What I forgot to mention in the video is that in German 🇩🇪, once you know the pronunciation rules, you can usually read a text and pronounce all the words correctly even if you have no clue what it says! Pretty cool huh? :) On the other hand of course, German grammar is a nightmare for many non-native speakers. 😅 What are YOUR examples for inconsistent pronunciation in English? ⬇️ Or do you even have examples for German despite the rather consistent pronunciation rules?
I agree, but English seem so easy compared to German with needing to know the gender of words, the 4 cases, declension, and words getting bumped all around the sentence is driving me crazy, but after 1 1/2 years of working at it, I am making some progress 😀 Can't believe my great grandparents were fluent in German!
I have never been good at English even though I was born and raised in America. I had the same difficulties as she has described. Now that I’m in my 30s I can finally spell most words correct. Or use them in the correct context
@@bigaspn Maybe the rule in English is that every rule has its exceptions; sometimes even the exceptions have their own exceptions! - e.g. (when the sound is 'ee') it's I before E - except after C - except for the word 'SEIZE'
@@nancibernard1315 We have 7 cases. And there are more exceptions than rules on how to make them. Words have two genders in plural but three in singular. Greetings from Poland :) Anyway, I also find English easier than German but their spelling is hilarious.
@@bigaspn I heard the other day that 43% of Aussie adults have difficulty and or can't read or write english. i knew there were people who struggled but i was amazed at that %. There are always language courses no matter how young or old you are.
I used this rhyme while teaching English in S. Korea in the 1990s and also back in Denver in my advanced ESL and Intensive English classes prior to 9/11. The students loved it! English pronunciation and spelling are really tuff! I take it you already know Of tough and bough and cough and dough Others may stumble, but not you On hiccough, thorough, laugh, and through. And cork and work and card and ward And font and front and word and sword Well done! And now if 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: it’s said like bed, not bead- For goodness sakes 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, broth in brother. And here is not a match for there, And dear and fear for bear and pear. And then there’s dose and rose and lose- Just look them up-and goose and choose, And do and go, then thwart and cart. Come, come, I’ve hardly made a start! A dreadful language? Man alive! I’d mastered it when I was five.
I swear to god, that was the hardest rhyme I've ever read, also I'm not quite sure if I pronounced everything correctly (still learning english, first language: German)
Awesome! And, yes, native English speakers master speaking these words, and differentiating them before they can read and spell them. I still can remember learning the spellings. English would be a horribly boring language without the quirks that come from having so many influences.
Much to my surprise, though, a pretty comprehensive bit of research, using multiple criteria, found that the hardest language in the world to learn is Polish - not Japanese, Swahili, Arabic, Indian, Hebrew and so on! (Just my luck: I chose to live here! 🤣)
Great video! As a Native English speaker I never knew how hard the English language was until my dad told me. English was the fifth and last language he learned and would pronounce words incorrectly or mix up words in an expression for example. My dad was born in Greece to parents who were born in Russia(when it was called Russia). So my dad spoke Russian at home but Greek in school, he didn't even realize they were two different languages at first. Then, years later they moved and lived in Germany for a couple years and learned German. Then moved and lived in Italy for few years, learning Italian before finally settling in the United States, learning English. So my dad was fluent in Russian, Greek, German, Italian, and English. He had trouble with a lot of the things you mentioned about the English language. The words pear, pair, and pare threw him off. Also, the word cobweb for some reason he would say cow web. There is an English/American expression, "She thinks she's Miss goodie two shoes". My dad would say, " Miss two good shoes and one bad foot". Lol There are some English words I have trouble pronouncing and/or spelling also. If I have trouble saying or spelling a word I will try and use another similar word instead. Lol 😆 Thanks for sharing! ; ) 💕
My dad grew up speaking Twentse (a dialect of Dutch), and could also speak English, German and French. I think he did OK with English - it wasn't often that I noticed the influence of other languages. As for me, my first language is English, with some French and Latin at school, and some Samoan and Maori learned (or is that learnt?) as an adult.
This was like a good standup set, hilarious. English is my second language as well, i feel your pain throughout as tears tear through my face and my thoughts though im tough so i can take it ........English.
I think the best explanation is one I saw on Reddit awhile ago: English is 3 languages in a trench coat beating up other languages for their pronunciations and spelling. It is a complete mess and makes no sense, even for us native speakers.
@@FelifromGermany Yeah. It's not mine but it sums up this language so well. The spelling and pronunciation just make you want to pull your hair out sometimes.
That sounds like it's a descendant of a post made by James Nicoll on Usenet in the dim time before the Internet was really a thing. It can be found on his Wikipedia page.
"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary." James Nicoll
“Silent letters why they even there if they serve no function”😂 good point! Like a tailbone in anatomy! English is tough to learn from native lands as well but it’s funny & honest from ur perspective cause it sounds more truthful. Great video thanks
I think it goes to show how fast the spoken language changes. If you tried to change the spelling to match the spoken words, I think it would be hard to keep up, you'd be producing new dictionaries every few years. And which dialect or version of English would you standardise the spelling on? Best to leave it the way it is, I think 🙂
Great video! As a native English speaker who has been studying and trying to practice german (for no particular reason other than my ancestry is from there) for a good part of my life, I can‘t imagine what it must be like to comprehend and make sense of English. What I love about the German I know, along with Italian, is that all the vowel sounds are the same. It‘s getting over the American English mindset of pronouncing them the same that is most difficult (along with genders for nouns). But I imagine any language is easier to master than English. You‘re quite astounding. You have beautiful pronunciation and I enjoy all of your videos! Tschüss
That early sequence in the video in which you describe your confusion of the multiple pronunciations of "ough" was both delightful and shocking for me. As an American and native English speaker, I inherently knew all these pronunciations on site, of course, but seeing them all arrayed and compared to each other in one place was stark. It highlighted how much variance exists in the English pronunciation of this one sequence of letters.
Felicia, I'm a 58 year old Englishman, you've taught me me more about my own language in a 14 minute TH-cam video than I learnt in 5 years at High school back in the day. You're One smart, intelligent, witty and funny person. Brilliant work Felicia, I just love watching your content, thank you. 👏💐
English is a West Germanic language with a ton of Latin-based words and a very German stubborn streak where spelling is concerned. Some of these words with common diphthongs actually used to be pronounced the same. Look at Shakespeare for what are now weird rhymes, that did in his time. If English was Germanized, women would be Wömen. It's just a hidden umlaut.
@@anthonykaiser974 We don't use umlauts in English so we don't know what the hell they are. All those squiggles and dots above letters in some European languages are completely meaningless to us. Anything beyond an apostrophe and Americans start getting very confused.
@@LG123ABC you don't use diacritical marks in English. The "umlaut" still exists in things like irregular nouns (foot becomes feet same as the German Fuß becomes Füßen) just the spelling is fully changed because the I mutations are complete, not partial as in German.
I remember learning English as my first language growing up, we were taught in American school, English is one of the most difficult languages to learn. You are correct about all those words, I've often wondered the same things you covered in the video!
I’m 46 and only found out this year that my own mother doesn’t pronounce the L in palm. Before that, i had never considered that anyone thought it was silent.
This. Learning to read felt like a perpetual cycle of “learn the rule, here’s the exceptions”. And it always feels like there’s more exceptions than there are words that follow the rules lol. German grammar is a nightmare, but I can spell “Bedienungsanleitung” without a second thought. I sometimes can’t even remember if “exercise” has an additional “c” after the “x” without relying on spell check.
I do not consider myself fluent in German, Danish, Norwegian, or Swedish. But, other than silent letters in Danish, I really wished that we had their simplified spelling in English. But, an extra key for modifying vowels would be nice for typing in these languages.
@@mdubmachine I think that the German grammar is simple because you have rules with few exceptions but in the English language you have you have many exceptions, which makes the English grammar harder to learn
I taught elementary school for 38 years and everything you said in this video is true for English speaking kids. Our language is a nightmare to learn how to spell for everyone. When I was learning German I loved the fact it everything is pronounced the way it spells. I also had two years of Spanish in high school and the same wonderful thing was true. I didn't think the German was that difficult to learn (although I'm a long way from being fluent) because English is Germanic in origin and I felt comfortable with German from the very beginning. As usual, your videos are very well presented! If I was still teaching, I would show this video to my students ad it encapsulates a great deal of the problems spelling and pronouncing English. Kudos to you, Felicia!
I failed French, Latin, Greek, German and passed Spanish with a "D". I programmed computers in COBOL, PL1, JOVIAL, C/C++, C#, FORTRAN, BPL, RPG III, IBM Assembly language. Did retrievals in SQL, SIS. Honeywell and UNIVAC machine languages. The way the mind works. It took the Russians OVER TWO YEARS to convert the B29 Standard size pieces into metric size pieces so they could build a duplicate. Language affects the way the brain functions.
As a COMPUTER SCIENCE instructor myself, I have throw in the sentence structure and a few other formats that make hexadecimal/binary MORE amenable to English. Never noticed why the "Japanese" keyboard options died out? That was in the 1990s/2000s so a youngster like you might not remember. Almost ALL modern languages (computer languages) from Honeywell TRIM III to IBM Assembler to COBOL to JOVIAL to C# can be translated. In the cases of translation from English (C++) to German (C++), ALL localisms, must be retranslated and removed. The COST alone for the chinese to backward engineer American software of 25 years ago is $2,000,000,000.00 a year. Teach kids MATHEMATICS, ENGLISH, LOGIC, A little History i.e. Dr Goddard, Babbage, Admiral Hopper, etc. Then GET OUT OF THE WAY. I still want my condo in the Astroid Belt.
Feli, this was your best video I've seen so far. I was cracking up. (Or is that dying with laughter? English is so tuff... err tough). You make it so clear why ESL speakers have such a tough time. But then again I have to tell you English is tough for native speakers too and for the same reasons! I suppose thats why I laughed so much as i can completely empathize. Keep 'em coming.
I wish English spelling would go to the internal phonic alphabet as a named Dictionary says the word is pronounced. Idioms, clichés, and grammar are whole other issues.
I took some German in high school and the teacher told us that when she first came to the United States, she kept pronouncing doughnuts as, "duffnuts."
I use know someone who was Brazilian. Her and her family emigrated here when she was young. Her father, despite living here 25+ years, still pronounces “gloves” as glowves. 🤷♀️
We may be lucky, in that this is one of those words that is getting simplified as the language evolves. I would say that the majority of people spell it "donut" now.
This is something I have had more than one English teacher say to me. English is two different languages: spoken and written. You can spend your entire life speaking English and not know how to write it; You can spend your entire life reading and writing English and not know how to speak it!
And the exact same thing can be said about German. There are special courses for people who've learned to speak German as a 2nd language, but now need to be able to write it correctly, but this is more a style thing, not really having to do with spelling. "Bürodeutsch" or "Schriftdeutsch".
@@musicofnote1 Yes, Bürodeutsch is a thing even natives often have problems with, but in general there is no big problem from speaking to writing or the other way around. Some things only from hearing to writing could be a problem, but they are rare and most times have a logical rule. The problems should be with ei and ai, but ai is rare or eu and äu, but if you have the also rare äu, you always have another word: Baum - Bäume. It's like french: I speak it with bad schoolfrench, absolutely not fluid, but give me a text and I can read it like a pro.
Gluten Tag Feli, Proud German-American. This is C.J. from south-East Arizona. First, I love the video. As a native English speaker and writer; I still get tripped up by these words. And I spell words like 'Wednesday' in my head: WeD-Ness-Day. Second, I love your videos. I have learned so much about my German and German-American culture and heritage. Growing up in the USA, I was not told directly but culturally to feel shame and dishonor of my German heritage, to be ashamed of who I am and where I come from. However, your videos have shown me to feel a deep love and pride in my German and German-American culture and heritage that I have never had before. In my life, your videos are a blessing. I want to thank you and Ben for creating and posting these videos, to me you are a precious gift. I am looking forward to more of your wonderful videos. And you and Ben do make a cute couple. I know you have seen the T.V. show "Friends" so you will understand when I say: you and Ben are each other's lobster. Veilen Dank Dien Friend, C.J. (and yes I used Google Translate but only for the correct spelling. :) )
Google let you down, coming and going. Gluten is das Gluten (or der Kleber), the stuff that makes some people ill. Good Day is Guten Tag. Dein Friend is neither German nor English. Your Friend is either dein Freund (male) or deine Freundin (female). It can be tricky in German. I lived with a Czech woman housemate in Germany. If I introduced her as meine Freundin it would have meant she was my girlfriend. That would have annoyed my wife. I had to be careful and introduce her as eine Freundin von mir, a friend of mine.
" . . . with a lot of confusion and bitternes, sometimes." OMG. You have the most expressive face, and the most sunny disposition. Just keep on being yourself, Feli. Love ya.
@@chill4xed42 Nope. As a person who has lived in Southern California for the past 65 years, where there are lots of *palm trees,* I can tell you that the "L" in palm normally *is pronounced.*
@@chill4xed42 The "L" in Palm Tree is *slightly* de-emphasized. But you know that position your tongue takes hard up against the roof of your mouth when you say the "L" in Lucky Lindy Licked a Lollypop? Yeah. That position. That is where your tongue ought to be when you say the "L" in *"Palm Tree."*
Damn Feli, you nailed it! I'm Italian and I love English language, it's easy, practical and brilliant but I still struggle so much where pronunciation is concerned... So frustrating at times, yet I love the challenge!
You're not the only one that struggles with this! Just ask many native English speakers who still have issues with the same things you pointed out today!
As an American who is a native English speaker as well as an English teacher I agree with this! Even though I've been to Germany twice and find German to be a bit difficult especially regarding grammar, I was able to learn some basic phrases that helped me survive my times there. The rules do make more sense though because the phonetics serve a purpose like you mentioned. Anyway, great video! Danke!
Started watching your vids, feeling nostalgic. You see, I was an exchange student about the time of the fall of the Berlie Wall. Spent a year in Stuttgart, my senior year in high school. Struggled mightily to keep up despite 3 years of German, but eventually held my own. I can't imagine having to adjust to the lack of logic in the English language; once I was able to understand the flow of German grammar, everything fell into place easily. Going the other way....not easy, as you've pointed out here. That said: some of the best memories of my life are teaching English to 5th graders in Baden Wuertemberg...so much fun! I'm grateful for your channel -- but am sad you've had to go through the re-branding. Will keep watching, I really enjoy your content!
I'm sure it can be difficult learning the different spellings and meanings of English words. However it does make it so much easier to tell a punny joke. Some do not think puns are funny, but I love it.
I am a native german speaker and I can say: our articles are much worse! The pronounciation is very simple if you know the rules. But if you haven't learned the right article, you are screwed, because the endings of the adjectives depend on the grammatic gender of the noun.
Author Bill Bryson has written two books on this topic that I strongly recommend: "The Mother Tongue - English And How It Got That Way" and "Made in America: An Informal History of the English Language in the United States"
You mentioned write and right. You can add "rite" and make a trio! The definitions - courtesy of Oxford Languages - are the following: 1) A religious or other solemn ceremony or act. 2) A social custom, practice, or conventional act.
Your understanding of the English language is better than most native English speakers (and i used to teach English in Europe). Languages are fascinating to me - very cool to see videos like this. Danke.
It might seem frustrating, but if you know your parts of speech like the back of your hand, then neither Horizon (n.)/Horizontal (adj.) nor Minute (n.)/Minute (adj.) should be an issue. Then again, I'm a native English speaker with limited perspective as to how hard it is to commit parts of speech, verb forms, tenses, etc to memory.
I noticed from my German speaking friend that she’ll get confused with “oo” pronunciations. She said something like, “This restaurant has good food!” where both words sounded the same with different consonants. Same with words like “mood”, “book”, “door”, and “flood”.
You can get a lot of amusement out of deliberately mispronouncing the "oo" in these sentences: Look, the thieves hid their loot in the woods. Shoot! It's not good to get too much soot on your boots.
As a native English speaker who has taught adult literacy and English to non native speakers, I have learned just how many exceptions and odd spelling and pronunciations we have. Great video!
I have thought about these before and feel so bad for people learning English for these reasons 😞 I've been trying to learn German and it can be so discouraging, but helps me feel better knowing that as hard as English can be to learn, many people stick with it and succeed so I can succeed in German! 😁
When teaching my young Chinese students, I push a feather through a straw to help them with the concept and pronunciation of "through." It can be tough though :)
Though my wife and I could be Feli's grandparents and we have no yearning to speak German, we discovered this charming, intelligent and darn cute young woman who is a treat to watch. She has such an infectious and cheery personality that we really enjoy just watching and grinning.
The key to it is to memorize what the world looks like. Then get a whole bunch of words that rhyme with each other that are actually spelled about the same and memorize those in that category of the last few numbers which makes them rhyme. There was so many little tricks I had to put in my head when I was younger. I still suck at spelling.
Please take comfort in knowing that we suffer like you in learning the rules and pronunciations so we thought the same. Well done and extremely entertaining 😂.
@@loopshackr "unique" sounds a bit french (frensh? ;-) but the u would be different, it would be the german ü or the norwegian u ;-) Ünig ;-) Unique ;-)
And if we pronounce • gh as [p] in hiccough, • ough as [əʊ] in dough, • phth as [t] in phthisis, • eigh as [eɪ] in neighbour, • tte as [t] in gazette, • eau as [əʊ] in plateau potato could be spelled ghoughphtheightteeau
Feli, this is my first introduction to you and your channel. Seeing the sparkle in your eyes and the enthusiasm in your voice gives me hope that spelling and pronunciation will not remain a mystery - to new speakers of English as well the American children in our schools. Spelling is not emphasized as the younger generations are more accustomed to visual learning than all of us ancient relics that learned spelling and grammar back in the day. We call it "old school" learning. I have been writing as a hobby for 60 years and I was a professional writer for the last ten years of my career. Even with a good working knowledge of the dictionary, I still find myself writing "there" for "their" when writing my first drafts. I hope that your subscribers will use this as a "take-away:" Even writers who make their living using the peculiar rules of English are constantly self correcting as they write. One would think that working with words all day everyday would cure all problems of spelling and grammar. Not exactly!
Thank you, Feli for putting my frustrations with the English language in such an eloquent video. I was born in America, and I'm 73 years old and still struggle with many of the same idiosyncrasies you point out. Two thumbs up, five stars and a hearty well done. Oh just between you and me I absolutely spell Wednesday as you outlined - I use the same method to spell together as to-get-her.
As a native English speaker, this is amazing and totally agree! A big issue I think is that unlike many European languages - including German - there isn't a national governing body rationalizing language rules.... it's all based on historical contexts and development of dialects and roots of individual words.
"A big issue I think is that unlike many European languages - including German - there isn't a national governing body rationalizing language rules" Actually, it's quite the reverse. Most of our spelling strangenesses result from the fact that not once, but twice, English was subjected to what amounted to Crown regularization of spelling- in both cases, not long before the pronunciations changed dramatically and the 'official' spellings became phonetically obsolete.
Can you imagine the outcry if you proposed this. The House of Lords would explode and the traditionalists would have a fit. Hell, they still hate the change to metric measurements. Besides, who would get to do it? The English, the Americans, the Canadians, Australians? On that topic why do the Americans think they speak English? American is a different language to English especially when written. Even spoken American is dramatically different to English.
@@lowfatlatte0 good point but South Americans don’t make Spaniards call their language Spanish Spanish unlike the Americans who slap UK English on everything 😂😆🤣
@@shaneintheuk2026 actually they do. :l they call it castillian Spanish. That is despite Spanish spoken in catalunia being varied similar to how English is varied between Scotts, Irish, and Britt's. Those groups exchange far more language change than exchanged between the US and any member of the UK. Thus we categorize many dialects under a group called "UK English".
BTW "dove" as in the past tense of "dive" is really only used in American English. In the UK the past tense form of dive is "dived". Also "there" and "their" aren't pronounced identically in all English varieties. Some native speakers in the UK do distinguish these, depending on their regional accent, and also some distinguish between "weather" and "whether", "Wales" and "Whales", "witch" and "which", "wine" and "whine", etc.
One problem is that when the monks started writing English down centuries ago, they decided to use the grammatical rules of Latin and it’s been a nightmare ever since. Add in the changes over the years and the fact that English adopts words from other languages, or invents them (We’re looking at you, William Shakespeare), things can be a pain, even for native speakers.
@@sayeichhornchen1972 You a totally wrong. I speak English and Portuguese and in fact there are some grammatical structures in Portuguese that matches exactly with the English language... Everybody knows that English is a Germanic language but it's notorious the huge Latin influence in it.
As a Swede I must say the fact that both English and Swedish have kept spellings from older days don't only have drawbacks. It makes it easier to se the relations between words that have a common Germanic background when the pronunciation has gone in different directions. Apart from the fact that this is great for an etymology-lover as myself, if I don't understand a spoken English word, sometimes I can get it if I see it written.
Try manx mate manx language is from where I’m from. The Isle of Man 🇮🇲 it used to belong to Norway 🇳🇴 back in the days. We are also Vikings. My past past family was a Viking king called orry king orry. He was king where I’m from.
One reason for words not sounding as they are spelt, is that these days we pronounce words very differently to how they used to be said in bygone days. Take for instance Shakespeare plays, If they are said as they were in his day most people would not understand them. 👍👍👍👍
Interesting. But how is it pronounced in German as opposed to in English? I am not a German speaker, but I believe the same could be said for the German pronunciation. The first, second and third "e" are all pronounced differently as well.
@@lordraydens No, it was the name of a German girl who inspired Wilhelm Maybach to create the brandname Mercedes. She happened to be called Mercedes, and her name was not prounounced in a Romanic way (French, Spanish) but in a German way.
Servus Feli, This is the first time I've seen the greeting, SERVUS, being used for 67 years! I'm enjoying your TH-cam videos. I was stationed at a small town about 56Km SE of Munich, called Bad Aibling. This was in 1954-1956...about the time your grandma and grandpa were thinking if getting married! Feli, I hope you enjoy the States as much as I loved those 26 months in Bavaria. I still think a lot about the wonderful time I had riding all over western Europe on my BMW 600.
That’s exactly the way I learned English. I just memorized the way words looked and sounded. It works well for me but it’s hard to explain to my elementary school age children. They want to know the rules…
I use Gboard on my phone now and if sometimes I struggle with spelling Google translate comes in handy 😁 I learned english from music and movies over 20 y ago. Didn't have any assistance back then.
I heard a speech pathologist say that the rules of English are simple and could be explained in a single chapter, but you'll need 27 additional chapters to explain all the exceptions to the rules.
Watching my son learn to write was a revelation. So many of the words he spelled “wrong” were actually spelled according to a more logical and consistent set of rules than the actual written language applies. The reason spelling reform will never get anywhere is that the rules are enforced by the people who have mastered them. It makes them feel smart to be fluent in the complex mess that is English spelling, and besides it would be too much work to unlearn it all and use a simpler system.
You are judged by the words you use. When a person on the radio says, "I axed my mother," I get a perfect image of his race and level of education without even seeing his face.
In Germany we had the same problem with some words. Therefore it was decided to teach the younger generation a newer set of grammatical rules. I personally was educated right in the process of decission making. So one day the said that we have to write the new way and on the second it was the old way and so on until the goverment decided it is okay to write in both ways but the following schoolstarters would only learn the new grammatical rules. For the unluky ones like me, we are still confused.
Was literally chuckling all the way through this, since I can understand the frustration. One more for you... The classic "to/two/too" one... "TO go with another, you TWO must be in agreement, TOO." And the "i before e" is "I before E, except after C", as in "ceiling" vs "hieroglyph".
There once was a video on Merriam-Webster's channel here about that rule. Sadly, they removed it (probably when Kory Stamper, the associate editor who narrated it, left M-W). Someone reuploaded a copy: th-cam.com/video/eSBhC3k2XOo/w-d-xo.html
Oh I love how spelling bees exist in English, especially with their foreign-rooted words and loanwords such as: denouement, chthonian, maitre d', yarmulke, roux, moue, bdellium, saguaro, etc.
My absolute favorite is reading used car ads (not adds by the way) that mention that the car for sale has new breaks. This would mean, in a grammatically incorrect way, that some things on the car have recently been broken. What the ads mean to say is the car for sale has new brakes.
I once texted a girl: Me: Do u want to have a drink? She: I’m down Me: Ok, get well soon! She: No, I’m down means I’m totally up for it Me: So u wanna get out? She: I’m in 🤯🤯🤯
It's should've been 'I'm down for it." There's too much context loss by just using "I'm down." Down the stairs? Down in the basement? Down in the dumps?
Hillarious (if frustrating to some) video! English is a combination of Celtic, old German, Latin, old Scandinavia, and old French, with a touch of Greek words for good measure. Each of these languages have their own pronunciation rules and they are often in conflict with on another. Understanding the roots of those words will help one understand which pronunciation rule to follow.
Very true. What I find interesting are the English words that are obviously borrowed from French. Some of those words are ones that most people don't bother to use the French pronunciation for. Rapprochement and denouement are ones that come to mind.
Oh my goodness, I have never actually realized the noun vs verb, even though I do pronounce these words correctly. Thank you! For what it's worth, MANY native English speakers have a very hard time using their, they're and there.
I think it is more than that. It is a cultural/class thing. If kids came home from school speaking grammatically, their parents would have hated it. They wouldn’t have fit in any more.
@@louisshambarger2230 These aren't distinctions in spoken english- only written. There are no parents checking their children's writing to make they're misusing these words
"You'd think silent letters are something you'd just find in French or Spanish." -- I remember taking Spanish in junior high and being blown away about how standardized the pronounciation for all letters were. Every time you see an "E" it's always pronounced the same. About the only silent letter they have is the "h" and when it is/not slient is also pretty standardized.
It's funny how easy it is to become a spelling god in Spanish. Native speakers ask me how I remember where their silent h's go or whether it's a b or v in some word or an s, c, or z. Their complications are just trivial compared to English.
No. When the e is stressed it is a long vowel, and unstressed it’s short. You have “Mesa” where it’s stressed and pronounced “may-sa.” Then you have “ventana” pronounced “Ben-ta-na” NOT “bay-n-ta-na.” So, it all depends on whether the “e” is stressed or not. I taught Spanish for 46 years, so I can tell you you’re just plain wrong about the letter “e.”
Izó la vela de la carabela con cuerdas de verdolaga hinchadas. (Hoisted the sail of the caravel with swollen cords of purslane.) "Izar" is French "hisser", English "hoist"; where'd the H go? "Carabela" is "caravel", why did V turn into B? "Verdolaga" is from Latin "portulaca" through Arabic, which has no V or P; where'd the V come from? "Hinchado" is from Latin "inflatum"; where'd the H come from?
As a native speaker when I was in the 4th grade I invented a secret method starting with the word jeeahgraffy which is spelled geography. I made secret pronunciation to remember the spelling so I secretly said "ge-O-graphy". Decades later I was reading the autobiography of linguist Mario Pei and he said he did the same thing, having a secret pronunciation for English words according to how they would sound if pronounced by Italian phonetics. Pei, BTW, said that standardized spelling came into English in the 1700s and that instead of having half a dozen illogical spellings for a word it was reduced to one illogical spelling. A book on genealogy lamented that our English ancestors did not even use consistent spellings for their names -- not even an individual. Shakespeare sometimes wrote his name "Shakspear" or "Shakspeare". The movie _Shakespeare in Love_ satirized this by starting with him inventing a pageful of new spellings for his name.
Felicia, when I was in the US Navy, I was stationed at a NATO command. Most of the officers there were Danish and German. Being the American officer who just recently graduated college and the most junior officer, I got tagged as the Native English Speaker. So, I got to review the writing of the Danish and German officers and edited them as necessary. However, since many English words in the US and the UK are spelled differently, I had to remember the way that British spell their words since the official languages of NATO are British English and French. So that got a bit complicated sometimes.
A while ago in the 1980s, there was this great PBS show called “the Story of English” based on a book of the same title. What struck me most was when the narrator read a text from (what I recall as) Old English which I think was in the Middle Ages, and it sounded to me a lot like Scandinavian or some Nordic language (at least to my ignorant ears!) I guess my point is that I heard many of those sort of guttural sounds, such as the “gh” in thought or caught, WERE pronounced almost similar to the German -cht. Interestingly too, what are now “silent” e’s were also articulated, for example, “were” might be spoken as “wer-eh.” If you think the spelling is inconsistent now, you should see some old documents and such from the 18th century for example, where it seems as if pretty much everyone was making it up as they went along. Anyway, thought you might be interested. Here’s the link to the second episode, which also goes into the reason for irregular spelling - th-cam.com/video/p3q95Mg2i7c/w-d-xo.html
bow also has the "arrow" meaning. What my English teacher made me stumble over was "row". As in not-column, or as in paddling boat. But also as in having an argument.
What about “tower” (who tows a boat) versus “tower” (a building which towers above you)? If you had a particularly strong horse with great stamina towing a barge on a canal, he might be literally a “tower of strength” and, figuratively, “a tower of strength”!
@hognoxious We Americans pronounce it both ways. We pronounce it 'root' when using it as a noun, but 'rout' when using it as a verb. The problem pronouncing it 'root' when used as a verb is it is easily confused with the verb 'to root' (to poke or dig about, specifically a pig rooting for food with his nose).
What I forgot to mention in the video is that in German 🇩🇪, once you know the pronunciation rules, you can usually read a text and pronounce all the words correctly even if you have no clue what it says! Pretty cool huh? :) On the other hand of course, German grammar is a nightmare for many non-native speakers. 😅 What are YOUR examples for inconsistent pronunciation in English? ⬇️ Or do you even have examples for German despite the rather consistent pronunciation rules?
Zu wild ich schwöre
„Ich wollte es nicht umfahren, also habe ich es umfahren.“
Ein alter Hut aber das Beispiel, was mir als erstes einfällt. ^^
From my experiences, German grammar is not only a nightmare for non-native speakers.
There is ewe and you
The problem with the German pronunciation isn't not knowing how to pronounce a word, but not being able to pronounce it.
This reminds me of the mantra: "English is weird. It can be understood through tough thorough thought, though." 😂
That's a good one.
@@rockabye274 and a hiccough
Five words above are pronounced hard.
I heard the phrase as « accept that no one can know English thru and threw except through tough thorough thought, though »
It can be taught via taut tautology.
As a native English speaker, I absolutely loved seeing all these examples of how odd English actually is. Very well done.
I agree, but English seem so easy compared to German with needing to know the gender of words, the 4 cases, declension, and words getting bumped all around the sentence is driving me crazy, but after 1 1/2 years of working at it, I am making some progress 😀 Can't believe my great grandparents were fluent in German!
I have never been good at English even though I was born and raised in America. I had the same difficulties as she has described. Now that I’m in my 30s I can finally spell most words correct. Or use them in the correct context
@@bigaspn Maybe the rule in English is that every rule has its exceptions; sometimes even the exceptions have their own exceptions! - e.g. (when the sound is 'ee') it's I before E - except after C - except for the word 'SEIZE'
@@nancibernard1315 We have 7 cases. And there are more exceptions than rules on how to make them. Words have two genders in plural but three in singular. Greetings from Poland :) Anyway, I also find English easier than German but their spelling is hilarious.
@@bigaspn I heard the other day that 43% of Aussie adults have difficulty and or can't read or write english. i knew there were people who struggled but i was amazed at that %. There are always language courses no matter how young or old you are.
I used this rhyme while teaching English in S. Korea in the 1990s and also back in Denver in my advanced ESL and Intensive English classes prior to 9/11. The students loved it! English pronunciation and spelling are really tuff!
I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough
Others may stumble, but not you
On hiccough, thorough, laugh, and through.
And cork and work and card and ward
And font and front and word and sword
Well done! And now if 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: it’s said like bed, not bead-
For goodness sakes 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, broth in brother.
And here is not a match for there,
And dear and fear for bear and pear.
And then there’s dose and rose and lose-
Just look them up-and goose and choose,
And do and go, then thwart and cart.
Come, come, I’ve hardly made a start!
A dreadful language? Man alive!
I’d mastered it when I was five.
I swear to god, that was the hardest rhyme I've ever read, also I'm not quite sure if I pronounced everything correctly (still learning english, first language: German)
Awesome! And, yes, native English speakers master speaking these words, and differentiating them before they can read and spell them. I still can remember learning the spellings. English would be a horribly boring language without the quirks that come from having so many influences.
LOL native English speaker and I can't even get through the first "paragraph"? Stanza? I can't remember!
I've lived in Texas all my life.
I never heard the word "hiccough". We always say: "hiccup" 🙂
This took me six tries and I still don't think I said everything right.
I like to describe English as: The easiest language to "get by" in, but one of the hardest to *master.*
You can legit string words together in pretty much anyway to be understood. Look at how scots talk they mix the order of words up so much
Much to my surprise, though, a pretty comprehensive bit of research, using multiple criteria, found that the hardest language in the world to learn is Polish - not Japanese, Swahili, Arabic, Indian, Hebrew and so on! (Just my luck: I chose to live here! 🤣)
@@johnbaker-rabe9260 there is no hardest language it all depends on what your mother tongue is
@@walls_of_skulls6061 example please ?
@@emeraldabroad2771 "how like" is used likehow Americans would say "like how"
There's a children's book called "P is for Pterodacyl: the WORST alphabet book" and all 26 words start with a different silent letter.
Great book. My daughters gave me a copy.
That is amazing! loll!
Haha, that is great (going to have to look it up).
English got lots of words from other languages so most if not all of those words likely came from other languages.
Here is the Video from the Book : th-cam.com/video/TrMvv3hSG_k/w-d-xo.html
The word LAUGHTER, when adding an "S" to the front of the word, becomes SLAUGHTER.
The same with LAUGHTER and changing one letter to DAUGHTER , and what's with the spelling of BABY and MAYBE
Daughter, which rhymes with water.
Comedy
Like when Homer Simpson wears the cow suit and can't see the S, he thinks he is going to the Laughterhouse
Putting the laughter in slaughter just leads to the fun in funeral
Great video! As a Native English speaker I never knew how hard the English language was until my dad told me. English was the fifth and last language he learned and would pronounce words incorrectly or mix up words in an expression for example. My dad was born in Greece to parents who were born in Russia(when it was called Russia). So my dad spoke Russian at home but Greek in school, he didn't even realize they were two different languages at first. Then, years later they moved and lived in Germany for a couple years and learned German. Then moved and lived in Italy for few years, learning Italian before finally settling in the United States, learning English. So my dad was fluent in Russian, Greek, German, Italian, and English. He had trouble with a lot of the things you mentioned about the English language. The words pear, pair, and pare threw him off. Also, the word cobweb for some reason he would say cow web. There is an English/American expression, "She thinks she's Miss goodie two shoes". My dad would say, " Miss two good shoes and one bad foot". Lol There are some English words I have trouble pronouncing and/or spelling also. If I have trouble saying or spelling a word I will try and use another similar word instead. Lol 😆 Thanks for sharing! ; ) 💕
My dad grew up speaking Twentse (a dialect of Dutch), and could also speak English, German and French. I think he did OK with English - it wasn't often that I noticed the influence of other languages. As for me, my first language is English, with some French and Latin at school, and some Samoan and Maori learned (or is that learnt?) as an adult.
@@richardvoogd705 OH wow! Impressive! ; )
This was like a good standup set, hilarious. English is my second language as well, i feel your pain throughout as tears tear through my face and my thoughts though im tough so i can take it
........English.
I think the best explanation is one I saw on Reddit awhile ago: English is 3 languages in a trench coat beating up other languages for their pronunciations and spelling.
It is a complete mess and makes no sense, even for us native speakers.
That's such a good summary!!!
@@FelifromGermany Yeah. It's not mine but it sums up this language so well. The spelling and pronunciation just make you want to pull your hair out sometimes.
Yes, this is probably the best way to sum up English...I believe William Shakespeare said something like this...
That sounds like it's a descendant of a post made by James Nicoll on Usenet in the dim time before the Internet was really a thing. It can be found on his Wikipedia page.
"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary." James Nicoll
the 'c' in pacific ocean, is pronounced diffrently three times
Aren’t the first and third cs pronounced the same?
Yeah if you spelled it like it's pronounced it would be more like pasifik oshean
@@toddwebb7521 you are right of course!!
@@914Rocky, "ocean" [was originally] pronounced "oce-yan", but people are lazy and pronounce it "o-shun" or "o-shin".
@@sm5574 Really? I’ve never heard it pronounced that way. Interesting
“Silent letters why they even there if they serve no function”😂 good point! Like a tailbone in anatomy! English is tough to learn from native lands as well but it’s funny & honest from ur perspective cause it sounds more truthful. Great video thanks
Ask the French, they started it! 😁
I think it goes to show how fast the spoken language changes. If you tried to change the spelling to match the spoken words, I think it would be hard to keep up, you'd be producing new dictionaries every few years. And which dialect or version of English would you standardise the spelling on? Best to leave it the way it is, I think 🙂
It gets even more fun if one includes regional ascents. Such as Southern, Upper Michigan Peninsula, or Down Eastern Maine ascents.
Oh sure, you betcha, I am fluent in da Yoopers dialect
German is a NIGHTMARE by comparison
My English teacher once said
"TOO and TO are TWO different words"
That's two too many thing to remember.
I’m a native born American and STILL say “wed-nes-day” when I write: Wednesday
Woden's day
I'm British, and I think “Wotan's Day”.
@@allenwilliams1306 it’s a Germanic God so it’s Woden. 4 of the Roman-based languages lauded Mercury on the 4th day of the week.
same here, haha
@@StormyDay Well, I think of him as Norse ultimately (Odin), but I guess I've been too much influenced by Wagner!
Great video! As a native English speaker who has been studying and trying to practice german (for no particular reason other than my ancestry is from there) for a good part of my life, I can‘t imagine what it must be like to comprehend and make sense of English. What I love about the German I know, along with Italian, is that all the vowel sounds are the same. It‘s getting over the American English mindset of pronouncing them the same that is most difficult (along with genders for nouns). But I imagine any language is easier to master than English. You‘re quite astounding. You have beautiful pronunciation and I enjoy all of your videos! Tschüss
That early sequence in the video in which you describe your confusion of the multiple pronunciations of "ough" was both delightful and shocking for me. As an American and native English speaker, I inherently knew all these pronunciations on site, of course, but seeing them all arrayed and compared to each other in one place was stark. It highlighted how much variance exists in the English pronunciation of this one sequence of letters.
Felicia, I'm a 58 year old Englishman, you've taught me me more about my own language in a 14 minute TH-cam video than I learnt in 5 years at High school back in the day. You're One smart, intelligent, witty and funny person. Brilliant work Felicia, I just love watching your content, thank you. 👏💐
She also has the most excellent diction and I am surprised she is not doing voiceover work.
OK tone it down.
@@joshuddin897 Why?
I keep finding people of older age in these comments, I wonder why
@@thatdbzguyfr because not everyone is the same age as you perhaps?
i’d add “Colonel” to the mix lmao
this comment deserved more love, cause it's spot on
You really want confusion, militarily? Lieutenant in British English is pronounced "Leftenant."
English is a West Germanic language with a ton of Latin-based words and a very German stubborn streak where spelling is concerned. Some of these words with common diphthongs actually used to be pronounced the same. Look at Shakespeare for what are now weird rhymes, that did in his time. If English was Germanized, women would be Wömen. It's just a hidden umlaut.
@@anthonykaiser974 We don't use umlauts in English so we don't know what the hell they are. All those squiggles and dots above letters in some European languages are completely meaningless to us. Anything beyond an apostrophe and Americans start getting very confused.
@@LG123ABC you don't use diacritical marks in English. The "umlaut" still exists in things like irregular nouns (foot becomes feet same as the German Fuß becomes Füßen) just the spelling is fully changed because the I mutations are complete, not partial as in German.
I remember learning English as my first language growing up, we were taught in American school, English is one of the most difficult languages to learn. You are correct about all those words, I've often wondered the same things you covered in the video!
For me a native of West Virginia, the "L" in palm tree isn't silent. Sometimes we get a little lazy in our pronunciation, but it's there.
I’m 46 and only found out this year that my own mother doesn’t pronounce the L in palm. Before that, i had never considered that anyone thought it was silent.
If it's any consolation, it's confusing for us native English speakers, too.
This. Learning to read felt like a perpetual cycle of “learn the rule, here’s the exceptions”. And it always feels like there’s more exceptions than there are words that follow the rules lol.
German grammar is a nightmare, but I can spell “Bedienungsanleitung” without a second thought. I sometimes can’t even remember if “exercise” has an additional “c” after the “x” without relying on spell check.
Reading internet comments is a good demonstration of their/there/they’re and to/too/two confusion
I do not consider myself fluent in German, Danish, Norwegian, or Swedish. But, other than silent letters in Danish, I really wished that we had their simplified spelling in English. But, an extra key for modifying vowels would be nice for typing in these languages.
@@mdubmachine I think that the German grammar is simple because you have rules with few exceptions but in the English language you have you have many exceptions, which makes the English grammar harder to learn
@@mdubmachine And then you get people who teach you wrong too like "i before e except after c" - funnytweeter.com/caches/cache.php?tweet_id=110755.jpg
I taught elementary school for 38 years and everything you said in this video is true for English speaking kids. Our language is a nightmare to learn how to spell for everyone. When I was learning German I loved the fact it everything is pronounced the way it spells. I also had two years of Spanish in high school and the same wonderful thing was true. I didn't think the German was that difficult to learn (although I'm a long way from being fluent) because English is Germanic in origin and I felt comfortable with German from the very beginning. As usual, your videos are very well presented! If I was still teaching, I would show this video to my students ad it encapsulates a great deal of the problems spelling and pronouncing English. Kudos to you, Felicia!
I failed French, Latin, Greek, German and passed Spanish with a "D". I programmed computers in COBOL, PL1, JOVIAL, C/C++, C#, FORTRAN, BPL, RPG III, IBM Assembly language. Did retrievals in SQL, SIS. Honeywell and UNIVAC machine languages. The way the mind works. It took the Russians OVER TWO YEARS to convert the B29 Standard size pieces into metric size pieces so they could build a duplicate. Language affects the way the brain functions.
English has more roots in Saxon and Anglo than German.
As a COMPUTER SCIENCE instructor myself, I have throw in the sentence structure and a few other formats that make hexadecimal/binary MORE amenable to English. Never noticed why the "Japanese" keyboard options died out? That was in the 1990s/2000s so a youngster like you might not remember. Almost ALL modern languages (computer languages) from Honeywell TRIM III to IBM Assembler to COBOL to JOVIAL to C# can be translated. In the cases of translation from English (C++) to German (C++), ALL localisms, must be retranslated and removed. The COST alone for the chinese to backward engineer American software of 25 years ago is $2,000,000,000.00 a year. Teach kids MATHEMATICS, ENGLISH, LOGIC, A little History i.e. Dr Goddard, Babbage, Admiral Hopper, etc. Then GET OUT OF THE WAY. I still want my condo in the Astroid Belt.
I'm sending this video out to 1600 English learners whose email addresses I have picked up over the years.
@@xenxander Isn't Saxony a German state?
Feli, this was your best video I've seen so far. I was cracking up. (Or is that dying with laughter? English is so tuff... err tough). You make it so clear why ESL speakers have such a tough time. But then again I have to tell you English is tough for native speakers too and for the same reasons! I suppose thats why I laughed so much as i can completely empathize. Keep 'em coming.
I am a native English speaker and I feel VERY SORRY for anyone trying to learn it ! SO many rules, SOOOOO many exceptions.
That’s the fun part!
It seems to me that orators and writers who have mastered the language are able to have a great deal of fun
I wish English spelling would go to the internal phonic alphabet as a named Dictionary says the word is pronounced. Idioms, clichés, and grammar are whole other issues.
I took some German in high school and the teacher told us that when she first came to the United States, she kept pronouncing doughnuts as, "duffnuts."
I use know someone who was Brazilian. Her and her family emigrated here when she was young. Her father, despite living here 25+ years, still pronounces “gloves” as glowves. 🤷♀️
We may be lucky, in that this is one of those words that is getting simplified as the language evolves. I would say that the majority of people spell it "donut" now.
This is something I have had more than one English teacher say to me. English is two different languages: spoken and written. You can spend your entire life speaking English and not know how to write it; You can spend your entire life reading and writing English and not know how to speak it!
And the exact same thing can be said about German. There are special courses for people who've learned to speak German as a 2nd language, but now need to be able to write it correctly, but this is more a style thing, not really having to do with spelling. "Bürodeutsch" or "Schriftdeutsch".
@@musicofnote1 Yes, Bürodeutsch is a thing even natives often have problems with, but in general there is no big problem from speaking to writing or the other way around. Some things only from hearing to writing could be a problem, but they are rare and most times have a logical rule.
The problems should be with ei and ai, but ai is rare or eu and äu, but if you have the also rare äu, you always have another word: Baum - Bäume.
It's like french: I speak it with bad schoolfrench, absolutely not fluid, but give me a text and I can read it like a pro.
Gluten Tag Feli,
Proud German-American.
This is C.J. from south-East Arizona.
First, I love the video. As a native English speaker and writer; I still get tripped up by these words. And I spell words like 'Wednesday' in my head: WeD-Ness-Day.
Second, I love your videos. I have learned so much about my German and German-American culture and heritage.
Growing up in the USA, I was not told directly but culturally to feel shame and dishonor of my German heritage, to be ashamed of who I am and where I come from.
However, your videos have shown me to feel a deep love and pride in my German and German-American culture and heritage that I have never had before.
In my life, your videos are a blessing.
I want to thank you and Ben for creating and posting these videos, to me you are a precious gift.
I am looking forward to more of your wonderful videos.
And you and Ben do make a cute couple.
I know you have seen the T.V. show "Friends" so you will understand when I say: you and Ben are each other's lobster.
Veilen Dank
Dien Friend,
C.J.
(and yes I used Google Translate but only for the correct spelling. :) )
Google let you down, coming and going.
Gluten is das Gluten (or der Kleber), the stuff that makes some people ill.
Good Day is Guten Tag.
Dein Friend is neither German nor English.
Your Friend is either dein Freund (male) or deine Freundin (female).
It can be tricky in German. I lived with a Czech woman housemate in Germany. If I introduced her as meine Freundin it would have meant she was my girlfriend. That would have annoyed my wife. I had to be careful and introduce her as eine Freundin von mir, a friend of mine.
" . . . with a lot of confusion and bitternes, sometimes." OMG. You have the most expressive face, and the most sunny disposition.
Just keep on being yourself, Feli. Love ya.
The *"L"* in *Palm Tree* is *not entirely silent.* It's just kind of quiet. 😛 😟
That is not how that works. It is just as silent as in colonel or half.
Came here to say this.
@@chill4xed42 Nope. As a person who has lived in Southern California for the past 65 years, where there are lots of *palm trees,* I can tell you that the "L" in palm normally *is pronounced.*
@@chill4xed42 Colonel - "Kernel" Depends who says it and where
@@chill4xed42 The "L" in Palm Tree is *slightly* de-emphasized. But you know that position your tongue takes hard up against the roof of your mouth when you say the "L" in Lucky Lindy Licked a Lollypop? Yeah. That position. That is where your tongue ought to be when you say the "L" in *"Palm Tree."*
No I understand why "spelling competitions" are such a big thing in the U.S. - And why they need a sentence in which the word is used.
@Steven Strain you mean the Bri ish? Why would they be annoyed?
@@victorlaurent2978 More likely to say annoy the Brits than Bri ish who even says that?
@@hydrolito the Bri'ish, it's a meme
@@hydrolito There's a handful of accents like Luton or Essex that drop their Ts, but I think most of us pronounce them
Spelling is a whole genre of humor. All you can do is laugh about it. But I can imagine how too many students of English must cry more about it.
Damn Feli, you nailed it! I'm Italian and I love English language, it's easy, practical and brilliant but I still struggle so much where pronunciation is concerned... So frustrating at times, yet I love the challenge!
This is how we get payback for 16 ways to say "the" in German.
Now THAT is confusing.
And “a” and “your”
AMEN!!
So very true!!
Never understood the ;) need of even one 'the'. But then, I'm a Finnish native speaker ;)
You're not the only one that struggles with this! Just ask many native English speakers who still have issues with the same things you pointed out today!
Hi Feli! Great show/no nonsense presentations. Enthusiastic presentztions !!!
You just have to remember that read rhymes with lead but read rhymes with lead!
Awesome picture. Fellow Star Trek fan.
Nice.
😂😂😂
And my pet peeve: don't forget that the past tense of the verb "to lead" is spelled "led," not "lead."
That’s great, thanks. I was laughing when I read this:)
As an American who is a native English speaker as well as an English teacher I agree with this! Even though I've been to Germany twice and find German to be a bit difficult especially regarding grammar, I was able to learn some basic phrases that helped me survive my times there. The rules do make more sense though because the phonetics serve a purpose like you mentioned. Anyway, great video! Danke!
Started watching your vids, feeling nostalgic. You see, I was an exchange student about the time of the fall of the Berlie Wall. Spent a year in Stuttgart, my senior year in high school. Struggled mightily to keep up despite 3 years of German, but eventually held my own. I can't imagine having to adjust to the lack of logic in the English language; once I was able to understand the flow of German grammar, everything fell into place easily. Going the other way....not easy, as you've pointed out here. That said: some of the best memories of my life are teaching English to 5th graders in Baden Wuertemberg...so much fun! I'm grateful for your channel -- but am sad you've had to go through the re-branding. Will keep watching, I really enjoy your content!
I'm sure it can be difficult learning the different spellings and meanings of English words. However it does make it so much easier to tell a punny joke. Some do not think puns are funny, but I love it.
If I hadn’t grown up as an English speaker I’d have never learned the language. My sympathies. It’s kind of a mess.
Same, for sure.
As a native speaker I really never thought about these things... and I just typed an example lol
English, wth lol
@Sol Dei "neither" works better here.
I am a native german speaker and I can say: our articles are much worse!
The pronounciation is very simple if you know the rules. But if you haven't learned the right article, you are screwed, because the endings of the adjectives depend on the grammatic gender of the noun.
@@SoulAcid1 Is that the infamous die der das articles so many are frustrated with when learning German?
Author Bill Bryson has written two books on this topic that I strongly recommend: "The Mother Tongue - English And How It Got That Way" and "Made in America: An Informal History of the English Language in the United States"
You mentioned write and right. You can add "rite" and make a trio! The definitions - courtesy of Oxford Languages - are the following:
1) A religious or other solemn ceremony or act.
2) A social custom, practice, or conventional act.
Your understanding of the English language is better than most native English speakers (and i used to teach English in Europe).
Languages are fascinating to me - very cool to see videos like this. Danke.
Here are a couple more:
Horizon vs horizontal
Minute as in “give me a minute” and “minute” as in “minute details”
...and minutia, with the "sh" of Modern (vs Classical) Latin.
"I begged father to deliver me from the wrath of my mother; my plight was minute compared to the Packers'."
At the Chinese restaurant, is it minute chicken, as in takes only a minute to make? Or is it minute chicken, as in small chicken? 🤷🏻♂️🤔
It might seem frustrating, but if you know your parts of speech like the back of your hand, then neither Horizon (n.)/Horizontal (adj.) nor Minute (n.)/Minute (adj.) should be an issue. Then again, I'm a native English speaker with limited perspective as to how hard it is to commit parts of speech, verb forms, tenses, etc to memory.
Quite a few other languages have words spelled the same whose meanings change radically by how they are pronounced.
I noticed from my German speaking friend that she’ll get confused with “oo” pronunciations. She said something like, “This restaurant has good food!” where both words sounded the same with different consonants. Same with words like “mood”, “book”, “door”, and “flood”.
You can get a lot of amusement out of deliberately mispronouncing the "oo" in these sentences:
Look, the thieves hid their loot in the woods.
Shoot! It's not good to get too much soot on your boots.
As a native English speaker who has taught adult literacy and English to non native speakers, I have learned just how many exceptions and odd spelling and pronunciations we have. Great video!
I have thought about these before and feel so bad for people learning English for these reasons 😞 I've been trying to learn German and it can be so discouraging, but helps me feel better knowing that as hard as English can be to learn, many people stick with it and succeed so I can succeed in German! 😁
OMG I was literally in that very class where you learned how to pronounce "cough". Btw I very much enjoyed your class
When teaching my young Chinese students, I push a feather through a straw to help them with the concept and pronunciation of "through." It can be tough though :)
Though my wife and I could be Feli's grandparents and we have no yearning to speak German, we discovered this charming, intelligent and darn cute young woman who is a treat to watch. She has such an infectious and cheery personality that we really enjoy just watching and grinning.
Same here she is my kids age. She has a nice mid western accent and a small German one that sneaks in every so often.
I speak both languages and I just think it's fun to hear somebody complain about English. Also I'm 15 so I don't relate at all.
The key to it is to memorize what the world looks like. Then get a whole bunch of words that rhyme with each other that are actually spelled about the same and memorize those in that category of the last few numbers which makes them rhyme. There was so many little tricks I had to put in my head when I was younger. I still suck at spelling.
Please take comfort in knowing that we suffer like you in learning the rules and pronunciations so we thought the same.
Well done and extremely entertaining 😂.
I remember struggling with the word "Queue", darn, you just have to pronounce the first letter, the rest is silent :laugh:
Yesssss!!!!
😂😂😂 in hindi/urdu it means why
Right! Four consecutive silent vowels - it's unique!
RU kidding?
@@loopshackr "unique" sounds a bit french (frensh? ;-) but the u would be different, it would be the german ü or the norwegian u ;-)
Ünig ;-)
Unique ;-)
If we pronounce the:
gh, as in the word “tough”
o, in the word “women”
ti, in the word “motion”
The word “ghoti” would be pronounced: fish
Lol. I see one slight flaw, though. When I pronounce "women," the "o" is more of an "e" sound.
🤣
@@Madchemist002 Fish with a slight Scottish accent ☺
And if we pronounce
• gh as [p] in hiccough,
• ough as [əʊ] in dough,
• phth as [t] in phthisis,
• eigh as [eɪ] in neighbour,
• tte as [t] in gazette,
• eau as [əʊ] in plateau
potato could be spelled ghoughphtheightteeau
@@Madchemist002 Which "e" sound??? There are many.
The ie/ie rule works most of the time. It is "i" before "e," except after "c," or when sounding like "a" as in neighbor or weigh!
Feli, this is my first introduction to you and your channel. Seeing the sparkle in your eyes and the enthusiasm in your voice gives me hope that spelling and pronunciation will not remain a mystery - to new speakers of English as well the American children in our schools. Spelling is not emphasized as the younger generations are more accustomed to visual learning than all of us ancient relics that learned spelling and grammar back in the day. We call it "old school" learning.
I have been writing as a hobby for 60 years and I was a professional writer for the last ten years of my career. Even with a good working knowledge of the dictionary, I still find myself writing "there" for "their" when writing my first drafts. I hope that your subscribers will use this as a "take-away:" Even writers who make their living using the peculiar rules of English are constantly self correcting as they write. One would think that working with words all day everyday would cure all problems of spelling and grammar. Not exactly!
Thank you, Feli for putting my frustrations with the English language in such an eloquent video. I was born in America, and I'm 73 years old and still struggle with many of the same idiosyncrasies you point out. Two thumbs up, five stars and a hearty well done. Oh just between you and me I absolutely spell Wednesday as you outlined - I use the same method to spell together as to-get-her.
What do you do about your "therapist"?
I sound out both Wed nes day and Feb ru ary when I write them down 😂
@@adrasteia3866 Yeah, when I spell "Wednesday", I think (pronounce) to myself "Wed NES day". 😊
I always told myself Wednesday had something to do with weddings back in the day.
As a native English speaker, this is amazing and totally agree! A big issue I think is that unlike many European languages - including German - there isn't a national governing body rationalizing language rules.... it's all based on historical contexts and development of dialects and roots of individual words.
"A big issue I think is that unlike many European languages - including German - there isn't a national governing body rationalizing language rules"
Actually, it's quite the reverse. Most of our spelling strangenesses result from the fact that not once, but twice, English was subjected to what amounted to Crown regularization of spelling- in both cases, not long before the pronunciations changed dramatically and the 'official' spellings became phonetically obsolete.
Can you imagine the outcry if you proposed this. The House of Lords would explode and the traditionalists would have a fit. Hell, they still hate the change to metric measurements. Besides, who would get to do it? The English, the Americans, the Canadians, Australians? On that topic why do the Americans think they speak English? American is a different language to English especially when written. Even spoken American is dramatically different to English.
@@shaneintheuk2026 by that reasoning, people in central and South America don't speak Spanish. I don't think I can agree with that.
@@lowfatlatte0 good point but South Americans don’t make Spaniards call their language Spanish Spanish unlike the Americans who slap UK English on everything 😂😆🤣
@@shaneintheuk2026 actually they do. :l they call it castillian Spanish. That is despite Spanish spoken in catalunia being varied similar to how English is varied between Scotts, Irish, and Britt's. Those groups exchange far more language change than exchanged between the US and any member of the UK. Thus we categorize many dialects under a group called "UK English".
BTW "dove" as in the past tense of "dive" is really only used in American English. In the UK the past tense form of dive is "dived". Also "there" and "their" aren't pronounced identically in all English varieties. Some native speakers in the UK do distinguish these, depending on their regional accent, and also some distinguish between "weather" and "whether", "Wales" and "Whales", "witch" and "which", "wine" and "whine", etc.
I've had trouble with English spelling since elementary school. Thanks goodness for spell check.
One problem is that when the monks started writing English down centuries ago, they decided to use the grammatical rules of Latin and it’s been a nightmare ever since. Add in the changes over the years and the fact that English adopts words from other languages, or invents them (We’re looking at you, William Shakespeare), things can be a pain, even for native speakers.
It's not like other languages don't do this, but we on the other hand update our spelling regularly to match the current pronunciation
And don’t forget that English speakers make up words for anything at the drop of a hat 😂
English an Latin grammar have as much in common as a jellyfish with a submarine. ^^
@@lydiafife8716 Is it a “Whatsit” or a “Wotsit”? The former, because someone has trademarked the latter.
@@sayeichhornchen1972 You a totally wrong. I speak English and Portuguese and in fact there are some grammatical structures in Portuguese that matches exactly with the English language... Everybody knows that English is a Germanic language but it's notorious the huge Latin influence in it.
As a Swede I must say the fact that both English and Swedish have kept spellings from older days don't only have drawbacks. It makes it easier to se the relations between words that have a common Germanic background when the pronunciation has gone in different directions. Apart from the fact that this is great for an etymology-lover as myself, if I don't understand a spoken English word, sometimes I can get it if I see it written.
Also Yiddish and Dutch German are similar and I can talk to Pennsylvania Dutch
I love word " history" also. I tell my wife word origins and she looks at me like, why does anybody care?
Yea olde Ænglisc and olde Norse were very very similar aswell brother; from back in Saxon and Viking times, times of Wessex, Mercia and the Danelaw!
th-cam.com/video/WxPApTGWwas/w-d-xo.html
Try manx mate manx language is from where I’m from. The Isle of Man 🇮🇲 it used to belong to Norway 🇳🇴 back in the days. We are also Vikings. My past past family was a Viking king called orry king orry. He was king where I’m from.
I hear what you are saying and I'm glad you are here to tell us.
Been speaking English all my life. I, indeed use the Wed-nes-day trick when spelling that word. Excellent observation!
"Rhetoric sounds like Frederic" 🤣 Danke für die Eselsbrücke!
that's a very helpful donkey bridge!
English needs these German expressions badly. I already use schadenfreude a lot but can't spell it without looking it up
@@krisrowan or looking for an umlaut on the keyboard.
and what is the English word for umlaut?
Who knows diaresis who isn't teaching English?
Maria, except in English Frederic sounds like Fredrick so Rhetoric and Frederic do not rhyme.
Some other words. “Deer and dear”, and It’s not “fine” to get a “fine”. 😱
I saw a nice wordgame in
Singapore the fine city
What about “fine leg” (the cricket fielding position)?
0:45 This is exactly how I felt learning spelling in Primary School haha! I'm still bad at it, but at least we have spellcheck haha!
Now, I just get reminded of my first experiences in english spelling quizzes.
You are so right about Wed-nes-day, as a native english speaker for over 30 years, EVERYONE spells it in their head when writing it.
I don't.
Think of it as Wodens-day!
Try that with "phthlate." Amerikans can't manage "amphitheatre."
@@jimkirby9959 Well, most Americans would spell it "Amphitheater"
@@Rocketsong Which is exactly how germans would spell it.
As Eddie Izzard once said, English letter combos like -ough are just ways to cheat at Scrabble.
One reason for words not sounding as they are spelt, is that these days we pronounce words very differently to how they used to be said in bygone days. Take for instance Shakespeare plays, If they are said as they were in his day most people would not understand them. 👍👍👍👍
Quote Ooguay: "The past is history, the future is a mistery, but the here and now is a gift. That's why you call it present."
The English pronunciation of Mercedes has three different sounds for the letter E
and is missing the grave accents ;(
Interesting. But how is it pronounced in German as opposed to in English? I am not a German speaker, but I believe the same could be said for the German pronunciation. The first, second and third "e" are all pronounced differently as well.
doesn't matter. it's a spanish word, so it should be pronounced in spanish
@@lordraydens No, it was the name of a German girl who inspired Wilhelm Maybach to create the brandname Mercedes. She happened to be called Mercedes, and her name was not prounounced in a Romanic way (French, Spanish) but in a German way.
@@bobbwc7011 that's still wrong
You can also spell Tony as Ptoughneigh.
Had to work on that. An old favorite is "ghoti" for fish.
You forgot the k before the n. 😂
ghoti = fish
Or toe-knee
Uh. No. There’s just no reason for that. I reject this proposal. 🤣🤣🤣
Servus Feli, This is the first time I've seen the greeting, SERVUS, being used for 67 years! I'm enjoying your TH-cam videos. I was stationed at a small town about 56Km SE of Munich, called Bad Aibling. This was in 1954-1956...about the time your grandma and grandpa were thinking if getting married! Feli, I hope you enjoy the States as much as I loved those 26 months in Bavaria. I still think a lot about the wonderful time I had riding all over western Europe on my BMW 600.
Delightful! Because of the change I had the opportunity to enjoy this video I didn't see before.
Well it's simple: Forget about any rules, just learn EVERY SINGLE WORD by heart: Meaning, Pronunciation AND spelling. Done.
That’s exactly the way I learned English. I just memorized the way words looked and sounded. It works well for me but it’s hard to explain to my elementary school age children. They want to know the rules…
I use Gboard on my phone now and if sometimes I struggle with spelling Google translate comes in handy 😁
I learned english from music and movies over 20 y ago. Didn't have any assistance back then.
In the end that is what everyone does. Either by hard learning or by time
. and so are the dumb seperated from the others, only dumb dont care about rules
I heard a speech pathologist say that the rules of English are simple and could be explained in a single chapter, but you'll need 27 additional chapters to explain all the exceptions to the rules.
Watching my son learn to write was a revelation. So many of the words he spelled “wrong” were actually spelled according to a more logical and consistent set of rules than the actual written language applies.
The reason spelling reform will never get anywhere is that the rules are enforced by the people who have mastered them. It makes them feel smart to be fluent in the complex mess that is English spelling, and besides it would be too much work to unlearn it all and use a simpler system.
You are judged by the words you use. When a person on the radio says, "I axed my mother," I get a perfect image of his race and level of education without even seeing his face.
@@jimkirby9959 What does race have to do with this?
@@jurikurthambarskjelfir3533 It's most common among black English. However, it is also a regionalism.
@@foobar6194 Never heard this around black friends
In Germany we had the same problem with some words. Therefore it was decided to teach the younger generation a newer set of grammatical rules. I personally was educated right in the process of decission making. So one day the said that we have to write the new way and on the second it was the old way and so on until the goverment decided it is okay to write in both ways but the following schoolstarters would only learn the new grammatical rules. For the unluky ones like me, we are still confused.
my favorite is the word for a line which is "queue". It is basically the letter "Q" with not one, not two, but 4 silent letters following the "Q"
Hallo Feli, ich bin jetzt wirklich beeindruckt von deinem Video, das alle Englischlehrer weltweit benützen können.
Was literally chuckling all the way through this, since I can understand the frustration. One more for you... The classic "to/two/too" one... "TO go with another, you TWO must be in agreement, TOO." And the "i before e" is "I before E, except after C", as in "ceiling" vs "hieroglyph".
The "i before e" thing makes me immediately think of: science 🤣
I before E except after C and when sounding as ay as in neighbor and weigh
Still isn't true sadly haha
@@AwkwardHillbilly Yeah. Two rums to room two-two-two too.
How come you put floor wax on the floor, but you don't put sealing wax on the ceiling?
@@pierreabbat6157 because SEALING wax is used for sealing documents and letters.
One of my favorite sayings regarding our spelling rules: "I before E except after C. Disproven by Science"
Their doesn't fit either
There once was a video on Merriam-Webster's channel here about that rule. Sadly, they removed it (probably when Kory Stamper, the associate editor who narrated it, left M-W). Someone reuploaded a copy: th-cam.com/video/eSBhC3k2XOo/w-d-xo.html
I heard a variant of the expression which removes most of the exceptions: “I before E, except after C, if the sound is ee”.
That is weird.
The only rule in English is that ALL rules have exceptions even the exceptions.
Oh I love how spelling bees exist in English, especially with their foreign-rooted words and loanwords such as: denouement, chthonian, maitre d', yarmulke, roux, moue, bdellium, saguaro, etc.
My absolute favorite is reading used car ads (not adds by the way) that mention that the car for sale has new breaks. This would mean, in a grammatically incorrect way, that some things on the car have recently been broken. What the ads mean to say is the car for sale has new brakes.
I once texted a girl:
Me: Do u want to have a drink?
She: I’m down
Me: Ok, get well soon!
She: No, I’m down means I’m totally up for it
Me: So u wanna get out?
She: I’m in
🤯🤯🤯
😂
It's should've been 'I'm down for it." There's too much context loss by just using "I'm down." Down the stairs? Down in the basement? Down in the dumps?
@@LadyAnuB This is why texting and colloquial language should be used sparingly. It rots higher brain function.
@@TheMidgardViking Except those who text the most are those that use colloquial language the most.
That's slang, which is another topic that is frustrating. Each generation adds new slang.
Hillarious (if frustrating to some) video! English is a combination of Celtic, old German, Latin, old Scandinavia, and old French, with a touch of Greek words for good measure. Each of these languages have their own pronunciation rules and they are often in conflict with on another. Understanding the roots of those words will help one understand which pronunciation rule to follow.
Very true. What I find interesting are the English words that are obviously borrowed from French. Some of those words are ones that most people don't bother to use the French pronunciation for. Rapprochement and denouement are ones that come to mind.
@@atrujillo9 And for example, visage. Americans & Brits will say "viz-idge." Knowing the French version that sounds bad to me ( an American ).
@@treetopjones737 Oh wow. I had not thought of that. How is it supposed to be pronounced?
You could take this show on the road. That was 15 minutes of the funniest stand up I've heard in weeks. You rock.
See her other videos. They're all great.
Oh my goodness, I have never actually realized the noun vs verb, even though I do pronounce these words correctly. Thank you!
For what it's worth, MANY native English speakers have a very hard time using their, they're and there.
Mostly because they didn't pay attention in first or second grade.
I think it is more than that. It is a cultural/class thing. If kids came home from school speaking grammatically, their parents would have hated it. They wouldn’t have fit in any more.
@@louisshambarger2230
These aren't distinctions in spoken english- only written. There are no parents checking their children's writing to make they're misusing these words
@@gemoftheocean true story. I didn’t know this either.
They're their there.
"You'd think silent letters are something you'd just find in French or Spanish." -- I remember taking Spanish in junior high and being blown away about how standardized the pronounciation for all letters were. Every time you see an "E" it's always pronounced the same. About the only silent letter they have is the "h" and when it is/not slient is also pretty standardized.
The other silent letter is the u after Q ( like in QUE or QUIEN) or G ( gue or GUI)
It's funny how easy it is to become a spelling god in Spanish. Native speakers ask me how I remember where their silent h's go or whether it's a b or v in some word or an s, c, or z. Their complications are just trivial compared to English.
@@jazmine9570 English is the Hoover of languages. Think of the contents of your vacuum cleaner bag.
No. When the e is stressed it is a long vowel, and unstressed it’s short. You have “Mesa” where it’s stressed and pronounced “may-sa.” Then you have “ventana” pronounced “Ben-ta-na” NOT “bay-n-ta-na.” So, it all depends on whether the “e” is stressed or not. I taught Spanish for 46 years, so I can tell you you’re just plain wrong about the letter “e.”
Izó la vela de la carabela con cuerdas de verdolaga hinchadas. (Hoisted the sail of the caravel with swollen cords of purslane.)
"Izar" is French "hisser", English "hoist"; where'd the H go?
"Carabela" is "caravel", why did V turn into B?
"Verdolaga" is from Latin "portulaca" through Arabic, which has no V or P; where'd the V come from?
"Hinchado" is from Latin "inflatum"; where'd the H come from?
Even as a native speaker, I totally understand how these oddities would be confusing for those learning the language.
When you mix Dutch, German, French, Spanish, and Old English = Modern English
kinda satisfying to know that I m not the only one struggeling with this :D
Don't worry, native speakers struggle with this as well.
Starting at 9:07 (Silent letters), you forgot the most famous one: Queue.
Queue - The letter Q followed by 4 unnecessary vowels.
The letters after the 'Q' are merely waiting their turn.
@@khausere7 Nice one.
OMG, this video is so funny! Felicia, I think you can have a little bit more of this type of video where you are semi-complaining, and put some memes.
As a native speaker when I was in the 4th grade I invented a secret method starting with the word jeeahgraffy which is spelled geography. I made secret pronunciation to remember the spelling so I secretly said "ge-O-graphy". Decades later I was reading the autobiography of linguist Mario Pei and he said he did the same thing, having a secret pronunciation for English words according to how they would sound if pronounced by Italian phonetics.
Pei, BTW, said that standardized spelling came into English in the 1700s and that instead of having half a dozen illogical spellings for a word it was reduced to one illogical spelling.
A book on genealogy lamented that our English ancestors did not even use consistent spellings for their names -- not even an individual. Shakespeare sometimes wrote his name "Shakspear" or "Shakspeare". The movie _Shakespeare in Love_ satirized this by starting with him inventing a pageful of new spellings for his name.
Felicia, when I was in the US Navy, I was stationed at a NATO command. Most of the officers there were Danish and German. Being the American officer who just recently graduated college and the most junior officer, I got tagged as the Native English Speaker. So, I got to review the writing of the Danish and German officers and edited them as necessary. However, since many English words in the US and the UK are spelled differently, I had to remember the way that British spell their words since the official languages of NATO are British English and French. So that got a bit complicated sometimes.
Didn't even notice how difficult English is since I grew up with these rules 😅 she's got a point though!
A while ago in the 1980s, there was this great PBS show called “the Story of English” based on a book of the same title. What struck me most was when the narrator read a text from (what I recall as) Old English which I think was in the Middle Ages, and it sounded to me a lot like Scandinavian or some Nordic language (at least to my ignorant ears!) I guess my point is that I heard many of those sort of guttural sounds, such as the “gh” in thought or caught, WERE pronounced almost similar to the German -cht. Interestingly too, what are now “silent” e’s were also articulated, for example, “were” might be spoken as “wer-eh.” If you think the spelling is inconsistent now, you should see some old documents and such from the 18th century for example, where it seems as if pretty much everyone was making it up as they went along. Anyway, thought you might be interested. Here’s the link to the second episode, which also goes into the reason for irregular spelling - th-cam.com/video/p3q95Mg2i7c/w-d-xo.html
"The Story of English": Brilliant series, which I remember enjoying back in the day! It hadn't occurred to me to look for it online. Thanks!
Well, English is a Germanic language.
Also this is all spot on. You must have had an great English teacher(s). 👏🏾
Here’s a nice rule to help you out
You only use an before a word if that word has a vowel as the first letter
Otherwise use a
bow also has the "arrow" meaning.
What my English teacher made me stumble over was "row". As in not-column, or as in paddling boat. But also as in having an argument.
What about “tower” (who tows a boat) versus “tower” (a building which towers above you)? If you had a particularly strong horse with great stamina towing a barge on a canal, he might be literally a “tower of strength” and, figuratively, “a tower of strength”!
@hognoxious We Americans pronounce it both ways. We pronounce it 'root' when using it as a noun, but 'rout' when using it as a verb. The problem pronouncing it 'root' when used as a verb is it is easily confused with the verb 'to root' (to poke or dig about, specifically a pig rooting for food with his nose).