JovialJman - English 101 (Some Interesting English Concepts)

Dictionaries are a good way to show English.

English being one of the most widely spoken languages, spoken by about 1.5 billion people or more, have very interesting roots and things about it that not many people know. Lets talk about that.

Vsauce has done a video with the title of ENGLISH. I will talk about some of the points Michael made, but I highly recommend you watch the video. In the year 400 A.D. and earlier, there were people that were named Angles, (not because they were good at maths, teehee), and after the roman ruling period a lot of the Angles migrated from their homeland Anglii, (what is now northern Germany) to a land called Britannia, (Britain) which was named after the people that lived there. Now so many of these Angles lived on this island that it was referred to as Angel land, which then came to be the county name of England.

This image is taken from wikipedia, showing an early map of North Africa, Europe and a bit of Asia

Now in 1066, the normans invaded the land and won, and this event is believed to be the biggest change to the English language. One of the changes that the normans brought were the words of the meat they ate, (i.e. pork and beef), while the natives still called the animals with their own words, (i.e. pig and cow), and because of this, English is one of the very few languages that have different words for the meat of the animal then the name of the animal itself.

Now if you take that into consideration, you will have Germanic derived words, and Latin derived words. English has taken a lot of words from other languages and calls them english. Greek derived words are used for specific things, like things in science and biology, where as informal, and rude things would be germanic, (this is due to the Normans making that the common tongue offensive) and there are others.

Accents and dialects are something on their own as well. For instance Americans sound quite different to Europeans, and both of those nation speakers would sound different to people that are taught and brought up in another language then learnt to speak english. Some nations have rather Stereotypical accents associated with them. Like in the beginning of this paragraph when I generalized the countries you would most probably think of one accent for the group, where in fact in one country there may be 10's of accents. This to some degree may also lend itself to the spelling differences as well.

Americans spell some words different to those of Britain, or have different words for them entirely. Colour and color is a good example of that, gas and petrol is another, (gas coming from Gasoline and petrol from petroleum). Tom Scott has done a few videos on english in this playlist, and I would recommend watching all of them as it is very interesting. OP english is a widely debated subject on pronunciation. How would people in the Shakespearean era sound like? Well this video may help.

Now English is still evolving and many new words are made every year. Noob has made its way into the Oxford Dictionary, whereas just a few years ago it was only considered slang. Many words like this have slowly made their way into our speech. Now when does a noise become a new word? Well this is hard to answer directly, but Oxford Dictionary, (the place where many Scrabble players and others will look to see if a certian arrangement of letters is a legitimate word) usually adds a word to their list when it becomes apparent that it is used by enough people often enough with a particular meaning for it.

Now english is known to be really confusing to learn if you are not a native speaker already, words have silent letters in them that seem to serve no purpose, (pterodactyl is one), and others words that you would think would mean one thing but means the opposite or something completely different, (these words are known as misnomers one of which is inflammable which I have mentioned before). Then you get words that were in the dictionary that weren't actually meant to be there. Dord is a famous example of this, and Vsauce made a brilliant video on it, (I seem to really like Vsauce, but who wouldn't)

Now, (sadly because it is early morning), I have to end this post. This was more of a history lesson, but don't fret as I shall continue this topic in the next post where I talk about point of view and grammar to a certian extent. I am sorry i have been MIA these past several days, but I am back in action and shall post the following blogs in a more timely manner to suit you, the readers, a bit better. I hope you have enjoyed today's post (supposed to be yesterday) and if you did, or would like to ask, tell me/us anything please do so in the comments below and/or on Facebook/Twitter. If you would like to see the newest post as they are published please follow us on Twitter and/or like us on Facebook using the associated buttons on the bar to the left. Thank you for taking the time to read today's post, and I hope you have/had a wonderful day.

Keep learning comrades.

OddballGreg - My First Time In Durban

I'm not sure why I thought a dog staring into the ocean was an accurate representation of this event, but screw it: PUPPY!

You know that place down by the coast called Durban? In South Africa? The one with bunny chow, beaches, traffic circles and cargo ships at sea at all times? If not, you've likely never lived in South Africa. If you have, then you're probably gasping at the fact that I've only just been for the first time.

If you're a long time follower of the blog, you may have become familiar with the usually erratic release schedule of the posts, considering they tend to go up at some absurdly late hour, or not at all when there are occasional difficulties. Considering how much attention you pay, that would probably have alerted you to the fact that the last week's posts were not written on the days of their posting, since their publishing times are far too consistent.

I, having written them all ahead of time, was enjoying a fantastic week down in Durban, one of South Africa's greatly enjoyed holiday destinations famous for it's hotels (I think), beaches and bunny chow, among various other things. Having never had the opportunity to go before, I was quite ecstatic when a one of my best friends arranged for me to go spend a week down there with him as a form of early birthday present. (Yes, that dreaded day looms this month. Egads.)

So what did I get up to while my posts automatically published themselves? Various things that I've never done before. I explored a new city I'd never seen; got severely sunburned because "I don't get sunburned"; went to a marine park and aquarium; bashed my knee significantly on a rock in the ocean and nearly drowned in shock; spent 2 hours trekking along open beaches with my awesome friend while singing ridiculous songs, throwing a random orange we'd found and christened "Doctor Orange" to each other and suffering the sandblasting that could only be compared to walking through a desert naked; learned to drive; drove to our residence in the middle of the night and of course went to large party in the middle of a farm where it rained... a lot... and I got wet and fairly muddy.

Suffice to say, my 8 day long visit was hardly ill spent, and I met a good few wonderful people as well as enjoyed spending time with a fantastic friend of mine. Of course, having driven there and back was a somewhat tiring exercise of 7 hours each, and as such is the reason for this post going up two days later than originally intended.

In any case, I suspect you probably don't read this blog for details about my holiday's, but should I would more than happily extrapolate on the details of my foray into foreign lands should you desire. If so, do be sure to let me know down in the comments below, or via Facebook/Twitter. We here at TCSA love to hear your feedback. And of course, if you enjoy finding out about awesome stuff on the web and world then do please be sure to like the Official TCSA Facebook page and/or follow us on Twitter using the associated buttons on the bar to the left to get all the latest posts as they're published. Also, do be sure to share posts you enjoyed with your friends as it helps us out a great deal. Regardless of what you do, I thank you for having taken the time to read this post; hope that you have/had an absolutely FANTASTIC day, and I will speak again soon.

Who came up with "Seasons Greetings"? It sounds weird. Happy holidays my friends. (Teehee)