Interesting links and articles related to IELTS, ESP, EAP and E-learning. Available to teach ESP, EAP, Research Skills, IELTS, TOEFL and General English.
The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is one of modern linguistics greatest and most genius inventions. Besides its usefulness in accurately describing the sounds of every human language, we ca…
I take it you already know Of tough and bough and cough and dough? Others may stumble but not you On hiccough, thorough, slough and through. Well done! And now 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' sake 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, or brother, And here is not a match for there, Nor dear and fear for bear and pear, And then there's doze and rose and lose- Just look them up- and goose and choose, And cork and work and card and ward And font and front and word and sword, And do and go and thwart and cart- Come, I've hardly made a start! A dreadful language? Man alive! I'd learned to speak it when I was five! And yet to write it, the more I sigh, I'll not learn how 'til the day I die.
The following is a partial list of linguistic example sentences illustrating various linguistic phenomena. Different types of ambiguity which are possible in language. Demonstrations of words which have multiple meanings dependent on context. Will, will Will will Will Will's will?
Ambiguity[edit] Different types of ambiguity which are possible in language.
Lexical ambiguity[edit] Demonstrations of words which have multiple meanings dependent on context.
Will, will Will will Will Will's will? – Will (a person), will (future tense helping verb) Will (a second person) will (bequeath) [to] Will (a third person) Will's (the second person) will (a document)? (Someone asked Will 1 directly if Will 2 plans to bequeath his own will, the document, to Will 3.)[1] Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo. – Buffaloes from Buffalo, NY, whom buffaloes from Buffalo bully, bully buffaloes from Buffalo. Police police Police police police police Police police.[2] — Cops from Police, Poland, whom cops from Poland patrol, patrol cops from Poland. Rose rose to put rose roes on her rows of roses. (Robert J. Baran) – Rose [a person] rose [stood] to put rose [pink-colored] roes [fish eggs as fertilizer] on her rows of roses [flower]. James while John had had had had had had had had had had had a better effect on the teacher[3] – With punctuation: "James, while John had had 'had', had had 'had had'. 'Had had' had had a better effect on the teacher", or "James, while John had had 'had had', had had 'had'. 'Had had' had had a better effect on the teacher" That that is is that that is not is not is that it it is – Grammatically corrected as: "That that is, is. That that is not, is not. Is that it? It is". Can can can can can can can can can can. – "Examples of the can-can dance that other examples of the same dance are able to outshine, or figuratively to put into the trashcan, are themselves able to outshine examples of the same dance". It could alternatively be interpreted as a question, "Is it possible for examples of the dance that have been outshone to outshine others?" or several other ways. Martin Gardner offered the example: "Wouldn't the sentence 'I want to put a hyphen between the words Fish and And and And and Chips in my Fish-And-Chips sign' have been clearer if quotation marks had been placed before Fish, and between Fish and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and Chips, as well as after Chips?"[4] Syntactic ambiguity[edit] Further information: Syntactic ambiguity Demonstrations of ambiguity between alternative syntactic structures underlying a sentence.
We saw her duck.[5] One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas, I don't know.[6] Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana
There aren't any such words in common use, though the 20-volume historical Oxford English Dictionary does contain the word Rousseauian meaning 'relating to the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau or his views on religion, politics, education, etc.'.
The more familiar words queuing/queueing contain clusters of vowels but there's no letter 'a' among them.
Some words which come from Greek also contain several vowels strung together, for example pharmacopoeia or onomatopoeic, but none contain all five vowels with no consonants in between.
Siobhan Thompson performs a tour of the accents of the British Isles - and the celebrities who speak with them! Five lessons to help you do a better Britis
Words really don’t have any logic to them. You can’t just work out the meaning of words based on the sounds that make them up. That’s because words are arbitrary. So if you don&#…
I’m taught p-l-o-u-g-h Shall be pronouncé “plow.” “Zat’s easy w’en you know,” I say, “Mon Anglais, I’ll get through!” My teacher say zat in zat case, O-u-g-h is “oo.” And zen I laugh and say to him, “Zees Anglais make me cough.” He say, “Not ‘coo,’ but in zat word, O-u-g-h is ‘off.'” Oh, Sacre bleu! Such varied sounds Of words makes me hiccough! He say, “Again mon frien’ ees wrong; O-u-g-h is ‘up’ In hiccough.” Zen I cry, “No more, You make my t’roat feel rough.” “Non, non!” he cry, “you are not right; O-u-g-h is ‘uff.'”
Ough is a letter sequence often seen in words in the English language. In Middle English, where the spelling arose, it was pronounced with a back rounded vowel and a velar fricative (e.g., , , , or ).
English has borrowed words from all over the world. This results in a delightful mess of letter combinations that can be pronounced in many different ways.
[caption id="attachment_118688" align="aligncenter" width="612"] This fellow is simply trying too hard (Pic: John Gomez via AP Images)[/caption] First of all, it's important t
To get content containing either thought or leadership enter:
To get content containing both thought and leadership enter:
To get content containing the expression thought leadership enter:
You can enter several keywords and you can refine them whenever you want. Our suggestion engine uses more signals but entering a few keywords here will rapidly give you great content to curate.
Your new post is loading...
Scoop.it!
