I used to teach English as a second language and this is why people learning English have to learn sentence structure in order to know when a word is being used as a verb, noun or adjective.
English speakers learn this subconsciously as children and don't even notice it anymore except when it is used incorrectly and jars on our ears. Even then we know it is wrong, but often cannot say why.
An example is that to an English speaker the sentence
"The motorcyclist was had to bank around the river bank, in order to bank on arriving at the bank in time to bank his savings. However a cloud bank threatened to slow him with rain."
makes perfect sense simply because of the arrangement of the words in the sentence, indicating which of the seven meanings of the word Bank are appropriate at any given point.
A more vulgar example is
"Fuck that fucking, fucker, he's a fucking fuckwit, fucking fuck him!"
The “th” sound is unique to English which uses it this way, that way, then and there, throughout.
At least it’s not like the French nasal talking, or Bushman clicks but it’s still awkward for people learning the language.
Welsh has its ways with Ll and Dd. And a few other letters too.
The way the Rs are pronounced, in English or in French. Different.
The English "th". We were wondering if the English moms were cramming a crow bar in the mouth of their kids to pry open a gap between their front teeth so that they could pronounce their "th" properly!
Yeah, it can be a hard language to learn, and I’m glad that I did so as a kid. My dad, for whom it was a fifth language, used to say that in English, “you spell it ‘horse’ but pronounce it cow.’ “ Still, it’s a great language with a huge vocabulary, tons of “loan words” from other languages, and a lot of flexibility in usage.
& definitely makes for the best crosswords!
-ough is the worst, you can pounce that letter combination almost any way want to
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