Why can “fast” also mean immobile?

 

Milda fast asleep: she can perform this trick absolutely anywhere

Fast asleep? Fasting period? Fasten your seatbelt? How come we have so many expressions that use “fast”, but actually mean the opposite? Better ask the Scandinavians, Dutch and Germans…

English has a seemingly bizarre vocabulary that only makes sense if you know where words come from. We get away with all kinds of expressions that make absolutely no sense at all until you get an explanation from an etymologist (or someone who just googled it, because as everyone knows, they know everything).

FAST ASLEEP

So why? The only times you should be fast asleep are either in a bunk on a night train or when you take a nap in a car (make sure you’re not the one driving before you execute this action).

It comes from the Germanic root meaning “fixed”, which in fact is most likely an offshoot of the same origin, albeit through Latin. In Old Norse, fast originally meant the same: “quickly” or “swiftly”, and also “close to” or “almost”, but after some time, the meaning expanded to include “firmly” or “vigorously”. This is because when you go fast in a race, you are keeping up with the leaders, and therefore sticking to them.

But remember, they didn’t have a concept of speed like we do – speed was enabled either by horses, or by falling in a straight line from a cliff or tower. If you consider the idea of going quickly meant you were probably hunting or being hunted, the analogy starts to make sense.

The most probable origin is that of a hunter or horse rider keeping up with his/her target or competitor. Both travelling fast and “sticking” to the other. So the idea of being “fast asleep” is that you are figuratively glued to slumber and cannot be woken up.

Coupled with this, the word fast in German means “nearly”, again giving the impression that something is close to the end or even imminent.

This double-idea of “fast” is manifested in the expression “fast approaching”. The word fast in this sense can be interpreted as either time passing quickly or something that will inevitably and remorselessly reach its climax or conclusion, therefore fixed.

 

FASTEN YOUR SEATBELTS

So when the pilot on an aircraft says “please fasten your seatbelts”, they are saying “affix yourself firmly to the seat”. And here we get the whole picture: at some point the ideas of “firmly” and “vigorously” got blended with “quickly”, probably through things like the Old Norse expression “drekka fast”, meaning “drink hard”, in other words knock back some ale as quickly as you can as if it was an obligation. You can find an explanation of the -en suffix further down this article.

 

GERMANIC EXPRESSIONS

Some expressions from other languages can corroborate this:

German:

Festmachen (fast + make) = to secure / to attach / to tighten / to fasten

Befestigen = to couple / to install / to attach / to moor

Eine Freundschaft festigen = to cement a friendship

Wasserfest = water-tight / water-resistant

Festlegen = to determine something / to define something / to establish (e.g. a fact)

Dutch:

Vast = firm, tight

Vastzitten (fast + sit) = to be stuck

Vasthouden (fast + hold) = hold on tight to something

Alvast = in advance / already (therefore inevitable)

 

Danish:

Fastsætte = to fix / set a value to something

Fastansat = permanently employed

 

FASTING PERIOD

When we forgo food and drink, it is known as fasting (verb: fast). But why? Well, this is also linked to the above: in the deep, dark days of the Germanic languages, fast had the concept of holding firmly to something, or faithfully observing a particular ritual. So then this also has some logic to it When we fast, we have firm control of ourselves, and we are holding on to our beliefs through the observance of this ritual.

Fasting therefore has the same concept as being fast asleep: both are “sticking” to their meanings.

BREAKFAST

This brings us nicely on to the word breakfast. This of course signifies exactly breaking your fast, so eating after your night’s sleep. But it wasn’t always that way – up until quite late, in fact, it was called morgenmete, or “morning meat” (in Danish it is still morgenmad). This is because a morning (pre-noon) meal was a rarity in some parts of Europe, so a morning meal was consumed as an exception, possibly to give strength before a journey or a battle.

Take, for example, the French “déjeuner” (dé = to go the other way from + jeuner = to fast) is actually lunch. This stems from the Latin verb disjejunare (jejunus = barren, dry, meagre), in other words to end the dry period. In France they ate for the first time around noon (of course, nothing to do with the French stereotype work ethic, I am sure…) but once the idea of eating earlier took hold, it was called “petit-déjeuner”, therefore “little breakfast”. If you have seen what the French eat in the morning (I use the word “eat” loosely), you can see where the “petit” fits in.

Although the Spanish desayuno has the same root, almuerzo is generally accepted to mean “lunch”, but this is not universal in the Spanish-speaking world. Almuerzo has the Arabic prefix al- that is very common to Spanish, plus morzar, from mordere, meaning “to bite”. And the German Frühstück, which means “early bit”, gets an honourable mention here. But then we see the Dutch ontbijt (ont- = prefix same as un- + bijt = bite), it maybe has the concept of unclenching one’s mouth, or again, breaking a fast. With Spanish and Dutch having similar meanings, I wonder if there is a connection through the former's colonisation of the Low Lands.

OTHER VARIANTS:

Handfasting

In the distant past, it was common for two people to promise each other in marriage through an official ceremony known as handfasting. This came from the Nordic idea of shaking hands to seal a deal, but was adapted in English society for a betrothal to your promised one. It lives on in modern-day Pagan circles to signify a coming-together of two loved ones through the ancient tradition of wrapping and tying a cloth around the couple’s conjoined hands and declaring their intentions.

Steadfast

The word stead, which lives on in words like instead, means “place”, is often found in word compounds and collocations, one of them being steadfast, which does exactly what it says: fixed in position. It means someone who is resolute and consistent in his/her beliefs or is unshakable in matters of principle.

 

-EN SUFFIX

Fasten is one of many verbs that contain the -en ending. This is probably the most Germanic thing English does: amongst other things, the -en ending in Dutch and German can signify verb infinitives, and any lingering verbs in English generally signify that someone has done something to another person or an object, e.g. darken, weaken, lengthen, cheapen, straighten, enlighten, hearten, tighten, frighten, sharpen, sweeten, etc.

 

ROUND-UP

So this is why “fast” means two opposing things, known as a contranym. Lots of words do this in English – other languages too, but not as much. This is because over the years English has homed in on some single acceptable spellings and pronunciations. It has broken down the much larger number of variants of similar words and arranged them into these blocks of words with the same spelling or pronunciation but different meanings, which can only be identified by the rest of the sentence or the overall context of the text or dialogue. This started at the arrival of the printing press back in Tudor times and quickly transformed the way we speak and write the language. Despite only a little over a century and a half between them, the English of Shakespeare (b. 1564) is closer to our English today than it is to Chaucer’s (d. 1400). But that’s for another time.

Raymond Goslitski

Off: a very versatile three-letter word

 

Is this milk off?

Prepositions in English are found everywhere. They usually help us clarify what we want to say and give us an extra dimension in some expressions. But this is probably more for the benefit of native English speakers, because for those learning English as a second or third language, it can pose a nightmare.

How to explain the misery of a preposition to native English speakers, so that they get the idea that it’s not as easy as they think? In this article, I will try to enlighten readers to understand how annoying prepositions can be, and why we need to sympathise with learners when they attempt to use them.

Let us take the humble preposition off and see what devastation this can wreak. In fact, let us add the verb to be.

Without providing any context, what could be the difference between these phrases?

A.      He’s off.

B.      It’s off.

Well… a huge one, actually. And not just one meaning per phrase. So I will try to put more context in them now:

A.      Phone call: “Hi, can I speak to Max?” – “Sorry, he’s off until the end of the week.”

“Pete’s switched off his computer, so I guess he’s off now.”

The first suggests Max is on holiday, the second that Pete is leaving the office. In English, native speakers understand these and use these without thinking, but learners really have a lot of work to do to grasp this.

 

B.      “Don’t drink the milk in the fridge, I think it’s off.”

Restaurant: “Could I have the eggs benedict, please?” – “Sorry, it’s off today, but it’ll be back again tomorrow.”

Here, the first one means that the milk is no longer drinkable, and in the second, it means that item is not available that day. Again, native speakers use these expressions effortlessly, but learners probably understand passively but would rarely use them.

And this is just the use of “be off” without an object… if you look carefully at the cases above, they don’t actually act as true prepositions at all, they are more like adjectives. However, if we think of other verbs that precede “off”, we can see that the preposition fundamentally changes the meaning of the verb.

PULL OFF:

A.      Would you like to pull off a piece of my cake?

B.      It was such an amazing trick – nobody thought he would pull off such a feat!

C.      I’m going to pull off the road for a short break.

 

CUT OFF:

A.      The arrogant presenter cut off his guests several times during the interview.

B.      The entire region was cut off by the floods.

C.      To make your dress the right length, I need to cut off about 20 cm.

 

TURN OFF:

A.      To get to our house, turn off at junction 14 and take the first exit at the roundabout.

B.      Your horrible perfume is enough to turn off a sailor 100 miles out to sea!

C.      Please turn off the lights before you leave.

(Solutions to all the meanings at the bottom)

 

Sometimes, what we can also do to some of these verbs is move the order around a bit, to give it a little more emphasis. To demonstrate, we will look at the same scenario but in three different contexts:

 

TURN ON:

A.      I think it’s time for the news, so I’ll turn on the TV.

B.      I think it’s time for the news, so I’ll turn the TV on.

C.      I think it’s time for the news, so I’ll turn it on.

We cannot say “turn on it” – why? Think about it, and if you need some time, don’t look at the next few lines yet.

 

So you can say “turn the TV on” or “turn on the TV” with almost the same meaning. The one word at the end signals the destination in some contexts, though. Here, with the help of bold italics to signal stress in speech, we can see how the speaker wishes to emphasise the meaning in that context.

I don’t feel like listening to music any more, I’ll turn on the TV (= a different medium)

If you want to watch something, you need to turn the TV on (= not off)

You wanted to watch TV… so turn it on, then! (=also not off)

In all three cases, the last word highlights the main object (or objective), and the word “it” is nearly never stressed, because generally pronouns like this are used when the subject the word “it” represents has already been mentioned, as in the last example above. That’s the reason you can’t say “turn on it”.

But also because “turn on it” means a couple of entirely different things… it may mean you want the other person to climb on the TV and do a pirouette. Or it may mean you want the other person to no longer consider it a friendly entity.

“The gymnast climbed onto the horizontal bar and turned on it as elegantly as always.”

“The company used to be very popular, but customers turned on it when the CEO refused a long-overdue pay rise for the staff.”

In any case, it explains quite well why Tom Jones sang “baby you can turn me on”, and not “turn on me”

 

Anyway, back to looking at “off”…

Not all phrasal verbs use objects. For example, if we use the construction “take off”, we can do the following:

A.      A. "He took off his shoes and went into the shallow water.” – removed clothing

B.      B. "He took a week off and went to Malta” – chose to spend time away from the office

C.      C. "The plane took off from Toronto Airport on schedule.” – left the ground

 

In A., we can put “off” before or after “his shoes”.

In B., we usually only put “off” after the length of time, when discussing annual leave.

In C., there is no object accompanying the phrasal verb, because the entirety of the construction means “left the ground.”

 

It can get a little confusing at times, however. Consider the phrasal verb “go off”. On one side it provides us with another meaning of “away”, which we will come to shortly.

“Go off” can also have two opposite meanings:

“At the campsite, the lights went off every night at 11.30.” – stopped working

“The fire alarm went off at the first sign of smoke.” – started working

WHAT?

I mean, how utterly confusing is that…? It almost makes anyone question why they started learning English in the first place.

But we can also use “go off” to describe someone departing, although it’s not very imaginative.

Let us look at variations of the phrase “he said goodbye and went off”, varying it each time. Using the word “went” doesn’t tell us much about how someone left, but if you change the verb, it explains the whole thing:

“He said goodbye and drove off.” – by car, as the driver

“He said goodbye and walked off.” – on foot

“He said goodbye and ran off.” – on foot, but faster

“He said goodbye and cycled off.” – on a bike

“He said goodbye and rode off.” – on a bike, a horse, or as a passenger in a vehicle

“He said goodbye and sailed off.” – in a boat with its own means of propulsion

“He said goodbye and rowed off.” – in a boat but with oars

“He said goodbye and danced off.” – maybe from a Fred Astaire film?

“He said goodbye and flew off.” – a bird gave a greeting then left the scene?

“He said goodbye and ****ed off.” – a common way to say that someone left rather abruptly

This is the reason why “off” accompanies a lot of profane verbs, because “**** off” more or less means “go away and do unspeakable things to yourself.”

So as you see, three little letters can do so much to accompany our words and enrich our communication. Don’t be afraid of “off”, just understand how it fits and what it can do for you.

 

SOLUTION:

PULL OFF:

A.      To take a piece from the main part of the cake

B.      To succeed

C.      To go to a side road

 

CUT OFF:

A.      To interrupt someone in full speech, or end a video/audio connection

B.      The entire region was cut off by the floods

C.      To make your dress the right length, I need to cut off about 20 cm

 

TURN OFF:

A.      To take another road by leaving the one you are on

B.      To repulse someone

C.      If you don’t know the meaning to this one, you should seek linguistic help!

Holy days and holidays: where did they go their separate ways?

Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=677773 

All these days off recently have driven me mad: we take a day off because some character from a late-Bronze-Age science fiction book did a few implausible things with the help of quite a lot of Middle Eastern authors high on heavy herbal stimulants.

Not all of them are holy days: we have bank holidays, regional holidays, national holidays, school holidays, etc.

But why do we call them holidays, and where does the idea come from?

I was recently recovering from one of the numerous four-day weeks that plague the first half of the calendar and are conspicuous by their absence after the summer break, except for a little respite at the beginning of November. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for a reduction in the working week, but their irregularity (sometimes on a Thursday, often on a Monday, really causes severe issues with my course calendar. This year is really extreme. I finish most courses in mid-June, except for those on Mondays, which don’t finish until July.

Anyway, all this made me contemplate the origins of the word holy. Stand by for a wild ride…

 

HAIL/HEALTH

One of the only words non-German speakers know from German is the word Heil. I won’t go into details why, but let’s say it preceded the name of a mad Austrian with a brushy moustache. Heil means a few things, namely “salvation” as a noun, and “safe”, “medicinal” or “healing” as an adjective, giving English the very words “heal”, “health”, and all their derivatives. This was the direct translation from Latin ave, seen in the phrase Ave Caesar, the Roman version of Heil You-Know-Whom, meaning “hail” or “wish well”.

 

WASSAIL

In Modern English, there are a lot of hangovers from the “hail” connection, for example in Midwinter, it is common to go wassailing in more folksy parts of the English-speaking world, and “wassail” comes from the Old English wæs hæil, meaning “be healthy”. Wæs, as a word, is now found in the past simple form as “was”, but many centuries ago it was the main form of the verb and the imperative. So the idea of wassailing was to wish health to one and all, as well as the nature for the coming year, in hope of fruitfulness and fecundity.

For comparison, the Dutch imperative of “to be” is wees and the German Wesen, means “being”, as in human being.

This is where it gets a bit bizarre…

 

HALIBUT

Yes, you read that right: the fish. The name comes from the fact that it was eaten on holy days, in the tradition of not eating meat. Butt in German is a flatfish like a flounder, add that to “holy” and that’s what it is: the holy flatfish.

 

HOLIDAY

So let’s cut to the chase: a “holiday” was originally a “holy day”, such as Christmas or Easter, because they were the only days that working people were allowed to take off… or were forced to take off. During the first Black Death in the 14^th century, workers gained quite a lot more rights, as there were so few healthy people still able to do anything, and so they lobbied for more “holy days”, even ones that weren’t connected to religion. Over time, “holiday” came to signify any non-working day, standing apart from “holy days”, which were days when people went to a big stone building to send telepathic messages to famous dead people and hear some of those late-Bronze-Age science fiction readings.

 

HAPPY HOLIDAYS

When any traditionalist tells you not to say “happy holidays” because it’s such a modern, non-religious invention, this is what to do: rather than punch the person on the nose, tell them the phrase actually dates from the mid-19^th century when piousness was still in fashion, and by the late 1930s was common parlance, even being used by various companies for marketing purposes, such as Camel and Coca-Cola. So it’s not a new thing – get over it, snowflakes!

 

SANCTIMONIOUSNESS

Here is a word that really stands out from the crowd. In English, as well as French and Latin, it means the ostentatious showing of your holy credentials. Being sanctimonious was and is to give the outer appearance of a do-gooder, even to the extent of criticising others for being less virtuous than you.

There are a few of these on Facebook that never stop telling us how pious they are, but sometimes it’s about the secular world too: someone in my wider professional circle was completely indifferent to our efforts in March to help Ukrainian refugees. When I approached them about it, they more or less stared straight over me and out the back to the wall. My hair was smoking for a good ten minutes from the laser-precision stare. But after a week of seeing how we were getting on, suddenly, there was an almighty change of heart, and suddenly this person was practically auditioning for Fundraiser of the Year.

Why did I bring this up? Because the Dutch, Germans and Scandinavians have a lovely word for people like this: Schijnheilig / Scheinheilig / Skinhellig. The root words of “shine” in less diluted Germanic languages double up to mean both “seem” or “appear”, and at the same time “shine” or “gleam”. This awesomely passive-aggressive word translates literally as “shine-holy”, and I love it.

The words we use can reveal our outlook on life

English is a language with a split personality: every word we use gives off a vibe that leads to the formation of either positive-sounding expressions, neutral ones, or negative ones too. Some may sound aggressive or arrogant, charming or ironic. But unless we adhere to strictly neutral rhetoric, we are heading towards picking a side in whichever conversation we are participating. And along with our voices (intonation, tone, etc.), facial expressions, gesticulations and even eye contact, it is impossible to escape from being seen to take sides in a debate. In our daily communications, we try hard to express what we feel by the words we use, and English is packed solid with synonyms to avoid having to repeat words, but their main use is to act as a conduit to demonstrate our feelings. So voices and expressions aside, this article will try to explain.

Feelings are very subjective indeed, as are personalities. We can betray our emotions or opinions on anything simply by the words we choose. 

Think about the following sentences:

A. We should go home before it gets too dark.

B. We should go home while it's still light.

Both sentences mean more or less the same thing, but what conclusions in the differences of the speakers could one possibly make? In the end, the sentiment is the same, but one might say that speaker A is more concerned by the impending darkness, while speaker B is more practical in wanting to make use of the daylight. An alert listener would conclude that one of these people was an optimist and the other a pessimist. This is why the sound of our voices plays such a crucial role in determining what people think about us.

These ones are clearer to identify:

1A. Your group of easy-going children is quite rare.

1B. Your gang of nonchalant kids is pretty abnormal.

2A. Your daughter is very inquisitive for her age.

2B. Your daughter is such a nosy little girl.

3A. We ask you to pay for the items before ordering them so that the flow remains constant.

3B. So as not to create an obstruction in the system, we would like to ask you not to order items without paying for them first.

So in each case, what are the differences between A and B? That's an easy one - the sentences in B give off a more negative tone than A. 

1A is generous praise, but 1B gives off the impression that you don't want to hang around with those kids.

2A implies that the speaker is impressed by the girl, but 2B says the speaker feels the girl has crossed a boundary.

3A Puts a positive spin on a process to motivate customers to act accordingly. 3B, however, seems to imply that the writer doesn't trust the customers and is giving them orders.

Sometimes there are also three stages:

4A. If you keep on being persistent, you'll get results.

4B. If you carry on being stubborn, something is bound to happen.

4C. If you don't stop being so obstinate, it'll catch up with you.

4A could be one of those memes for LinkedIn; 4B is fairly neutral, possibly advice from someone about handling a situation; 4C is criticism followed by a warning. However, in each of them the main sentiment is fairly similar: by remaining focused on your aims, there will be consequences. 

When it comes to instructions, we want to give off the right impression, so it is important to make sure of the tone:

5A. The wearing of badges in the building is obligatory at all times. To avoid any complications, it is strongly recommended to display them while on the premises.

5B. Staff are required to wear their badges at all times in the building, according to company policy. Without them, disciplinary action may follow.

5C. Staff must wear their badges at all times in the building. Failure to do so is a contravention of company policy and will likely result in disciplinary action.

These are three differently-weighted corporate notices. All give the same information, but the reader will react differently in each of them.

5A is fairly innocuous, uses neutral language, but might ultimately not deliver the right message to the reader; it is almost too friendly in its rendering. The lack of direct language could possibly lead to a general flouting of the rules and disciplinary action would then seem far too draconian.

5B is slightly more weighty, and mentions the fact that it is company policy. Unlike the previous one, it addresses "staff" directly, and finishes with a veiled threat for non-compliance. The use of "may" suggests this is a possible outcome but not the only one. 

5C is very direct and makes two mistakes. Firstly, the use of the word "must" may cause a degree of indignation, and secondly, the use of "will", despite coming before "likely" could lead the reader to interpret it as an inevitable consequence.

None of them are perfect, as it is difficult to reach the right balance. It all depends how you want your message to be interpreted. What we can say is that the more unfriendly the tone, the more likely a red flag will be raised in the reader's mind. 

This goes not just for aggression, but other attitudes too. How do the various replies to this question compare?

6A. "Where would you like to go on holiday?" - "I don't really mind."

6B. "Where would you like to go on holiday?" - "I really don't mind." 

6C. "Where would you like to go on holiday?" - "I don't really care."

6D. "Where would you like to go on holiday?" - "I really don't care."

6A's reply suggests the person replying is open. 6C's reply tells us the person has little to no interest. Without further context, 6B reveals maybe that the person replying is desperate to get away, anywhere at all, whereas 6D's reply could be a stronger version of 6B.

Let us take some synonyms and see what impression they may give off:

to admit - to acknowledge - to concede - to confess

to reject - to turn down - to refuse - to decline

to calm down - to mellow - to mature

a teacher - a trainer - a coach - a lecturer - a tutor - a pedagogue

a man - a bloke - a guy - a gentleman - a chap - an adult male

a feeling - a sentiment - an emotion - a sixth sense

clever - intelligent - astute - shrewd - wise - learned - knowledgeable

extrovert - sociable - attention-seeking - gregarious - fun-loving

generous - kind-hearted - charitable - profligate - extravagant

When we look at these words, we get a different take on each of them. Although they are classed as synonyms, if they meant exactly the same thing, most of the words would die over time leaving one preferred choice. But this is the thing: they don't. I prefer to call them by the established term "near-synonyms", because they mean something slightly different, depending on what image you wish to portray.

To sum up, we cannot escape the inference that the words we use when writing or speaking give away either our outlook on life, or what mood we were in when we wrote or said it. In any case, the reader or listener will have most definitely formed an opinion on you long before you get a reply!

Raymond Goslitski

The mad, mad world of the humble phoneme

To put it simple, a phoneme is a unit of sound. This means we use it alongside other sounds to form a word, a phrase, a sentence, or a full speech. It could also simply be a groan, a sigh, a hum, or a sign of surprise, pain, realisation, or wonder. We are, quite frankly, animals, albeit very articulate ones. If we look around the animal kingdom and how they are able to express themselves very clearly without the use of a vast array of words, it is easy to understand where humans have distanced themselves from nature: we lost the power of sensual communication that our non-human co-habitants still have. This is why they are so much more intuitive and instinctive than the average human. Or even the top-of-the-range one.

Let's play a game. You need at least one other person to play this with. Think of a one-syllable word, then without making a sound, say the word to your counterparts. Here are some ideas:

BAD            MEAN        PEN            WIDE        GOT            QUITE

VAN            READ          FEEL          KIT            BONE         BOUGHT

You see, when you take the sound out of the spoken word, these words could be absolutely anything similar. Bad could be misunderstood for pad, pan, ban, mad, man, bat, ban, or a number of other words, and the same goes for all the others. So now remember that context will make this all easier. Adding the rest of the sentence may make it easier to identify the word used through the context, but not necessarily water-tight. 

The phoneme is therefore so important to us as humans, that one slight variation can change the meaning entirely. Try this:

I'd like a whiter cup of coffee / I'd like a wider cup of coffee

It's time for a nap / It's time for a lap

I watched her screen / I watched her scream

There are even times where a slight pause between phonemes, for example a glottal stop, can make a big difference:

I'd love a nice tea / I'd love an ice tea

And then, there are words that change meaning depending where you put the stress. Think about the differences here:

conduct, conduct

desert, desert

contest, contest

record, record

object, object

present, present

upset, upset

Firstly, these two-syllable words put the stress on the first syllable when they are nouns, and on the second when they are verbs. Many times, the meaning changes accordingly:

"Your conduct was disgraceful!" and "Copper conducts electricity very well."

"They were lost in the desert," and "He will never desert his post."

"The contest was very exciting," and "They wanted to contest the decision."

"She set a new world record," and "I want to record this conversation."

"There's a mysterious object in the garage," and "I object to your behaviour."

"He got a very large present," and "She use to present the evening news."

"By winning the league, they caused the upset of the year!" and "I was upset by their behaviour."

There are plenty of other words of this kind where the verb/noun difference causes the stress to move, but where the main meaning doesn't change:

permit, import, increase, insult, reject, transfer, protest, progress, transport, etc.

We also spell a lot of words fully but leave out many of the letters when we speak. For example, what happened to the t in Christmas, listen or whistle? Where is the b in lamb, climb, doubt or debt? We often think we "hear" these letters because we know how the words are spelled, but the truth is, they're not actually there. 

Why do we keep them, then? 

For very good reason, actually. Words are easier to identify by the way they are spelled. When we speak, we understand the word from its context, or the way it's pronounced. When it's written, this is not so clear. So often, words keep their spelling, even if the pronunciation has changed over time. Here are some examples of homophones:

rein / rain / reign

write / right / rite

allowed / aloud

through / threw

weather / whether

hour / our

weak / week

male / mail

And then there are some words that don't change spelling but are pronounced differently (homographs):

minute

live

read

lead

wind

wound

bow

close

house

We have long vowel sounds and short vowel sounds:

reach / rich

leave / live

peel / pill

hate / hat

mile / mill

and many others. 

I won't bother you with shortening the words beach and sheet; I'm sure you can work that out for yourself...

In the picture above, some smarty pants has daubed "Real eyes realize real lies" onto the side of a tunnel in the town I live in. It's phrases like these that make us think (or even overthink) about our ability to comprehend words and phrases that sound very similar. 

The moral of the story is, pronunciation matters, and especially in English. As the word order of English sentences is more or less fixed, with a few possibilities for deviation, the way we pronounce words and how we stress them can make a great deal of difference. We spell words in what seems like a random sequence sometimes, not for fun, but often to distinguish a word from a similar-sounding one, or because the pronunciation has changed over time but the spelling not. It helps readers to distinguish one word from another, which is why any "reformation" of spelling is simply a bad idea: it would remove English from its roots and make it a shadow of the delightful language it is.

Raymond Goslitski

English is a very nuanced language - just ask its learners

Someone, somewhere, will have an opinion on why their chosen language is harder to learn than another. Often, these debates are kicked off by people who think they're experts but are just seeking to rationalise their own learning experiences.

What language is easy to learn for a German or Swedish speaker will not be the same for someone whose mother tongue is Japanese or Finnish. It really depends on several factors, such as the familiarity of the language you are learning, or the ease at which you can assimilate languages from that group. 

The debate about what languages are difficult and what languages are easy to learn is much more nuanced than just looking at the spelling-to-pronunciation ratio, the size of the vocabulary, and the number of tenses. There are so many other elements to factor in, such as inflections caused by cases, genders, or singulars and plurals; the number of exceptions in the grammar structure, such as irregular verbs, deviations from standard rules, differences between spoken and written forms, etc.; not forgetting the differences in regional usage and dialects. 

If we just take standard English, yes, it is pretty simple to use and people forgive certain mistakes. But then when we see some of the huge differences in meaning after minute changes to the wording, we realise English is actually not as straightforward as all that. Bear with me as I try to demonstrate what I mean...

1. verb + to- vs verb + _ing 

What's the difference between "remember feeding the cat" and "remember to feed the cat"? Or "stop eating" and "stop to eat"? Think about it for a second. 

"I remember feeding the cat" suggests you did it before and now you are recalling the moment, whereas "I remembered to feed the cat" means you didn't forget to do it.

"I stopped eating at 1" implies that you finished your meal then. 

"I stopped to eat at 1" says that you dropped what you were doing in order to eat at 1.

With the verb "like", it gets even more freaky. 

"I like cycling" and "I like to cycle" on their own mean roughly the same thing. But if I add some elements, we see how wildly different they can become:

"I like cycling to the shops" - here, we say that we enjoy it.

"I like to cycle to the shops" - in this one, we imply that it's not necessarily a pleasure for us, but we do it because it's practical or the better option.

It becomes more noticeable in something like household chores:

"I like to vacuum the house every weekend" vs "I like vacuuming the house every weekend" shows a very large gap in meaning. In the first, it's a job we do because otherwise the place would be very messy. In the second, we are demonstrating our utter madness in actually declaring our pleasure in the task.

2. hard vs hardly

"You work hard" or "you hardly work" are worlds apart in meaning. The former means you don't rest or take many holidays, and the latter means you are either a banker or a civil servant. 

Joke.

Well no, it was a dig.

3. opposites

"The alarm went off at 3 in the morning" is completely different to "the lights went off at 3 in the morning." In fact, they are total opposites - we call these contranyms, as they are words or phrases that have opposite meanings. Others include "sanction", "refrain", "dust" or "cleave".

For the clarity, "sanction" can mean either to take away permission or to give permission; "refrain" means either to avoid doing something, or to repeat; "dust" means to add fine particles or to remove them; and "cleave" means to stick to things together, or to separate them. 

4. homonyms everywhere

Let us not forget these beauties... homonyms run throughout the English language, and are only really distinguishable by the context in which they are found. They can be divided into homophones (words that sound the same but are spelled differently or have two meanings) or homographs (words that are spelled the same but mean different things, and may be pronounced differently too). 

Homographs - think about these words and how they can change meaning depending on the context (possible answers below):

right

bark

row

current

record

wound

rock

stick

like

figure

tablet

Homophones - say these words to another person and ask them how to spell them:

ate / eight

fare / fair

their / they're / there

meat / meet

pray / prey

knows / noes / nose

week / weak

tow / toe

to / too / two

made / maid

5. the and other articles

You might not believe this, but such a small word can create an almighty headache for a lot of learners. For example: 

farmers produce crops / the farmers produce crops / the farmers produce the crops / some farmers produce crops

cars were invented in the 19th century / the car was invented in the 19th century / the car is in the garage / some cars are in the garage

In some languages, articles are used everywhere, such as French or Italian, and they can come in various forms, such as masculine/feminine and singular/plural. In others, like Czech or Slovenian, they exist but they have lost their significance, so nobody bothers using them. Then there's English, where they are used sometimes but not everywhere, and change meaning depending on how they are used.

Consider the following:

We should look after the old and infirm 

We are building a shelter for the homeless

This is a place to heal the sick

This is a worrying development for the unemployed

These expressions refer to specific groups of people and their issues. They are used almost like nouns, or at least they allude to nouns, even if they are not. Yet what is most bizarre about this is that we can't say "the fit", "the intelligent", "the happy" or "the independent". Seems a bit discriminatory to me...

But then, what is the difference between:

breakfast / the breakfast

lunch / some lunch

dinner / a dinner

Without the article, we are referring merely to the daily meal:

"We have breakfast / lunch / dinner every day."

But by adding an article, we change the context entirely:

"The breakfast in that hotel is very filling."

"We had some lunch before we carried on working."

"I need to organise a dinner for 40 people next Friday."

We say "the Pacific Ocean", "the Sahara Desert", "the Black Forest", "the River Thames", but "Lake Titicaca", "Mount Olympus", and "Blueberry Hill". 

6. Future

When someone says "I'm going to get some food shortly", rather than "I will get some food shortly", what do they mean? It's all in the context, of course. 

"I'm going to get some food shortly, so let me know what you want" - this implies you have planned this, and your mission to the shop is imminent.

"I see everyone looks a bit tired, so I'll get some food shortly." - in this case, you hadn't planned it, but you're taking the decision now to get some.

And this is just one of many examples of where the future in English relies on what you wish to imply. English is an implied language, meaning that we can often deduce what someone says or writes simply by the words used. Of course, intonation, gesticulations and facial expression help in speech, but that doesn't stop it from being a real minefield.

7. Intonation

In English, people tend to have conversations that heavily rely on the melody for feeling. Let me explain: in yes/no questions, it is common that the last word or syllable will have a rising tone.

"Are you Swedish?" 

"Do you like fish?" 

"Did you have a lovely time?" 

But if you ask an open question, especially a personal one, the last word or syllable will often have a falling tone.

"Where do you live?" 

"What's your name?" 

"How old are you?" 

And the reason is actually quite a practical one... 

By using a rising intonation in yes/no questions, we are asking for confirmation, so just a straightforward yes or no will suffice. 

When we use a falling intonation in open questions, we simply want to ask for facts.

But then, if we swap them around, mad things happen...

By using a falling intonation in yes/no questions, we can seem very rude. We are either demonstrating that we aren't really interested in the answer, or we know the answer but are expected to ask it anyhow.

By using a rising intonation in open questions, we can come across as a little too eager to know the answer. This can either sound like a sleazy move by the questioner, or an intrusive interrogation of the other.

So there you go. These are just a few of the hurdles learners have to clear on their journeys.

It's a strange phenomenon, but learning languages like German and Polish can seem intimidating to learners starting out, but they get easier the more you know. English is the opposite. It all looks pretty straightforward, and then when you get to about B2 level, you start learning finicky little differences where you are confronted with the reality of the daunting task in hand. There is one upside though: it's easy to speak bad English, but most people won't give you a rough time over it!

ANSWERS:

right = your right to remain silent / turn right at the lights / you're right about everything

bark = the dogs bark all night / we put bark on the garden to stop the weeds from growing

row = three trees in a row / I had a row with my neighbours / I got in a boat and learned how to row

current = the current problems are huge / the current took the boat out to sea

record = we must record all the details / she's broken the world record / I have a huge record collection

wound = I wound the rope round the tree / the dog picked up a wound somehow

rock = all boats rock on the sea / I threw a rock into the river / rock music is still very popular

stick = stick the paper to the wall / I threw a stick to the dog / please stick around / stick it in the bin

like = you look like your mother / I like chocolate / we have a policy of like for like

figure = he earned a six-figure sum / there was a strange figure in the forest / figure out this problem

tablet = I took a tablet for my headache / they found an ancient tablet / my tablet has many apps