Things you don't understand about English--Let's Talk!

[Black_Conscious]

the whole thing is really confusing

[vothnthorvaldson]

Weirdly, olive skin is very evocative to me and really works to make me think of a brown with a bit of yellow green.
I think the accuracy of the colour depends of the type and preparation of olives people are most familiar with.

One clear example of the same kind is the North American word 'eggplant', which stuck, even though most people don't recognize the vegetable when presented with the round, white aubergines that are at the origin of the word 'eggplant'.

[DasIstWunderblyat]

I literally comes from the simplest language in the world where tenses do not exist and I am just stupid. Yes I sound dumb for the confusion but language is hard. I am sorry for not being able to learn language as good as other people.

[mlocik97]

In Slovak we say "Ja som nikdy nebol v Paríži" that mean "I never have been in Paris" but in real its "I never haven't been in Paris" (we use double "not" in Slovak to say "not", but double negation is logically not a "not".)

[amberberry]

English has a word for throwing someone out of a window but not for "day after tomorrow" or "day before yesterday". Brilliant

[eloise]

This one's my favorite so far

[amberberry]

I've always wondered this one. Because if the verb is "to buffalo", shouldn't it be used as "buffaloes" or "buffaloed" in the sentence.

[carreonaiwille]

As a non-native speaker with only the simple tenses in our native language, tenses in English are a nightmare. I teach language to middle-school age kids and tenses are something I have to review constantly on my own. I butcher it sometimes when unchecked. Irregular verbs are also quite a challenge.

[NickRowler]

English is my native language but I have really bad dyslexia and had issues with speaking.

Something I had issues with as a young kid was when someone wanted to use something they would ask...

“Do you mind if I use this?”

I would be OK with them using it and say “Yes.” Because I misinterpreted the question as “Can I use this?”. I pissed off a lot of people because if this. I ended up at one point just say, “Yes, you can use this.”

[rajillustration]

Native English speaker here and I will die before I spell freind and excersize correctly.

Also, you get a lot of interesting word definitions that are really area dependant. So I'm from California where we call people 'dude', and 'man', and they are both entirely gender neutral. Like completely and entirely general neutral when you use them in California. 'sup.

My bro lived in West Virginia for a while and they have a term called "holler" which is a dip in a mountain or something like that, and it can also be used as a unit of distance. We don't have that anywhere else.

[bakasama25]

Actually, English DOES has a word for that. It's "Overmorrow". I suppose the fun part about being a writer that aspires to the lofty title of "Wordsmith" is learning English or any other language better than the average speaker with the creative use of google or a thesaurus.

[IndigoShirtProd]

Too bad it's a word nobody will ever use, at least not in the near future.

@rajillustration not really related to the how confusing of a language English is, but more about localized colloquialisms: here in Texas, the question "How far away is it?" When talking about distances between cities and such, is answered differently by the locals. When someone asks how far away something is, native Texans always answer with a amount of time rather than a distance. If someone asks me how far away Houston is, I, and most other Texans I know, will say something along the lines of "it's so and so hours away." Weirds out people who are not from here cuz they just want miles, but Texas is so big that you're better off listing the time instead.

[rajillustration]

Same with California actually, our traffic is so bad we only measure distance in time. Our freeways are also just...a mess, so time is just more accurate than miles.

[indagold]

As a native english speaker, I hate tenses and to this day still don't know how to use them but after trying to learn spanish, I have new found respect for the english language.

[TedGravesArt]

"Cleave" is another word that's it's own antonym. You can cleave to something, meaning stick to something, or you can cleave something in two, meaning split it apart.

[Maps]

Can’t help but think of the Arctic Monkeys

[Ordinaryaverageguy]

Makes me wonder offhand whether the 'olive' color is like the color 'purple' - not everyone agrees what it means.

[Ordinaryaverageguy]

And often, when I get a distance in miles, I'll mentally convert it to required drive-time anyway.

[Maps]

I’m an English speaker and I got my MA in Applied Linguistics, but sometimes I still feel helpless in explaining this language.

I’ll leave you with this:

[bakasama25]

Well, þere's noþiŋ preventiŋ me from usiŋ þe letters seldom used Eŋlish letters like ŋ and þ when I'm typiŋ this oþer þan þe need to be understood clearly.

(Well, there's nothing preventing me from using the letter seldom used English letters like ŋ (eng) and þ (thorn) when I'm typing this other than the need to be understood clearly.)

I mean if want to write in English but not in normal English learning some obscure but valid English words might help with that. However, you may have to explain what those words mean. It could be useful for a world building project.