I hope this is not news to any of my readers. What I find interesting is why it does not make sense, as illuminated by a comparison to Spanish. English is much easier than other languages in that the words in an English sentence have less to do grammatically to the other words. Nouns don’t have case or grammatical gender, and to put a verb in the past, you usually just add “ed”, regardless of the subject. This is different from Spanish and most romance languages, where the form of the word you are about to use depends sensitively on what you are going to use a few words later. So, the rules of English grammar are simple, but grammar alone doesn’t let you communicate. It’s when you try to fill in the grammar with something that you run into all these problems.
- Pronunciation: Again, I hope this is not news to you. Just for fun, how many letters in the English alphabet never change their pronunciation? For example, “cough” and “through” are pronounced differently, so that knocks out o, u, g, and h.
- Unnecessary Synonyms: This is the one I really want to talk about, because it’s such a good way to tell merely fluent speakers from native ones. As an example, what’s the difference in meaning between “write” and “write down”? I don’t think there is one, but there is certainly a difference in usage: you only say “write down” when someone is already trying to communicate through non-written means. No, wait. “Write down the names of your whole family on this sheet of paper” sounds perfectly natural. Is there one rule for which to use, and more importantly, why did anyone start using “write down” when it has no meaning separate from “write”? If you are a lot smarter than me and you thought of the answer without breaking a sweat, first let me know what the answer is, then try coming up with you own examples. Remember, it has to be two words or phrases, which mean exactly the same thing, but are used in different contexts, based on as subtle a rule of usage as possible. What about “many” and “a lot of”?
#1 reminded me of this: A rough-coated, dough-faced, thoughful ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough; after falling into a slough, he coughed and hiccoughed.
Apparently there are 9 different ways to pronounce “ough” in there
#2…one of the things that I actually like most about English (besides the grammar and conjugation) is all the synonyms. Not only does it occasionally let you express things more poetically (which isn’t always useful, but good in literature and occasionally debates), but they often have some more subtle differences in meaning. Like “write down” I’d think of as a subset of writing, limited to quick notes on paper, and the like. You wouldn’t “write down” a novel, for example.
Of course, I do realize that this is all a royal pain in the ass.
Yeah, I’m with Nathan on “write down,” although I would add that I think that the phrase implies that you or someone else will want whatever is written down for later use, especially if it’s something easily forgotten, like a phone number. You would never say “why don’t you write your phone number for me,” unless it was followed by “on this piece of paper” or something. But you WOULD say “why don’t you write DOWN your phone number for me,” with no need to specify where/how, etc.
I gotta go eat a Labor Day picnic, but when I think of a similar example, I’ll hasten to let the internet know.