English Is A Ridiculous Language!!!!!

I have been learning so much about English since I have been teaching it. Today I learned that there are three different ways of pronouncing ‘ed’ when it is on the end of words.

1. As a ‘t’ like in stopped, where what we actually say is ‘stopt’.
2. As a ‘d’ like in joined, where we say ‘joind’.
3. As ‘id’ like in needed – these are the only ones that sound something like they are spelt.

 Ridiculous!!!!!

And a week or two back I discovered that there are at least 3 ways of spelling the ‘f’ sound. And only one of them involves the letter f!

Ridiculous!!!!!!!

No wonder I never figured out spelling. (Personally I am very thankful to the person who invented the zigzag red line in Word!)

Something else we were warned about during orientation is that your English degenerates if you do not purposely maintain it. Because you spend so much time ‘t a l k i n g    s l o w l y’ (which is very very hard for me) and using teeny tiny words of one syllable or less ;-) that you forget any extended vocabulary you might have had because of disuse. I have heard this with my own two ears from other teachers who have been here longer than I have. They speak to each other at times as if they were all ESOL students. Scary!!!!

The proposed solution for this problem is to read, a lot! :-D  Imagine my joy on discovering that I can consider reading to be professional development!!!!!!! Plus this is another justification towards buying that iphone I want. Portable library. Nothing beats a real book in the hand – except when you’re trying to sneak it past the people weighing your bags at the airport. There are only so many books you can squeeze in a suitcase before it becomes too heavy to lift off the ground. (Ask me how I know this...)

I suspect that writing also falls into this category, because when one is writing one is calling on that extended vocabulary while crafting sentences.  Therefore writing this blog can also be considered to be professional development.

And on that happy thought I am off to bed to dream about books and blogs. J