss, how we purse our lips, how we press into each other, how kiss is a small word for an action that feels big – i think about how we have french kiss, how we have a smack on the cheek, a peck. i think about this when we make eye contact, how we have “a moment” that passes between two people like an envelope, one that reads of more, more, more – i think of who gave us the names for obscure things. how shakespeare gave us elbow, and what did we call it beforehand.
what word is there for the way your eyes look when you talk about your favorite thing. we have phosphorescence, the property of emitting light, but that’s not right. what word is there for how it feels with the floor against your back while you’re watching sunbeams filter dust motes. there’s languid, relaxed, but that doesn’t work. what word is there for how it feels beside your best friend, listening to them laugh, knowing this moment is a pocket that keeps all of the good things inside, one i will tuck myself into again and again, one i am somehow distant from even though i’m enjoying it: watching the moment become a memory i think of fondly, even while it’s happening.
there’s kissing, there’s leaning in, there’s words for summer and fireflies in jars and fall creeping in. there’s words for leaves and the smoke in the air from breathing and there’s words for the fire of a sunset on an autumn evening. i think about how we made words for things. the oxford dictionary gives us 171,476 current words to make sense of things. how we let poets give us syllables for how it feels to fall into someone’s arms (melting) and someone who talks a lot (gregarious) and vast burning (conflagration). the beauty of language is we have a word for that until we don’t have a word for that and then poetry comes in.
if i kiss you i think: portent. if i kiss you i think of telling you here is where our lips purse here is where my sins absolve here is the paroxysm of my heart. i kiss you and i think: what words do other people use when they need to fill in the emptiness of “love”. do they think conflagration, the misery of scorching, or do they think of slow burning. do they think portent. do they think of kisses as french or as just kisses, no purses or bow lips. when they lean in do they melt into it. when they love, is it just that? something specific? or do they mean “the spaces around this word say more than the letters i’m given.”
why do people say “don’t be a pussy” when talking about weakness more like “don’t be a man’s ego” because you know there isn’t nothing more fragile than that
uh
because “pussy” is the shortened form of the word “pusillanimous”, which means “timid, cowardly”
and not the slang word for the female genital region?
Fifteen years later and I just this minute learned that ‘draught’, as in Draught of Living Death, Sleeping Draught, etc. is, in fact, pronounced “draft”.
Then there’s this guy:
In our defense:
caught – cawt
taught – tawt
daughter – dawter
distraught – distrawt
draught – draft
???
laugh – laff laughter – lafter
tough – tuff
cough – coff
There is plenty of precedent for gh representing an f sound if you were paying attention.
tHeRE is plENTy of PREcEDEnt if yOu weRe PAYing aTTEntIOn
Get over yourself.
“If you were paying attention” you would know that English has been dissected for centuries and determined to be one of the hardest phonological languages in modern existence due to the fact that it’s a hodgepodge of other languages resulting in various letters/digraphs being associated with various sounds.
(See, I can be just as pretentious.)
In fact, “if you were paying attention” then you would know about The Chaos, a famous (and infamous) poem written by Charivarius.
Dearest creature in creation, Study English pronunciation. I will teach you in my verse Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse. I will keep you, Suzy, busy, Make your head with heat grow dizzy. Tear in eye, your dress will tear. So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.
Just compare heart, beard, and heard, Dies and diet, lord and word, Sword and sward, retain and Britain. (Mind the latter, how it’s written.) Now I surely will not plague you With such words as plaque and ague. But be careful how you speak: Say break and steak, but bleak and streak; Cloven, oven, how and low, Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.
Hear me say, devoid of trickery, Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore, Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles, Exiles, similes, and reviles; Scholar, vicar, and cigar, Solar, mica, war and far; One, anemone, Balmoral, Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel; Gertrude, German, wind and mind, Scene, Melpomene, mankind.
Billet does not rhyme with ballet, Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet. Blood and flood are not like food, Nor is mould like should and would. Viscous, viscount, load and broad, Toward, to forward, to reward. And your pronunciation’s OK When you correctly say croquet, Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve, Friend and fiend, alive and live.
Ivy, privy, famous; clamour And enamour rhyme with hammer. River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb, Doll and roll and some and home. Stranger does not rhyme with anger, Neither does devour with clangour. Souls but foul, haunt but aunt, Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant, Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger, And then singer, ginger, linger, Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge, Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.
Query does not rhyme with very, Nor does fury sound like bury. Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth. Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath. Though the differences seem little, We say actual but victual. Refer does not rhyme with deafer. Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer. Mint, pint, senate and sedate; Dull, bull, and George ate late. Scenic, Arabic, Pacific, Science, conscience, scientific.
Liberty, library, heave and heaven, Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven. We say hallowed, but allowed, People, leopard, towed, but vowed. Mark the differences, moreover, Between mover, cover, clover; Leeches, breeches, wise, precise, Chalice, but police and lice; Camel, constable, unstable, Principle, disciple, label.
Petal, panel, and canal, Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal. Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair, Senator, spectator, mayor. Tour, but our and succour, four. Gas, alas, and Arkansas. Sea, idea, Korea, area, Psalm, Maria, but malaria. Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean. Doctrine, turpentine, marine.
Compare alien with Italian, Dandelion and battalion. Sally with ally, yea, ye, Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key. Say aver, but ever, fever, Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver. Heron, granary, canary. Crevice and device and aerie.
Face, but preface, not efface. Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass. Large, but target, gin, give, verging, Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging. Ear, but earn and wear and tear Do not rhyme with here but ere. Seven is right, but so is even, Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen, Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk, Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.
Pronunciation — think of Psyche! Is a paling stout and spikey? Won’t it make you lose your wits, Writing groats and saying grits? It’s a dark abyss or tunnel: Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale, Islington and Isle of Wight, Housewife, verdict and indict.
Finally, which rhymes with enough — Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough? Hiccough has the sound of cup. My advice is to give up!!!*
—
So there’s no sense in acting pretentious because you could recognize a single digraph. This language is a complete clusterfoque where the standard rules don’t apply.
Ouuuu
Bringing it back to the point, draught is pronounced like draft, not drought, and I hate English.
There’s also the thing where if you learn words first by reading them, you tend to pronounce them the way they logically would be pronounced, by following the most common pronunciation rule for that set of letters, ie, Draught being mispronounced as drawt, not draft. Because there IS a word for DRAFT, and we use it in racing. And military service in war time. So why would a BEVERAGE be pronounced the same way?
So you teach yourself what must be correct because NO ONE uses the word “draught” out loud any more.
Don’t be such a snot. Surely the smarter people learned it from books since we NO LONGER SAY THAT WORD OUT LOUD.
Petition to pronounce it “drawt” anyway because language is a living entity that is dependent on usage to give it meaning and also Fuck English
Pretty much everyone I’ve ever heard use it pronounces it “drawt”, so I think we’re good. Then again I’m USian so *shrug*
Also, when USian beer companies use it with the “aft” pronunciation, they change the spelling to “draft”. So, “drawt” and “draft” are well on their way to becoming two different but similar words in USian English.
Random linguistic observation #137: in American English, depending on the tone, expression and posture with which it’s delivered, the word “yeah” can mean any of:
That is correct.
I approve.
I don’t care.
I am skeptical.
I wasn’t listening.
I agree to your proposal.
I require additional information.
I support you in this undertaking.
I didn’t tell you because I thought it was obvious.
I recognise the truth of your words, but fail to see their relevance.
i understand the historical reasons why English is the most common language
but if I was writing a speculative fiction novel
and I said “the language that most people learn as a second language, usually for professional reasons, is also the only one with a spelling system so terrible that spelling words correctly is a broadcasted competition”
you’d be like “extremely unrealistic 0/10”
i never thought of this, do other languages not have spelling bees?
just moving along like everyone else 