Blog Entry #82
Welcome to the fourth blogging challenge! In this, I would like for us to explore the nuances of this epigrammatic yet expansive, plain yet metaphorical, serious yet poetic, and sesquipedalian yet succinct language. Over the course of this month, let’s delve into the joys and admire the heterogeneousness of all the elements this language provides, right from linguistics and phonetics to malapropisms and synecdoches to the etymology of words and idiosyncrasies of the Shakespearean dialect (I googled 'dialects of English' to see if I used the word correctly and I found this extensive list - Wow!).
I am currently reading a book on this very topic called 'Mother Tongue: English and How it Got that Way' by Bill Bryson. It is hilarious and informative, and the idea for this blog challenge dawned on me while reading the very first chapter itself, which talks about how funnily difficult this language can be for non-native speakers, while how unpronounceable English speakers may find other languages such as Welsh. It also enlists the terms present only in the English language but not in others (such as: there’s no word in Italian for the term 'wishful thinking', and the French have no word that differentiates a 'man' from a 'gentleman') and vice-versa (the Gaelic Scottish speakers have a word for the itchiness that overcomes their upper lip before taking a sip of whiskey - of course they do!).
Blog Challenge #4: September 2020 Challenge: Nuances of the English Language
Happy learning!
No comments:
Post a Comment