Entries Tagged 'English' ↓

The English language is such a mishmash. It has grammar rules that rarely make sense. And more exceptions to those rules than there are rules.

So it isn’t surprising when people from other countries mess it up. But it can be funny. Often the translated phrase may be grammatically correct, but has an entirely different meaning to a native English speaker than what the writer meant.

This kind of thing has become so common that a a new term has been coined to denote confused English, Engrish. I said all of that to introduce you to a new site I found. It’s devoted to pictures of Engrish signs that are often very funny.



These pictures are just a few I selected, and there are plenty more on the site.
Check it out: Engrish.com

WordCount is a ranking of the 86,800 most used words in English language. It lists them in a sliding scale from 1, being most popular, to 86,800 being the least popular. It seems that “the” is the most commonly used word in the English language. And “conquistador” is the least used. The interface lets you use a slider bar to cycle through the words, or you can do searches on specific words. The entire project was designed and developed by Jonathan Harris of Number27

Check it out: WordCount

Last night when I got home from playing soccer, I was too keyed up to go right to bed. So I ended up browsing the Internet for a while to unwind.
I was browsing Del.icio.us and found this interesting article on one of the stranger aspects of the English language. Contronyms. Contronyms are words that can mean opposite things based on where or how they are used.
Some of my favorites are:

• apology - admission of fault in what you think, say, or do; formal defense of what you think, say, or do
• screen - show, hide
• consult - ask for advice, give advice

You can read the entire list and the article: Fun with words