English is my 3rd language, yet I'm constantly amazed at how many of native speakers cannot use correctly your/you're or
a lot
In the past I used to work with some Italians and Japanese. They always had trouble with English because so many words pronounced the same have different meanings, and are spelled differently.
In addition to
your – you're and
lots – a lot (why do one lot and many lots mean the same thing in spoken English?),we have:
there – their – they're
here – hear
base – bass
Certain vowel sounds have different ways to pronounce and spell them. Crude and food rhyme. Crud and crude don't rhyme. Explain that to a foreign visitor. There and here should rhyme. They come close but not close enough to rhyme. In English, instead of regular rules of pronunciation or grammar, we have no rhyme or reason.
In other languages, such as French, Spanish or Italian, if you see a word spelled out, you know how to pronounce it. And if you hear it pronounced, you know how to spell it. English has multiple spellings & pronunciations. Those double letters such as th, gh, sh, or ch only confuse people. They make well-educated foreigners sound ignorant & illiterate. When I worked with Italians, I was at the NIH in Bethesda, MD. It was comical to hear them try to say Be
thesda. It came out Buteezda.
Don't get me started on i before e. Or is it e before i? I yeild , or is it yield?
English is a mongrel language, a bit of old Celtic combined with German (Anglo-Saxon),French (from the Norman invasion of England),and a bit of Scandinavian (from Viking invasions). No wonder the grammar and spelling are a mess.
All the good curse words are Anglo-Saxon. They're short, usually one syllable, and very direct. The highfalutin multi-syllable words come from French and Latin. Compare sh!t to defecate or fu¢k to fornicate.
