I love learning new things, as I'm sure most do,
and I entered my linguistics class this semester with a bit of fear of the unknown.
Surprisingly enough, it is one of the most interesting classes I have taken so far.
Did you know,
that the way we pronounce words has changed over time?
For example, the word knife, that we now pronounce as nife, used to be pronounced kanifa?
It's amazing how the English language adapts to each generation.
Such as the word text, which now holds two meanings.
The first being, text used as a noun, the original words of something written or printed, as opposed to a paraphrase, translation, revision, or condensation.
The second being, text used as a verb, to communicate by text message.
What's even more amazing, is that we are able to distinguish between the two when used in a sentence.
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| http://www.chrismclaren.com/blog/ |
Did you know,
that we all pronounce words differently?
Of course you did. How else would dialects come into play?
But what's so awesome, is that although we each pronounce words differently, we are still able to understand one another.
It may sound dumb because it's something we do everyday but we really don't realize how much we go through to decode in conversation.
This is all possible because speech is organized through an internal structure and system of internal rules that we acquire from birth.
Meaning that we all follow the same rules on how a word will be pronounced, and even written in all languages.
How many times have you corrected someone on the way they pronounce a word? Or even made fun of them for pronouncing a word differently?
How many times has spell check told you a word is misspelled?
Think about it.
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