Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis for September 30, 2016

Yeah, that is an interesting word since it has no R in it and yet it’s pronounced like a piece of corn. Kernel. Of course the Middle French spelling might explain the modern English pronunciation. Coronel.

Colon Oscopy?

Indeed it does, Pig, indeed it does.:I think I’ll go have some ghoti and chips.

These colonial jokes are soooo old…

English is known to be one of the hardest languages for non-native speakers to learn. Very idiomatic.

Didn’t something like this happened already during a certain conversation? Just like with listening to people, you should finish reading the entire letters.

I’m still waiting for Pig to say, “Griffey, griffey” or, “Oink, oink.”

“If an S and an I and an O and a UWith an X at the end spell Su; And an E and a Y and an E spell I,Pray what is a speller to do? Then, if also an S and an I and a G And an HED spell side, There’s nothing much left for a speller to do But to go commit siouxeyesighed.”

— Charles Follen Adams, “An Orthographic Lament”

To say nothing of “ough” or read, read, red. English spelling is nuts. Gaelic spelling, though it seems weird, follows pretty set rules. If you know them, no problemo.

Reminds me of that Star Trek episode “E-Po-nes-ta…….”We The People"

English… misspoken by more people than any other language.

Sometimes that dumb Pig actually makes cents.

Colonel is a weird word

When Pig starts pronouncing aluminium instead of aluminum, then he might be speaking English.

It’s very hard to learn to speak English like a native, but very easy to learn enough to make yourself understood, because you can take an average English sentence, chop it into pieces, draw the bits at random out of a hat and still have a fair idea what was being said, whereas even a small error in French can render a sentence unintelligible.

No worse way to insult the military.

Whenever PB4S characters read a newspaper, Steph always puts in the name of a paper that has his kartune. Can anyone tell what today’s paper is?

I suppose he’d prefer pig latin?

It’s a word that’s pronounced correctly, and spelled wrong. The military rank was, at one time, “coronel”, meaning an officer of the crown. The spelling was corrupted by the French.

How about “about” because this is what our language is all about, and as I was just about to read the next comic I decided to take a walk about my property which is about half an acre….

Well, the British pronounce lieutenant as left-tennant.

Military ranks come from French, which is so many of them are spelled weird. Lieutenant and sergeant are two others.

English is actually not that hard to learn at a rudimentary level. It has a very flexible syntax which enables you to communicate with a small vocabulary. The pronunciation and spelling, specifically, is what gives foreign speakers fits. Because English derives from several different languages, it’s completely inconsistent.

I wonder what you called Colin Powell when he was a colonel?

Seen on a coffee cup:

Yes, English can be weird. It can be understood through tough thorough thought, though.

ghoti >

When I was little, it took me a a long time to understand that “man’s laughter” was a far cry from “manslaughter”.

And an idiom: I read a series of boys’ books where the hero was knocked out in each book (who ever heard of concussions?); each time he “came to”. To what? Why did they leave a word out?

@ Bruno Zeigertsuse of “toilette” for getting gussied up – oh the silly, silly French – STILL throws me for a loop.

Yes it does, yes it does.

Luckily one of my fellow countryman, dr. Gerard Nolst Trenité, wrote a little poem called “The Chaos” to help students of the English language train their pronunciation. I think Pig would love it. It starts as follows:

“Dearest creature in creation Studying English pronunciation, I will teach you in my verse Sounds like corpse, corps, horse and worse.

I will keep you, Susy, busy,Make your head with heat grow dizzy;Tear in eye, your dress you’ll tear; Queer, fair seer, hear my prayer.

Pray, console your loving poet,Make my coat look new, dear, sew it!Just compare heart, hear and heard,Dies and diet, lord and word."

And then goes on and on (and on and on), teaching students 800 English words with an irregular pronunciation.

Whenever I hear some Dutchman claim that he or she is glad to be a good English speaker (which usually isn’t the case), I let him or her read the poem out loud (and constantly correct them when they mispronounce a word). So far no one has managed to read more than about four verses. And it usually ends with them crawling quietly into a dark corner so they can cry without being noticed.

Kicking “K” or Curly “C”

Remember that?

xxx

Would a Lieutenant Colonel be a semicolon?

Laments for a Dying Language by Ogden Nash.http://genius.com/Ogden-nash-laments-for-a-dying-language-annotated

Don’t sweat the small stuff, Pig. You’ve got bigger problems.I’ll be makin’ bacon….

Do you think that’s something? Think about “quinoa.”

My brother is dyslexic