English is weird

Anonymouse@lemmy.world to Showerthoughts@lemmy.world – 113 points –

I got hung up on contractions this morning regarding the word "you've". Normally, I'd say "you've got a problem", which expands to "you have got a problem", which isn't wrong, but I normally wouldn't say. Not contracting, I'd say "you have a problem", so then should I just say "you've a problem"? That sounds weird in my head. Is this just a US English problem?

51

You are viewing a single comment
View all comments

Yes, English is weird.

'Bough' and 'cough' are not pronounced the same. 'Bough' and 'bow' are pronounced the same. 'Knee' and 'Leigh' are pronounced the same. 'Neigh' and 'nay' are pronounced the same. 'Polish' (the nationality) and 'polish' (as in what you do to a metal object) are not pronounced the same. 'Tear' (as in to rip) and 'tear' (as in to cry) are spelled the same, but not pronounced the same. Other words which are spelled the same, but pronounced differently:

resume / resume present / present record / record close / close use / use live / live

‘Bough’ and ‘bow’ are pronounced the same

Except, of course, when "bow" is pronounced "bow" instead.

I shot the boughs with my bow and then gave a bow to my beau!

The last one should be spelled beau if you mean your special guy.

Leigh put the Polish bough over his knee but couldn’t polish it. “What’s the use!” he coughed.

I've got all but the use/use one. What's the other usecase if one is "to consume"?

The noun 'use', as in 'this has a specific use'

You can have a use for something, and you can also use something (first one is pronounced the same as the end of 'papoose', second one is pronounced the same as 'ooze')

What’s the use of giving you the answer when you can look it up on the internet?

To have a brief conversation. I can look everything up myself, but it's nice not being a basement dweller every now and then.

It was just my crass humor. I used the noun version of the word “use” because you said you couldn’t figure out how to use it.