Re: [frogs] Discourse on the Consumption of Dog Food

[Anthony W. Youngman]

In message <address@hidden>, Graham Percival 
<address@hidden> writes
> As a cat person, I agree entirely.  This is pretty much the only
> time in my life that I'll express agreement with the English
> language... being surrounded by nothing but ESL people now (and
> trying to teach them better English), I have newfound appreciation
> for what a completely stupid language English is.

English isn't a silly language at all - it's what the Americans have 
done to it :-)

Seriously, the problem is that (certainly in England), Grammar and 
Etymology seem almost to be forbidden subjects. Combined with the 
attitude of "there's no such thing as right or wrong" which seems to be 
prevalent among certain sections of the TEFL community (Teaching English 
as a Foreign Language), the result is an awful mess.

I was surprised recently to discover how FEW rules it takes to pronounce 
English words. Given that the average person has a 20,000 word 
vocabulary, it apparently only takes about 30 or 40 rules for a computer 
speech program to *correctly* pronounce the 50,000 most common English 
words.

The problem is all the words that have made their way into English, but 
are not properly anglicised.

Cheers,
Wol
--
Anthony W. Youngman - address@hidden