Fashion, beauty and animal loving language consultant from South Africa living in Stockholm, Sweden.
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We had a PhD student from China – a very well educated older man but also quite an arrogant one. He thought we were all rather uncouth barbarians (he even told our supervisor that if it had been the Cultural Revolution, he would have had him tarred and feathered). One day he was complaining about how stupid the English language is, with all the exceptions to the rules with pronunciation and spelling – he has a point, there! I rather glibly said, oh, that’s because that word has a Greek root, not a Latin one, and proceeded to give him a potted history of Greek and Latin roots, Romance versus Teutonic influences, Saxons, Vikings, Gaelic etc. Not to mention English versus North American spelling and pronunciation! Somehow that managed to impress him and he treated me very differently afterwards. It’s no wonder that English can be so difficult to learn.
We had a PhD student from China – a very well educated older man but also quite an arrogant one. He thought we were all rather uncouth barbarians (he even told our supervisor that if it had been the Cultural Revolution, he would have had him tarred and feathered). One day he was complaining about how stupid the English language is, with all the exceptions to the rules with pronunciation and spelling – he has a point, there! I rather glibly said, oh, that’s because that word has a Greek root, not a Latin one, and proceeded to give him a potted history of Greek and Latin roots, Romance versus Teutonic influences, Saxons, Vikings, Gaelic etc. Not to mention English versus North American spelling and pronunciation! Somehow that managed to impress him and he treated me very differently afterwards. It’s no wonder that English can be so difficult to learn.