DailyDirt: English Curiosities
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
The English language is one of the hardest languages to learn. There are countless irregularities and significant differences between written and spoken English grammar that can trip up almost anyone. Here are just a few linguistic analyses of slightly older versions of English .- A method of diagramming English sentences was invented 166 years ago as a way to teach English grammar in a simpler way. Imagine if this was invented today.... [url]
- Linguistic anthropology looks at how language has changed and influenced social life. Some words have changed their meanings more rapidly than others, and here's a chart showing some of the words that have stayed the most consistent with time. [url]
- The most significant change to the English language is... the progressive passive. People used to say sentences like: "The house was building" instead of "The house was being built". (And long ago, it was "The house is a-building" or "The house is on building".) [url]
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Filed Under: diagramming, english, grammar, language, linguistic anthropology, progressive passive, sentences
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Waste of my time in 9th grade
In the article one sentence did stick out to me: "Parsing was almost insufferably tedious"
In this class I remember leaning over to my friend and saying: I hope the guy that invented this diagramming thing is dead, because if not, I’m hunting him down and force feeding him pencils until he dies of lead poisoning.
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