Valentine's Day Cryptic
Fancy man learnt strangely love comes first (10)
Answer: ORNAMENTAL
Through, Though, Cough, Rough, Thorough, Bough, Hiccough
If you ever found yourself wondering what would happen if anthropomorphised languages discussed why they were the way they were, Loïc Suberville has you covered.
@loicsuberville Who ever said english was easy?! #french #english #funny #language #wtf #why #fy #fyp #foryoupage
♬ original sound - Loïc Suberville
Loïc has hit a rich vein of content with his characters able to explore the mind-boggling range of oddities in English, French and occasionally Spanish.
It reminded me of this poem, author unknown:
I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble but not you
On hiccough, thorough, slough and through.
Well done! And now you wish perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps?
Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird.
And dead, is said like bed, not bead -
for goodness' sake don't call it 'deed'!
Watch out for meat and great and threat
(they rhyme with suite and straight and debt).
A moth is not a moth in mother,
Nor both in bother, or broth in brother,
And here is not a match for there,
Nor dear and fear for bear and pear,
And then there's doze and rose and lose -
Just look them up - and goose and choose,
And cork and work and card and ward
And font and front and word and sword,
And do and go and thwart and cart -
Come, I've hardly made a start!
A dreadful language? Man alive!
I learned to speak it when I was five!
And yet to write it, the more I sigh,
I'll not learn how 'til the day I die.
The Case of Pronouns
A seeming peculiarity of English is that our pronouns change according to their meaning in the sentence. She doesn't love he, she loves him. Why does 'he' change to 'him?'
This is a concept known as noun cases. Old English, Modern English's grandfather language, used such cases for all nouns. Many modern languages still do so. Grasping the concept of nominative, genitive, dative or accusative noun cases can add a great deal of difficulty for English speakers trying to learn German, Russian, or any number of languages that did not simplify their noun cases over the years in the same way that English did. Finnish has around 14 noun cases!
A proper understanding of our pronouns, which still use noun cases, can not only make learning other languages easier but provide some interesting linguistic insight into our own language! We tend to convert our pronouns instinctively, without much thought to it. Let's take a deep dive into the noun cases that remain in the language and see how they function.
Nominative nouns represent the subject of the sentence. They are also usually the unchanged version of the noun. 'I', 'you', 'he', 'she', 'it', 'we', 'you', and 'they' are the nominative pronouns in English.
Genitive nouns show possession. 'My', 'your', 'his', 'her', 'its', 'our', 'your', and 'their' are the genitive forms of our pronouns. The genitive case is one case that actually does extend to other nouns in Modern English. We form this case, generally, by adding 's to a noun. For example, "This is Frank's book." lets us know that the book is a possession of Frank.
Accusative nouns indicate the object of a sentence. 'Me', 'you', 'him', 'her', 'it', 'us', 'you', and 'them' are the accusative versions of our pronouns. And now we know why she loves 'him' instead of 'he'. Because he is the object of the sentence, the word 'him' is used to reference him.
Dative nouns refer to the indirect object of a sentence. Old English differentiated between dative and accusative nouns. Modern English does not. Even the pronouns dropped this case as the language evolved.
We no longer need such cases to get our point across because Modern English relies heavily on word order and context. The sentence, "Him loves she," is not grammatically correct. If we were to hear it, we would think the person is trying to say that he loves her. In other languages, less reliant of word order, that would be a perfectly correct sentence meaning the same thing as, "She loves him". We know from the noun cases that 'she' is the subject word, and 'him' is the object word. Absent word order requirements, it is a perfectly correct sentence.
There is one more case that existed in Old English, the instrumental case. This case indicated that a noun was an instrument or a means of accomplishing something. It is included last because it cannot be replaced with word order or context alone. Instead, it was replaced with the use of prepositions. In the sentence, "He hit the ball with the bat," the bat is the instrument. The words 'with the' indicate to us what the instrumental case would have indicated to speakers of Old English. Some languages have many cases that serve the same function as our prepositions do.
So there's our blast from the linguistic past. The earliest form of English required that all nouns change their case to indicate their role in a sentence. Over time, the accusative, dative, and instrumental cases were dropped and the genitive case was simplified. For whatever reason, pronouns retained their usage of the accusative.
New Year's Day Cryptic
Cleaning from New Year's Day to year's end, it all gets scrubbed regularly (10)
Answer: JANITORIAL
Christmas Day Cryptic
Woman of the upper classes, friend when Christmas comes round (8)
Answer: ANNUALLY
Verbs of Perception
Evocative verbs are the key to engaging writing. Your characters shouldn't just "hear" the crawling creatures in the dark when they can "catch a whisper of" them.
A
- anticipate
- apperceive
- appreciate
- apprehend
- assay
- attend
- auscultate
B
- be all ears
- be apprised of
- be with it
- beam
- become aware
- behold
- believe
- bite
- breathe
C
- catch
- catch a glimpse of
- catch a whisper of
- catch on
- catch sight of
- catch the drift
- chew
- clock
- consider
- contemplate
- credit
D
- deem
- descry
- detect
- devour
- differentiate
- dig
- discern
- discover
- distinguish
- divine
E
- eat
- eavesdrop
- enjoy
- espy
- examine
- eye
F
- feel
- feel in bones
- feel in gut
- find
- flash
G
- gape
- gawk
- gaze
- get
- get a load of
- get a whiff
- get an earful
- get the drift
- get the idea
- get the impression
- get the picture
- get vibes
- get wind of
- give an audience to
- give attention
- give ears
- glare
- glimpse
- grasp
H
- hark
- have a feeling
- have a hunch
- hear
- hearken
- heed
- hold
I
- identify
- inhale
- inspect
K
- know
L
- lay eyes on
- lick
- listen
- look
- look at
M
- make out
- mark
- mind
N
- nibble
- nose
- note
- notice
O
- observe
- overhear
P
- partake
- pay attention to
- peek
- peep
- peer
- peg
- penetrate
- perceive
- pick up
- pierce
R
- read
- realize
- recognize
- regard
- relish
- remark
S
- sample
- savor
- savvy
- scan
- scent
- scope
- scrutinize
- see
- sense
- sight
- sip
- smell
- sniff
- snuff
- spot
- spy
- stare
- strain
- survey
- suspect
T
- take in
- take notice
- taste
- test
- think
- touch
U
- understand
V
- view
W
- watch
- witness
Hi!
I'm Chris, a software developer from Haverhill, Massachusetts, specializing in linguistics, readability, and NLP.
I've been obsessed with the curios of the English language for as long as I can remember and this blog is my excuse to spend even more time on them.